Humans
spawned from aliens?
Someone who really had his stuff together
— or at least had a cousin working in the
upper echelon of the stuff business — once
said that ignorance is bliss.
Oh, the sheer multitude of smiles and grins
and joyful expressions I see surrounding
me daily. It is truly a wonder that homes
haven’t been built upside down, what with
all the bliss I witness in these parts.
Just the other day I was engaged in a conversation
with a young woman who is renowned for her
excessive happiness. Somehow the discussion
screeched and slid to the well-documented
and meticulously mapped question of where
we come from. (It is unimportant how we
reached this topic, but I will say that
the conversation began with intricate testimony
as to where Britney and Justin now stand.
According to their rep’s, they are very
happy and chock full of bliss.)
The young woman I was speaking with declared
with conviction that she absolutely does
not believe that we [humans] are descended
from monkeys.
I began explaining to her that that is not
how evolution works exactly when she interrupted
me.
“Wait,” she said aghast. “Are you saying
that someone as intelligent as you actually
believes in evolution?”
It was a dirty, ego-stroking tactic meant
to screw with me. She should have gone for
broke and scratched the little spot behind
my ear that sends me into a catatonic state
of pure bliss.
But, I could parry her low jab.
“I would venture to say that at least 85
to 90 percent of highly educated people
believe in evolution,” I said. “Even the
Pope went so far as to say that the evolutionary
process is a fact — after God created Earth
initially though.”
“So what,” she replied. “He’s just the Pope.”
Touché. I needed another tactic,
a full-frontal assault. Talk of genetic
mutations, adaptation and the fossil record
would only prove futile.
“So,” I said condescendingly. “Does this
mean that you believe in creationism?”
“You mean that we were created by God?”
she asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“No, that’s bogus too,” she said.
I was stumped. She was smiling.
I always assumed that the debate on man’s
origin was between two highly concrete and
stable positions. I reluctantly asked her
what the third option was.
“Aliens,” she said.
Really? That was her exact reply and she
isn’t even a Raelian. And from the looks
of her, I assumed she was much too happy
to be bogged down by Erich Von Daniken’s
book “Chariots of the Gods?”
I tried explaining to her just how ludicrous
her theory was. No evidence. No explanation
for similarities between species or biological
remnants, (that tailbone used to serve more
of a purpose than breaking on ski slopes).
Not even a simple, easy to grasp theological
treatise on man’s place in the so-called
scheme, none of that. Just some half-baked
babbling about aliens landing a few thousand
years ago and dropping off some genetically
engineered humans to populate the Earth
and raise cattle for valuable lips, tongues
and rectums.
She was so matter of fact about it; my face
must have looked like the wide open, almost
100-foot high front door of NORAD — where
the really big kids play really big video
games for the highest of stakes.
I was still in a state of shock when she
said, “But you know what? It doesn’t make
the least bit of difference where we come
from.”
My mouth shut halfway and I waited for next
words.
“We are each only here for a short time,
if we’re lucky,” she said. “You can sit
and worry and fuss over the when’s and where’s
and why’s, but that will just ensure that
you don’t explore the who’s and what’s and
I’s and the now. It’s so huge and heated
and yet so utterly inconsequential. And
for the record, Britney is a total slutbag.”
A moment after she walked away I felt a
deep pang of understanding and I smiled
as wide as a rainbow-billed toucan in a
fresh bowl of Fruit Loop’s. Sweet bliss,
how I longed for thee!
Greg Smith is a journalism major at Cal
State Long Beach.
|
