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| Perhaps we should re-evaluate who was really "stupid"; the birds or the people who allowed the complete extinction of the birds to take place. Word Info |
By Simon Powers, University of Lausanne
For hundreds of thousands of years humans lived in hunter-gatherer societies, eating wild plants and animals. Inequality in these groups is thought to have been very low, with evidence suggesting food and other resources were shared equally between all individuals. In fact, in the hunter-gatherer societies that still exist today we see that all individuals have a say in group decision making. Although some individuals may act as leaders in the sense of guiding discussions, they cannot force others to follow them.
But it seems that with the beginning of agriculture around 10,000 years ago, this changed. An elite class began to monopolise resources and were able to command the labour of others to do things, such as build monuments in their honour. So how was it that egalitarian societies, where all men were equal, transitioned into hierarchical societies where despots reigned? See: Raw Story
Once upon a time: hunter-gatherers in small bands had no leaders. We all ate a paleo-diet because that's all that there was - fast food chains hadn't been invented yet. We lived short lives, our vocabularies were limited, but we were ripped to shreds for our brief time in the sun. It was like a John Lennon song.
Then, along with agriculture, cities, finance, commerce, bread and reading, we birthed assholes. The bread made us fat and sedimentary, and since the saber tooth tigers died out - well before the Dodos - we had no natural predators that flexed our muscles or our minds. Couple that with remote controls, home computers, the Internet and flat screens with propaganda-as-news and [non] reality-TV and we were really screwed. The anus-class justified their existence by entrepreneurial genius; "divine right" ('cause, no one can argue with that), and suppression of anyone's rights other than their own. Most of them - like modern psychopaths - rose to prominence in positions of high authority, because they "sounded" like they knew what they were talking about even if they didn't. Keeping us divided through racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc. were and are tactics similar to the cynical observations of LBJ.
Nowadays, the royal anuses finance obfuscation on climate change (as their class previously did on the dangers of leaded gasoline and smoking); bribe politicians obviously addicted to crack cocaine, and buying elections. Speaking of lead, solving it may have remedied a myriad host of issues had the lying not taken place. But again, they excel at convincing everyone they have the answer to everything in simple soundbite philosophies spouted by their uneducated parrots in owned media to their under-educated minions, making John Steinbeck more prophet than author. A salient, poignant sign at the start of the Occupy Wall Street movement stated: "Satan runs Wall Street! One day, the poor will have nothing left to eat BUT the rich!" Never an advocate of cannibalism, but I observe in this case, they will at least be recycled into a usable compost contributing to new hunter-gatherer crops.
Despite Malcolm X's farm metaphor, it is the Dodos that have come home to roost. The birds were slaughtered for meat by the stupid humans that allowed them to perish. We obviously can't solve the problems in the Near East nor problems at our own borders, healthcare or funding the government at home, the Venn diagram intersection being their genesis from US policies that can be summed as "kicking the can down the road" and "whistling in the wind" without the calculation of blow back. Now, "eating our own" - usually, a political metaphor - is applied to the human species, and WHO will pen the image of our remains (at, if it comes to that, our demise)?
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