Natural Selection

So, in yesterday’s piece “Generational Fix” I touched on the topic of how basic logic and reasoning seem to fail so many people, day in, day out. My homie, @Luigi_Schmidt suggested I should write a piece on natural selection. Thus, this could be seen as a, erm…tongue in cheek follow up to the depth and heaviness that was “Generational Fix”. Enjoy:

The theory of natural selection (as I choose to construe it for the purposes of this piece) states that a species will evolve over time selecting traits which will best ensure its future survival while weeding out those traits which are, for lack of a better term, liabilities. To this end, those walking amongst us lacking basic common sense (which actually isn’t all that common) and logical reasoning skills will find themselves, and any potential descendants of theirs extinguished from the human race.

Take for example those wonderful “friends & family” members of ours who forward chain mails with a little catch at the end “send this out to 10 people you care about, including me. If I don’t get it back, I’ll know how you feel.” Shock and horror! Let us logically break down how this is a problem. The recipient of this email now has to respond, using the exact same email, catch and all, to the sender. Add to that, now there are 9 other hapless victims added to the chain. Having sent the response, the original recipient will now expect 10 responses, including one from the original sender. If you truly believe that the sender will be hurt by your non-response you can’t not respond and they can’t not respond and so you get caught in a perpetual “chain” of back and forth forwarding of the same email – it’s a vicious cycle!! If you send, oh say, 30 of these mails, it is very possible that you could end up spending every waking moment of your life receiving and forwarding the same 30 emails to 90 people and cleaning up your inbox and outbox and eventually die at your desk of dehydration. Extreme, I know, but that’s how natural selection works. Now share this blog post with 10 friends!

Next, let’s take the example of the typical pedestrian. These individuals clearly harbor unrequited dreams of strutting the runways of the world the way they casually sash across the street as if they don’t see me driving down the road at the (legal) speed of 60 km per hour. You would swear they think I would be concerned if they get run over. News flash: in the battle of your body dawdling along at 18m per minute and my 1300kg car moving at 60kmh, you will come off second best. Always!

Finally, your typical examples like running with a knife/pair of scissors, setting yourself on fire, snorting fire ants up your nose, texting and driving, tweeting and driving, drinking and driving, and of course, unprotected promiscuity will all get you killed. You can take that to Julius Malema’s trust fund! If anything, I’m surprised that natural selection takes so long to take effect, we still have so many “geniuses” roaming the earth. Anyhow, in the wise words of my twomie, @beanbagboy, “It’s a traffic circle, not a Rubik’s cube!” Let us let sense rule our lives people, we’ll be better off for it.