Stupid Bloody Idea, I Tell You...
May. 26th, 2004 09:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ursangnomeSomeone in the Great Cosmic Design Department needs to be hauled out and shot.
I can just imagine it. A few billion years ago these entities are sitting there in a meeting, sucking down the intergalactic equivalent of Starbucks and Krispy Kremes, and when asked, "So, what's out next project?" some yokel from over in marketing says, "Let's take a planet and put six billion monkeys on it! It'll be great! Give 'em sentience and some basic technology, and we can have a great theme park!"
Six billion monkeys! Really, what was this guy thinking? Couldn't they see the inherent design flaws? Couldn't they choose something that didn't spend quite so much of it's time jumping up and down, screeching, and throwing it's droppings about? Tree sloths might have been a reasonable choice. Or otters - for all their weasel family origins, they don't seem particularly mean spirited. Or budgies. Or angel fish. Anything but the damnable monkeys.
Personally, I think the sentience was a bad move. I mean, I don't expect any of my begonias are particularly worried that one of the pansies across the street is going to figure out how to spit the atom and blow up the flower beds. The rocks in my garden aren't concerned that some less than optimal choices it made back when it was a younger rock are going to haunt it for the rest of it's stony existence. And I seriously doubt my pink gourami is concerned about what impact the actions of some neon tetra with an expensive Harvard Law education several hundred miles away will have on it's life.
A ficus doesn't have anxiety. A pigeon doesn't break promises. Igneous rocks aren't petty. Nobody has to worry that a maple tree got up on the wrong side of the bed, or that a grasshopper may have an irrational fit of temper....
I can just imagine it. A few billion years ago these entities are sitting there in a meeting, sucking down the intergalactic equivalent of Starbucks and Krispy Kremes, and when asked, "So, what's out next project?" some yokel from over in marketing says, "Let's take a planet and put six billion monkeys on it! It'll be great! Give 'em sentience and some basic technology, and we can have a great theme park!"
Six billion monkeys! Really, what was this guy thinking? Couldn't they see the inherent design flaws? Couldn't they choose something that didn't spend quite so much of it's time jumping up and down, screeching, and throwing it's droppings about? Tree sloths might have been a reasonable choice. Or otters - for all their weasel family origins, they don't seem particularly mean spirited. Or budgies. Or angel fish. Anything but the damnable monkeys.
Personally, I think the sentience was a bad move. I mean, I don't expect any of my begonias are particularly worried that one of the pansies across the street is going to figure out how to spit the atom and blow up the flower beds. The rocks in my garden aren't concerned that some less than optimal choices it made back when it was a younger rock are going to haunt it for the rest of it's stony existence. And I seriously doubt my pink gourami is concerned about what impact the actions of some neon tetra with an expensive Harvard Law education several hundred miles away will have on it's life.
A ficus doesn't have anxiety. A pigeon doesn't break promises. Igneous rocks aren't petty. Nobody has to worry that a maple tree got up on the wrong side of the bed, or that a grasshopper may have an irrational fit of temper....
