Riding the Death-Wish Pickle Machine

OK. Let’s start this off by NOT apologizing for anything that is about to be said here. As an old friend who was a US Naval Academy graduate once put it: “No apologies, no excuses.” In other words, ‘suck it up, cupcakes’. If you are easily offended, perhaps this isn’t the best venue for you, but ‘nuff sed, since I won’t personally be offering any for the statements that follow.

I have a habit of waking up just slightly before the crack of dawn and having moments of utmost clarity, frozen slices of insight that absolutely beg to be explored further on paper. Fragments of perceptivity that positively scream, deep within the walls that usually safely contain my exploding awarenesses, to be latter released, like some ontological Prisoner of Zenda about to go pathologically insane unless allowed to see the blazing sun that has been denied him for untold years. Such extreme lucidity usually vanishes like the morning mists, however, I’ve learned from experience.

I had one of these crystalline moments early this AM at about 0430 hours (which is about a half hour before wifie wakes up and begins to perform her noisy ablutions in the adjacent bathroom, thereby making it categorically impossible for me to return to the embrace of somnolence that such a short while ago had me firmly ensnared). It had much to do, I’m sure, with the current non-specific, underlying sense of lifestyle disruption that so many of us are experiencing as a result of the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic.

As wakefulness progressed, I found myself thinking deep, complex thoughts about the nature of humanity, of our ever-infuriating species of so-called ‘intelligent life’ that predominates on this poor old and sadly abused planet, and in particular what an absolutely bloody mess we humming beans have unrelentingly made of Earth over the past several millennia. [From the best estimates to date, Earth began about 4.5 billion years ago and it is reckoned that we have about an equal amount of time left before our sun turns supernova and sizzles everything on its surface to ashes, so in the few thousand years of human civilization we’ve experienced thus far we’ve left a frightful mess in our wake.]

Several things became quite obvious to me as I awakened further. One was [spoiler alert for mothers and God-fearing Christians: potentially objectionable language about to be used.] that humanity, (that’s you and I, brothers & sisters), despite all our vaunted advances, moments of scientific insight, technological genius and flights of occasionally inspired imagination, is absolutely fu*ked.

Another is that organised religion, or loosely the belief in mystical, imagined, unseen yet omniscient Supreme Beings who actually give a mouse fart about us pathetic, insignificant little constructions of carbon-based life, has been, is and remains one of the worst impediments to so-called human progress that ever came along. Despite the frequent arguments that our great organised religions have done so much to help advance humanity’s rise from the unicellular slime we originated in, organised forms of ‘belief’ by ‘the faithful’ are in reality about as backward and retrograde a dynamic as anyone could hope to entrap the potentials of ‘sentient’ beings within.

Still another ‘obvious thing’ is that human beings, who are after all just another form of slightly more intelligent mammalian life, are prone to mate and reproduce without any constraint (owing to surging, irrepressible promptings of biochemical hormones) just like the so-called ‘wild animals’ we so unjustly and condescendingly look down upon, far less harmful creatures that increasingly have difficulties surviving in those sparse parts of the planet we humans still haven’t yet totally ruined for them.

One further lightning flash of truth was that, despite our inherent American tendency to give politically correct lip-service to the concepts of individual liberty, personal freedom and (above all) the chimera of equality, human beings vary tremendously in terms of just about every aspect of their various lives (especially basic intelligence) that you can think of.

And finally, human beings vary markedly in their ability to make rational (as opposed to emotional) decisions, being by nature both highly emotional and inherently fearful creatures with just the merest smidgen of rational thought to temper those flawed matrices.

All of the foregoing characteristics combine to assure that human beings shall, sooner or later, collectively shit their own kennels (Earth) to the point where they are no longer habitable (in other words, the planet will no longer support us). This is an inelectable, to my mind inarguable fact. Sheer human overpopulation will eventually doom the human race, regardless of any other threat (and there many) to our species conceivable. The evidence is everywhere about us, should anyone care to recognise it.

