The world as we know it will end because of TB.  Not tuberculosis…True Believers.

Human evolution has diddled with our mobility, the use of our extremities, language skills, (at least in some of us), and various voluntary and involuntary reflexes.  What hasn’t evolved in any way is our primordial fear of the unknown that somehow requires an irrational and often nonsensical and unconditional commitment to…well, some of the craziest shit imaginable; religion, (any of them), scouting, the Elks or Knights of Columbus, political parties, Sam’s Club…any group that encourages costuming, a secret handshake or sworn allegiance to a manifesto and/or leader, (human or magical).  The fact that the mission statements of these self-righteous flocks all claim an anointed calling from a questionably divine source, often and expectedly at cross-purposes with all others, would indicate to anyone with a capacity for simple reason, that faith alone is not valediction for frenetic devotion.  And yet, awe-inspired congregations freely worship at the church of Wall St., or Fox News, or lately, the pizza guy or the dim-witted governor, eating the wafers and drinking the wine, (or Kool-Aid®), and regurgitating the blather of their ridiculous doctrines with the fervor of door-to-door evangelists.  What’s lost, (possibly forever removed from our DNA), is the desire to look beyond the cozy cliques of communal camaraderie.  Instead of embracing evolution’s most generous, (albeit haphazard), gift, the ability to reason, for the pursuit of universal peace and prosperity, we have chosen to fragment our collective energy in the most self-destructive ways; power through brutality, ecologically poisoning commerce, profiteering health and education, reality TV…

Although the 7,000,000,000 of us are outnumbered a kajillion to one by bed bugs and head lice, our superior, (if temporary), rung on the evolutionary ladder should give us the upper hand in dealing with their innate desire to cuddle without poisoning them with chemicals that will eventually take us all down as well.  We should be able to see through the mega-corporation scam that has brought the world to its economic knees…Orwell, anyone?  The force, (the real one, not the Lucas one), of 7 billion brains solving and improving all of the problems of humanity shouldn’t be considered any less ridiculous than our chosen strategy of one ideology trying to impose its will on every other.  I’d like to truly believe that there is a common trigger in our grey matter that will eventually click, and the Arab Spring and the Tea Party and the Occupiers and religious fanatics and NASCAR and Beliebers will collectively realize that Utopia isn’t just a place that Thomas More made up.  Or, there’s the glass-half-empty alternative which would mean Lady Gaga was right, and we were, sadly, born this way.