An Icarian Perspective...

... on Evolution.

It's so easy to be negative. Or to criticise. Or to poke fun. Or to be dismissive. Or frustrated, or rude, or confrontational! Of course it is, but it's also increasingly far more difficult to be positive, or to take seriously, or to endorse either the actions, or else the intent of many of 'those' with authority and/or the means to advance their own interests over and above those of others.

Why on Earth would we elect to behave in any way, other than in opposition to the vast majority of that to which we are every day required and expected, often instructed by decree, to adhere to and to obey?

We have found that there is currently in operation a particular system which now always presides. And it currently presides in one very specific and efficient way for some people... whilst presiding in an altogether less forgiving manner for most other people. Arranged about the vast acreage between these two extremes there may be the aspiring climbers, or else the tired descenders. And there may well be others, lesser royalty, beta-landed gentry, the currently powerful, and those who are now becoming less so. But the vast majority of us are still pretty much pitched and paid in the camp labelled 'recipients.'

We- that is the 'we' who are of recipient class- may well delude ourselves that we are, in some small manner, participants, that we have a modicum of investment within and for the system. And, we sort of of do... but only sort of. And this 'sort of,' for the most significant part, is also much of an illusion, so much smoke and mirrors, slight of hand, prestidigitation. Yet even so, our part is such that without it those other parts would not also be possible, and even should we continue to play this role those other parts will most likely prove ultimately to be unsustainable.

Should such as our current niche situation transpire to come about in the wider animal kingdom- and we would be arrogant to consider ourselves in any way superior to these other creatures- a given species may respond in any of a number of ways. It may seemingly compliantly succumb yet also adapt accordingly to quickly cut, or otherwise ameliorate, its loses. It may simply die out. It may search out an alternative habitat. It may bite or otherwise fight back. Or it may investigate other and further-afield alternatives. Never does it really remain static, always instead dynamic... nature is most ingenious and it is most cunning! 

It may evolve! It may evolve or it may die!

27th October 2015

I was glib enough, in a previous post and several months back, to have suggested that the mega-wealthy no longer even breathe the same air as most other people. And it should be recognised that they are well able to access vastly different qualities and quantities of the air, water and land than are 'the rest.' Better sunshine, better ocean tides, better living spaces, better food, better healthcare, better transport, better education, better light, better pretty-much-everything really. We might well consider this accumulation of variables to constitute an entirely different habitat. And, isn't this how a single species branches out and gradually evolves to become more than one species?

Perhaps the topmost offshoots will have (or may need) smaller lungs, differently coloured eyes, cleaner complexions, better teeth, less robust skeletons, more delicate stomachs, certainly larger hands!

Those left behind, as 'twere, may be left to inhabit the 'off-cuts.' They may all breathe the less rarified air, drink of more soiled waters, occupy the more cramped spaces, but will they all elect to simply flow along precisely the same evolutionary stream?

7th November 2015

God, who despite not existing, we are often encouraged to believe as having entrusted us with free-will, so, will we employ this free-will for good, or will we otherwise, and once again, squander it? Either way the evidence to date would seem to very strongly contest that we will not be acting collectively. Instead, perhaps, some might elect to act to reduce the impact of such inferior habitat, whereas others may elect, albeit unconsciously, to further compromise their lot. Battling, often individually, invariably in harmful contrast to one another, we shall likely tier even the leftovers.

Much as have those Galapagos finches, we may effectively simply end up with slightly larger or smaller bills, and further a greater or lesser means to settle those bills. Or maybe the differences will be significantly greater than this?

Maybe one of those 'differences' will gradually (or conceivably quite swiftly) evolve blue or multicoloured skin, emblazoned perhaps with all manner of text and illustration? There will be misspellings! There will be geographic, historic and other inaccuracies, but there will be a map, of sorts, of the evolution of the species... how cool would that be? 

Hinges may appear as if screwed behind the knees. Tights may not so much be worn as secreted from the flesh, offering neither warmth nor the appearance of such, wholly holey... not so much cool then as chilled?