A few days ago, I was watching a program on the local PBS-affiliated TV station (KVIE) that dealt with water resources in the American Great Plains region, specifically as regards the Continental Great Divide and the flow of water from that watershed divide into the Platte and Missouri Rivers. One interesting aspect that emerged during the documentary was its reference to the Ogallala Aquifir, a massive subterranean water aquifer covering about 174,000 square miles, one of the world’s largest naturally occurring underground water tables.

The point was made repeatedly throughout the program that this huge substrate source of water serves the water needs of at least 8 states, though at great risk for over-extraction, given increasing and highly mechanised agricultural reliance upon its aqueous resources (first drawn forth at the turn of the century, after its discovery in 1895).

This is merely one excellent example of the demands that human settlements are increasingly making upon the Earth’s absolutely finite resources, and of course water is the single most critical and vital resource required to sustain all living biological matter. Other critical resources are similarly being squanderously exploited, extracted and converted to material consumer products for profit, without regard for the adverse effects of their rapid depletion by corporate industry.

Meanwhile human beings continue to lustily multiply like rabbits all across the globe largely without constraint and even encouraged to do so by institutional religious beliefs that make reproduction a sacred obligation (Islam and Christianity are perhaps the two best examples of this abysmally ignorant dogma). Furthermore, these religions also regard efforts by artificial means to control human reproduction as being a violation of their ‘god’s’ intentions (e.g. Christianity and its unenlightened adherents, notably, foremost among them being the Roman Catholics and fundamentalist Protestant sects), thinking such practices as abortion and birth control are morally sinful.

The result of this mindless madness, distributed broadly across a nation as vast and populous as the United States (and enmeshed within the basic founding intents of America that enshrine so-called ‘religious freedoms’, as they are) is the generation of ever-greater numbers of people, who will compete for increasingly limited life-sustaining resources.

Another co-dependent factor tied inextricably to this process consists of two additional co-dynamics: 1) general intelligence, and 2) level of education. While the highly educated, it has been repeatedly shown in numerous studies, tend to have lower birth-rates, the opposite effect has also been neatly correlated: those with marginal capacity for intelligent reflection and lower levels of education have substantially higher birthrates.

Thus, individuals who are probably most capable of supporting and sustaining families are having fewer children and those who are far less capable are essentially spawning like cute little bunnies (who hold the world’s absolute record for reproducing themselves; the average rabbit’s sex act lasts only 3 seconds…I am tempted to compare that to human male coital capabilities, but I’ll resist the attempt to be funny here).

Given the additional dynamic of today’s dumbed-down higher-education institutions, that have largely been converted into ‘white-collar worker’ mills, instead of establishments capable of producing self-actuating, thoughtful individuals, far too many erstwhile ‘college graduates’ these days remain incapable of functioning in a more reflectively intelligent manner than that required to use some smartphone apps.

Distilled into simpler terms, by drilling down through all my highfaluting verbiage and putting it into a much simpler descriptive context, we are ending up with far fewer smart people and a disproportionately greater number of marginally bright individuals, most of whom reproduce without a thought (other than the size of their partner’s external sex organs) and end up with families they often haven’t a chance of supporting economically.

Consider also that one of parents' chief responsibilities is to help their offspring survive long enough to survive the often catastrophic errors in judgement they will make as immature juveniles long enough to safely make it to adulthood. And the kids of parents in the lower economic classes don't usually have that advantage, when their fathers and mothers are substance abusers, gang-members, not very bright to begin with, or who never themselves matured.

And this is only in a country such as our United States, which is presently (still) at the top of the human socio-economic food chain on this planet. When one considers the fact that in countries like India (and many of the Arab nations) abysmal ignorance is almost a given fact of life, it doesn’t take a degree in economics to calculate that the most wretched segment of the world’s population shall continue to expand exponentially until we have finally reached that not-so-distant ecological tipping point whereat all human social norms across the planet will disintegrate amidst massive economic chaos. At that point it isn’t a stretch to predict the outbreak of violent, brutal wars as the strong battle the weak for their very survival.

