Nature Red in Tooth and Claw
It is survival of the fittest. Those who are slow, curteous or hesitant, lose. The unfit are denied their portion of a finite natural resource at or at least near the center of their natural habitat and must range far and wide for alternative niches. There may be aggressive encounters with younger members of the species, and at the last minute, just before it seems there might be an opening, the quicker competitor snatches up the morsel of habitat for himself, and walks away victorious, right elbow flexed, talking to air as is the way of his kind on this prarie campus. The loser howls to the tepid air, rails against the injustice that he, a silver-back male of the species, must grovel for his space. Should he not be honored with a higher place in this heirarchy than this? Had he served his turn as a low-ranking juvenile and subadult all those years only to come to this humiliating anonymity in the teeming thousands who milled about as he did, sweating, cursing, looking for their petty portion of the commons accessible to his kind?
I sure hope that today, I find a parking place.
Comments
hahahahaha no kiddin! could be worse though. 20,000 of these younglings just swarmed my town. perhaps this will be a banner year, and I will go a whole year without having to step around a puddle of vomit on Sunday morning on my way to get coffee. seriously though, your post brings to mind some discussions I have been having with my scientist friends about evolution...for example, where DOES courtesy and human kindness fit in? And the fact that we (more or less) care for our sick instead of letting the vultures eat them? And the fact that Eugenics has been utterly discredited as evil and inhuman? Perhaps my questions sound naive, or even leading, but they are not meant to be leading at all. I am sincerely trying to get a grasp on where human genetics (and biology) is going, and why. I hope you are doing great and weathering these back-to-school days well. see ya! --suzy
Posted by: suzy | August 24, 2005 9:20 AM
Tooo funny. I thought you were describing thwo animals locked in mortal combat over a choice piece of meat, and then I saw it was you who was participating in the ritual.
Posted by: kenju | August 24, 2005 9:43 AM
Oh the inhumanity of it all. Those who can, park. Those who can't, teach.
Posted by: Doug Thompson | August 24, 2005 10:14 AM
Hah! You suckered me completely. Better luck --or an earlier arrival-- next time.
Posted by: Ana | August 24, 2005 12:18 PM
42,000 arrive over this weekend. Why do I have this overriding sense of doom?
Posted by: fredR | August 26, 2005 10:25 PM