The Cosmic Joke

Somebody is goofing on us. Mankind is the pinnacle of evolution (so far). We are the masters of our domain. Yet, we are the quintessential example of non-selective breeding in a world obsessed with selective breeding.

Why?

Because men can't keep it in their pants and women can't help themselves. (Pretty much the same excuse but, somehow, women get to take the moral high ground on this one.) And no matter how carefully we plan, how well we are taught (or coached), no matter how many bad examples life throws in our paths, we still make bad choices. We know better. We may not have started out knowing better but by now we pretty much know the score.

Which got me to thinking. Why aren't we, by now, living in a Utopian society where each of us has our ideal mate, our children are guaranteed to be brilliant and beautiful, where sex is mutual, compatible and plentiful and where jealousy is merely a concept?

It is because we are blessed (or cursed) with two traits that have no business being together. Cognitive Reasoning and a Sex Drive. Simply put, we are so damn sure we can get laid on our own terms that we are constantly being blindsided by what's available.



The animal world does not have this problem. The males will hump anything and, when the bitches are in heat, pretty much the whole neighborhood shows up. Not that we don't know people like this but, then again, we aren't all blessed with the same amount of cognitive reasoning, either. Hell, dogs don't even need other dogs. They will hump your leg or a teddy bear with equal abandon.

On the flip side, a lot of people can't wait for their cognitive reasoning to kick in so that was why nightclubs and alcohol were invented. Also, in another soon to be well know internet fact, batteries were invented by a woman. War was invented by men to make themselves look good look so that they could get as many women as possible with as little discussion as possible.

In short, our Sex Drive will always trump our Cognitive Reasoning. Which is why, even though we may be at the pinnacle of evolution, we are definitely the results of non-selective breeding.

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The Trouble with Hairy (Legs)

I have a problem with spiders. Every morning and every evening I have to kill a bunch of spider webs on my front porch and on the tiki deck. It does not matter how diligent I am at removing them - they keep coming back. The problem is worse when I leave the porch lights on at night.

I picture a crew of spider construction workers with their little hard hats, the flashing sawhorse lights, the beep-beep-beep as they back their little spider asses to the next area to be filled in, spewing webbing as a cement truck would a load of concrete. Only a third of them are working. The rest are either "supervising" or "taking a break", leaning on little spider shovels and glaring at passing fireflies.

Personally I find spiders creepy. When I was a teen-ager I moved my bedroom to my parent's back basement to avoid sharing a room with my siblings. I had a cot in one corner, poor ventilation and nascent claustrophobia. One night I awoke in the dark. I was thirsty and I reached above me and pulled the string that turned on the bare bulb over my bed. Hanging parallel to the pull string was a single strand of spider webbing. Suspended by the webbing was a big hairy spider - about six inches from my face. After that I didn't find sleeping in the same room with my sister nearly as disturbing.

Yesterday, I was killing another batch of spider webs when the petite red head asked me if I ever killed the actual spiders. "Huh?" I replied sagely.

It had never occurred to me. I just kept killing more and more elaborate constructions. Then I got to thinking. I wondered how many generations of spiders grew up and were evolving through selective breeding to survive my daily attacks. Was I actually breeding a heartier form of super-spider? Would I awake one morning to find myself wrapped in a cocoon of webbing, suspended upside down from the ceiling? With thousands of chittering arachnids fighting over the remains of my neighbor and claiming "dibs" on me?

I believe that a lot of nature is put here as an example of how "The Big Guy" intends things to run. Spiders are indeed creepy. But they also serve a function. Eating bugs and scaring teen-age boys in the dark are two of them. They also give me something to do twice a day. Sort of a break from the routines of living in paradise.

As for selective breeding, I got to wondering if we weren't doing the same thing with our fellow human beings. You know, breeding a stronger, smarter, more virulent form of, say, terrorists - or maybe even ex-spouses? It is damn near Darwinian.

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