If this sounds fanciful, rest assured it is not in the least so. The chief problem we face is that if anything is to be done about our future prospects, it must be done now, while it may still be possible to fend off the inevitable outcome of a world filled to the brim with too many hungry people and not enough wherewithal to support them. But sadly, that ain’t gonna happen anytime soon because human beings have a natural tendency to procrastinate, deny reality and/or simply refuse to accept the fact that Homo sapiens may well breed itself into extinction.

An excellent example of this possibility may be found in our present predicament regarding the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic. It isn’t as if this predicament wasn’t foreseen, and it has in fact long been predicted by some of us who have substantial experience in CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear) threats to human health & safety. From 1900 onwards the exceptionally astute among us have predicted the likelihood of successive outbreaks of disease of pandemic proportions, particularly those of a viral nature.

Quite recently, another article appeared on-line in which the writer postulated that all memory of the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 crisis shall fade away entirely, not long after it is successfully dealt with, due to what the writer states is our characteristically selective manner of thinking. I read his words with considerable interest because not only is it true, we have seen this trait of myopic hindsight repeat itself over and over throughout human history.

As far as pandemics are concerned, we have experienced a number already in the past 100 years, including major instances in 1918 and 2005-07, yet not only were these dire events totally unforeseen, once passed they were conveniently forgotten with the passage of a few years, almost as if someone had wiped humanity’s collectively memory entirely clean.

As someone well-versed in the nature of CBRN agent threats, I myself witnessed this same phenomenon at work after the 1991 Iraqi ‘Gulf War 1’, at which time Saddam Hussein posed a very real and truly frightening threat to Allied Coalition Forces in the form of chemical and biological weapons (which he not only possessed, but had stockpiled significant quantities of for battlefield deployment in both rocket and artillery projectile forms).

Despite all the hubbub, despite all the panicky ant-hill activity throughout the world (and especially in the USA) at that time, as soon as that war had been concluded, the horrific nature of a near-unthinkable threat such as that was gradually but progressively forgotten. Especially after the Gulf War 2 sequel played out, when Dubya Bush captured Saddam Hussein and executed him removing his threat once and for all (all at a bargain cost of only several trillions of US dollars, it is conservatively estimated).

This same short-sightedness was again in abundant evidence with regard to America’s preparation for coping with the highly predictable threat of a naturally evolving biological agent (such as the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 virus), but it also applies even more ominously (if perhaps more subtly) to the threat of human overpopulation of our planet, the only difference being that in contrast to the above cited biological disasters, we have a bit more time to prepare for the human over-population crisis.

Back around the turn of the century, a popular movement centering on the ‘science’ of eugenics developed. Eugenics proponents felt that active intervention was needed to cull the human herd, so to speak, of those who were deficit in the higher qualities (characterised as such as intelligence, education, physically ideal forms, etc., etc.). Intellectuals of that early period believed that steps had to be taken to improve the human gene pool (since we were a species that had proven itself to be unacceptably variable in its potentials and capabilities; only by eliminating ‘marginal’ individuals could a whole raft of catastrophic consequences be headed off).

The applied social Darwinism of eugenics, which was essentially an American invention, was later exported and wholeheartedly embraced by none other than everyone’s favorite historical boogeyman, Adolf Hitler, who quickly put the theories to the test by attempting to eradicate the entire Jewish religion and its adherents. He was a little too successful, regrettably, and thereafter, of course, eugenics was consured as the ultimate ‘politically incorrect’ approach to how to elevate the quality of human life (despite the fact that its basic core tenets...aesthetics aside...were actually quite functional in a strictly pragmatic context).

