So The World Ended: Here Are The Best (And Worst) Things Humanity Created
So that’s it. The world ended. (I’d get into the whole “even if the Maya were right, they meant that there’d be a shift in consciousness or the beginning of a new era, not the end of the world” argument, but the world is ending, I don’t have time!)
It’s been fun, guys – the world did a bunch of cool stuff, specifically manifesting all this gross stuff called “life” it’s got crawling around on it. Life on Earth may have come to an end, but it had a pretty epic run. Let’s take a look back at some of its finer moments.
1. Just like… being in the first place.
So first there was some soup, I guess. In that soup weren’t noodles and chunks of beef and all that cool stuff, but instead the basic building blocks of life, as in the same stuff you’re made out of. Some chemicals were all like, “Yo, what if we could perceive ourselves and observe things and have awareness and eventually like make out and read books and eat sandwiches?” and some other chemicals were like, “Hell yeah, that sounds sick. Let’s do it.” And then they made some cells, and those cells kept splitting and eventually there was consciousness and it was awesome. And then…
2. Evolution
At some point along the line, some of the single-celled organisms decided they were better than the other single-celled organisms and then they probably turned into fish or something. Then Charles Darwin showed up and was like, “Alright guys, check this out,” and he whispered something into the fishes ear and then the fish were like, “That’s a pretty cool idea Charlie Boy” and then they turned into dinosaurs and plants and other kinds of fish and eventually monkeys and stuff. The dinosaurs peaced out because they were a bunch of whiners and couldn’t handle a stupid meteorite hitting them (LOL neither could we, right guys?). Then one day, one of the monkeys was like, “I’m sick of these monkeyshines,” and he decided to stop doing cool monkey stuff and started worrying about dumb stuff like morality and feudalism and fiscal responsibility. (Note: All of this is completely accurate, please take any future biology and history tests accordingly. Oh right, the world ended, no more tests, cool.)
3. Art.
Alright, I’m skipping a few steps here, but art is pretty cool. Sure, humanity did some other great stuff like medicine, creating infrastructure and being the architect of its own demise, but art is so great because it contains everything from primitive drawings to classical music to great literature to the episode of Friends where Joey has to create a fake foreskin.
Art is that which tied us, humanity, all together. Everyone wanted to create things to better understand the world we lived in, while simultaneously making it more beautiful, and that in itself is beautiful. Art entertained and taught and enlightened. Good job, humans.
But we also did some dumb stuff, here are two of the worst things we used to do:
1. Killing and hating each other.
I’m no vegan, but it is still pretty insane that you could eat another living thing all ground up and made into the shape of a ring.
Chicken rings aside, war and genocide were also pretty uncool. Homophobia and racism weren’t great, either. It was pretty miraculous that we could ever walk around and say stuff in the first place, so why did we have to mess that up with all the hate and murder? This might come off as a flippant approach to very serious issues, but for real, why did we have to go and mess up the amazingness that is life (human life specifically) by getting all up in each other’s grills over silly things?
2. Art I don’t like.
Wasn’t it terrible when people made things you don’t like? Even worse is when people used to (back during the existence of the world) make stuff I didn’t like. There are books I don’t like, TV shows I don’t like, music I don’t like, and cave drawings I don’t like (two thumbs down to the paleolithic paintings of Drakensberg Park in South Africa. What cliche garbage.)
Whelp, that’s it I guess, time to hit the old dusty trail of oblivion with all you other folks. It was nice existing with ya.
’til next time,
Sean Morrow