10th July 2016

Conveniently, or perhaps not, this potential-species-offshoot may effectively read like a book- not necessarily a very well written book- laying out for the future scientist almost traces of the evolutionary pathways. Several earlier cultures will perhaps also be in evidence, misrepresented through the accumulated rainbow clash of historical mis-facts.

Whether it is to be the stretched-hollow earlobe of the Karen peoples, or else some powerful Maori tattoo, perhaps a pincushioned face, maybe a split tongue, it is most important that the assimilated culture is referenced much as a superhero comic book might be. "Those hieroglyphs there? That means 'Chelsea F C reigns supreme in our hearts'" Or maybe not? 

Or will it yet be the turn of those devoid of peripheral vision? Of course, they do not really need it anyway, able to hasten along any given footpath or walkway without so much as a glance to the side, ahead even. Is it even likely that, for these immersed souls, peripheral does not actually exist? We see them ghosting past but they are not really there at all. Should we venture to reach out and test the theory we may find that their image is now little more than a trace, a memory, of those who they once were, before having transcended the virtual plain. Perhaps they now inhabit some parallel and 'virtual' dimension, but who's really to say? Perhaps it is our's that is the illusion, and their's the reality? If we dare to peer into the tiny screen will we also be drawn towards that brighter, more sparkly, more perfect world?

6th November 2017

Perhaps the liars, those who are no longer able to effectively communicate beyond their own kind, will rise to the fore. Although the serious likelihood of such 'creatures' being able to even eke out an evolutionary niche for themselves seems, at best, tenuous. Whatever, if not, will then become of those who have basted so long in the exuded juices of the false prophets, those mouthpieces of the CEOs and those of higher office? Perhaps they will yet be able to turn it around and to once again reside amongst those who they have thought to rise above and excrete upon. Or will such a greyer and far-lesser reality be beyond and below their powers to adapt?

Their false Gods and their masters will by then have abandoned them, and will have pulled up the ladder. So, will the new reality sting their eyes, will it offend their ears, will the air taste too fowl for them; will this evolutionary branch simply soon fizzle out altogether? Will Douglas Adams's Gilgafrincham Ark Fleet Ship B at long last be fighting its way from the archives and into a belated reality?

12th August 2014

On the surface the world would appear to have little to offer those who will have spent their respective lifetimes pretending and arguing that their false world presides over everybody else's real one. But then, within this type there resides the most slippery and evasive of humankind. Is it not true that these 'peoples' have effectively exuded the oils upon which the Icarians have slithered into the ascendancy? Whatever else there will surely be more than enough oil to go round! Perhaps then another of the evolutionary offshoots will simply render them for fuel?

Deeply immersed within a cloying sediment of subterfuge, lies and misrepresentation, the human species prepares itself for its next stratospheric evolutionary leap! It's not going to be a very pretty sight!

Having clawed their (respective) ways to the position of an assumed supremacy over all other (remaining) lifeforms- to have become the 'dominant' species for the short duration of just 200,000 years- yet (seemingly) set to continue this questionable reign, the Homo sapiens group curiously died out suddenly approximately 500 million years ago. Around this time, evidence from gathered fossil and plastinated evidence would seem to imply that, at least four known great ape species from the Homo sapiens group were eking out their own respective toeholds upon the third planet.
Homo icarians
Homo hyacinthum
Homo telefono
and Homo mendacium  
Catastrophically, this (apparent) divergence chanced to coincide with the planet undergoing its seventh mass extinction event (biotic crisis), significantly hastened as a consequence of the activities of the Homo sapiens complex. Toxification of the global troposphere and of the water tables, however, appears to have merely hastened the rise of a fifth (recognised) ape-mimic (or pseudo-animal) classification, that of the Plastiforms, more specifically the Digerendum plasticus race. The evolution of this 'species' appears to have taken place ostensibly, although not exclusively, upon the mass of the newest (eighth) continent. The rapid toxification of the planet may also have been one of the factors that effectively hastened the sudden diversification of the Homo sapiens group, immediately prior to its ultimate demise.   

Devaluation of the Species
Charles-phenol A Cyber-Darwin (The year of our creation 5,000,000,001)