The kicker was that America has a cultural tradition of embracing ‘equality’ as an integral part of the human rights equation and there could therefore never be even the slightest vestige of an agreement as to what constitutes ‘inferior’ racial characteristics & traits, or what differentiates the good from the bad. With whites using eugenic theory to classify blacks as inherently inferior and non-Jews seeking to persecute Jews for their distinctly different cultural beliefs, it was clear enough to most that the problems associated with sorting out eugenic theory and refining it to the point of functionally agreeable adequacy were too great to undertake, and the study of eugenics was soon relegated to the graveyard of bright ideas that were unrealistic and largely unworkable.

That leaves us back at square one, with rising concerns over the fact that smarter, more reflective members of society are gradually losing out to the knee-jerk, reactive simpletons all among us, a process that will ultimately degrade if not wholly destroy our species on this planet.

But returning to the cited PBS documentary on water management (above), I found myself musing over the message being promulgated in it that we can still make intelligent choices in managing our collective lives that will both meet our needs as human animals and help preserve the planet at the same time. The message extant in this excellent documentary is unfortunately a clear-cut case of the preacher sermonising to the church’s choir, if I may be permitted to use a religious analogue in an otherwise strictly secular argument here, since it is aimed at intelligent, humane, caring and reflectively thoughtful individuals who probably already subscribe to most of its exhortations.

Those who are most in need of benefiting from it are, dare I say, the knee-jerk, dumbed-down, intellectually flawed specimens of our culture who consistently demonstrate that they are largely not only unmindful of exercising basic wisdom but actually constitutionally incapable of becoming at all concerned about their deficiency. After all, they live a largely reactive life, don’t they? A life in which little active reflection takes part. Making the same mistakes repeatedly, engaging in cycles of the same grossly harmful behaviors and activities that perpetuate their substandard lives.

These poorly educated, marginally bright people are also the target audience of America’s surgically precise commercial marketing machinery and advertising industry that keeps them perpetually enslaved to rampant, superfluous and destructive consumerism that destroys not only their economic well-being but the basic quality of their lives and any remaining ability they might still have to reflect intelligently for themselves.

How sad, therefore, that programs dealing with such critically important problems as the above probably never trickle down to the burger-consuming, Chevie & Ford monster pickumup driving Budweiser guzzlers and morbidly overweight substance abusers who most need to pay closer attention and take heed.

These rather dire problems highlight a major flaw in our American system of governance, a system that imposes a weighty, responsible burden for intelligent regard and wise action upon its citizens, due to the very nature of ‘democracy’ (democracy reflects, after all, merely a majority consensus and not by any stretch of the imagination does it represent the definitive, collective voice of applied reasoning, intelligent thought and/or mature responsibility that such a system mandates for its citizenry).

And so we Americans continue to hurtle down the happy road to eventual political extinction, while far more autocratic regimes (such as the Peoples Republic of China) stand a far better chance of being able to change the status quo for their collective betterment (but only if that option is made ascendantly desirable, since the opposite possibility…that of creating a vastly corrupt, tragically inhumane and utterly repressive socio-economic system…is also far more possible in a super-autocracy like China’s).

In this race, to see whose society crumbles first (America’s or China’s), America is at a decided disadvantage, since the dumb bleat of cultural ignorance is a loud one and will quite likely be heard well above the quieter pleading of reflective intelligence, with predictably disastrous results. Totalitarian societies can, of course, ignore and/or override the more ignorant elements of their own populations, simplyby resorting to overt repression when populist stupidity threatens the politically predetermined ideal status quo.

Democracies, by contrast, are at a decided disadvantage under similar circumstances when mass social ignorance prevails over collective wisdom (as it does presently, here in America). As in other specifics, China commands a certain enormous advantage over us. In that context, democracy may be seen as not constituting a superior system of social governance (as we Americans are overly fond of believing).

Frankly, I’d hate to put any money on the outcome of the coming ‘cold culture-clash’ that looms between the USA and the PRC at this time, such are the vast uncertainties involved in predicting anything these days, but if we don’t start to enshrine enlightened wisdom above the ignorant, thoughtless reactivity of our masses, things do NOT look pretty!

---------------------------------

One last thought, here. Yesterday I was driving a short distance to the local park with the pup, taking her out to experience that botanical symphony of deliriously luscious (at least to a dog’s exponentially amplified olfactory organs) odors that fire up the doggy brain in a manner quite similar to that wherein the aroma of dark roasted Arabica beans appeals to people, and was making a left turn (into a central turning lane that divides right and left traffic lanes) when a kid ( I say ‘kid’, despite his apparent age of at least 16-18), bare-chested and zooming along on a skateboard, suddenly darted across the street in front on me. Sorely vexed at his deathless defiance of my vehicle’s 3000 pounds of forward momentum, I reflexively threw out my hand to warn him off (there was no time to stop, given the abruptness of his maneuver). His response was some sort of screamed Tourett’s Syndrome utterance impugning my mother's legitimacy as he swerved away at the last second and continued down the street and out of sight.

The embers of that example of extremely stupid behavior remains smoldering within me as I write these words, for it is exactly that sort of sheer, inexcusably abysmal ignorance (but now permeating a nation full of supposedly mature adults who should know better) that is reducing our American republic, founded on the highest precepts of applied wisdom, to little better than a seething rabble of whining, ‘entitled’ and complaining populist dimbulbs who lack the merest capability to reflect intelligently on our pressing socio-political and economic issues (e.g. protests over whether or not right-wing ‘2nd Amendment’ fanatics have the right to defy currently mandated COVID-19 social distancing guidelines, despite the obvious collective health risks of so-doing).

Reckless, irresponsible thought (if you can even call it thought) and situational knee-jerk behavior are normally characteristics of callow immaturity, so in that small sense at least the idiot kid’s actions may be partly explained (if not pardoned).

However, when an entire nation suffers from that same ‘arrested juvenile’ mentality (such as we have presently, demonstrating in the state and Federal capitols), and when older, wiser and more experienced figures of recognised prominence fail to step up and strongly censure these gatherings of naïve souls, you have dead-certain potential for accelerated disintegration of what once was a strong, purposeful and moderately unified nation, in a time of grave crisis.

My own opinion is that we are now witnessing the result of decades of parental permissiveness, abnegation of family responsibilities, narcissistic individualisms, moral and physical flaccidity and most of all a complete failure to encourage (nay! reinforce) thoughtfulness and encourage disciplined intelligence (instead of ‘entitlement’ sentiment) among our younger citizens. In short, America is institutionally ripe for a fall and we are witnessing the early stages of that decline as the nation continues to suffer through the present chaotic pandemic crisis (a crisis largely attributable to deficit leadership, an indecisive governmental bureaucracy and administrative failures to send in the public health ‘A-Team’ at the onset of the epidemic).

As the nation continues to embrace unqualified ‘anything and everything goes’ diversity, bereft of even the slightest skeptical criticism of what passes for common populist wisdom (which usually translates to applied reactive ignorance), we are sewing the seeds of our own national destruction ever faster and more surely than ever.

Given the enormous further impact of sloppy, simplistic religious sentiment (read: principally Christian fundamentalism) that mindlessly affirms popular ‘sanctity’ of all human life in extremis (e.g. the Right to Life movement and similar causes that regards abortion as a ‘crime against God’), the poorer elements of our population continues to brainlessly spawn like rabbits and we continue to welcome (almost ecstatically) poorly educated, economically impoverished immigrants unconditionally, with the predictable result that eventually the sheer pressure of disproportionate population density disparities will require us to resort to the sort of Draconian social constraints exemplified by Orwell’s and Huxley’s famous tales of future dystopia.

But since we still have a few hundred years of wiggle-room left before we reach that crucial tipping point, things continue to spin rapidly out of control much as they presently are, with the cattle-like masses outnumbering and outvoting the rocket scientists among us to perpetually retard enlightened socio-economic foresight.

As the old saying goes, “You can’t fix stupid” and stupidity is exactly what it is. A nation as full of stupid people as is ours doesn’t stand (or deserve) a chance to thrive under any form of democratic system. Which is why severely autocratic regimes like China have an almost unbeatable advantage over us in the present race to see which system…East or West…achieves world-wide hegemony (it is, after all, a ‘zero-sum’ game, as the Chinese view things).

As a specialist in cranial protection technology and safety areas of health science, I found myself staring perplexedly at yesterday’s 18-year-old skateboarding cretin and despite my intense anger, absently wondering how soon he was going to end up bashing what few brains he still has to smithereens on the street’s unforgiving asphalt surfacing. His death might certainly provoke grief in his parents (although it would make sensational ‘breaking news’ on the 5 PM local news broadcast), but it would definitely keep him from breeding more little cretins like himself in the future!

Despite being a medical guy all my life, I have long since given up grieving over the loss of those among us who aren’t smart enough to adequately protect their own heads…the single most important part of the human body…while engaging in inherently hazardous activities. In fact, I now tend to feel that this sort of behavioral mindlessness is merely further proof of nature’s trying to correct its mistakes by eliminating bad or seriously flawed genes in the human species.

Call it inadvertent applied eugenics, if that euphemism makes the concept any more acceptable, but one way of another I feel Social Darwinism is due to make a huge comeback in the not-too-distant future, like it or not. Probably not in time, regrettably, to save us naïve, dumbed-down Americans from ourselves and our catastrophically defective system of government, but perhaps timely enough to allow a few people on the globe to still survive the Lemming-like rush of humanity towards certain extinction (although that’s probably not really an ultimately productive idea, when one reflects further on my main point here).

Better to let Ma Nature wipe the slate clean and start all over again, which come to think of it, may be exactly what she’s trying to achieve with the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic. [I’m tempted to sign off here by saying ‘stay safe and follow all the preventive COVID-19 guidelines’ but that would seem to defeat nature’s intent, wouldn’t it?]

Thinking further along these lines, mindful of the fact that many of the fundamentalist Christian Churches were among the most flagrant of the social-distancing guideline violators when the COVID-19 preventive recommendations were promulgated, it’s smugly comforting to think that their ignorance may actually help reduce their flocks significantly (we should be so lucky!).

Tell me nature isn’t constantly self-correcting itself…!

-----------------

PS: In case anyone wonders where the title of this piece came from, it harkens back to the lyrics of a song 70s folk artist Arlo Guthrie (Wood Guthrie’s son) sang (‘The Motorcycle Song’) some many years ago, which appear below. You really have to listen to the song to get the full appreciation of how it all fits together, needless to say.

The Motorcycle Song (by Arlo Guthrie)

I don't want a pickle
Just want to ride on my motorcicle
And I don't want a tickle
'Cause I'd rather ride on my motorcicle
And I don't want to die
I just want to ride on my motorcy…cle

It was late last night the other day
I thought I'd go up and see Ray
So l went up and I saw Ray
There was only one thing Ray could say, was:

I don't want a pickle
Just want to ride on my motorcicle
And I don't want a tickle
'Cause I'd rather ride on my motorcicle
And I don't want to die
I just want to ride on my motorcy…cle

Just last week I was on my bike
I run into a friend named Mike
Run into my friend named Mike
Mike no longer has a bike. He cries:

I don't want a pickle
Just want to ride on my motorcicle
And I don't want a tickle
'Cause I'd rather ride on my motorcicle
And I don't want to die
I just want to ride on my motorcy…cle

Ironically enough, if America doesn’t get its head together pretty soon, we’re all going to have to swallow that big, oversized pickle Arlo sings about. D’ya think?