:newb: Humble apologies if this is innappropriate for this forum. It was either here or the jokes forum, where it didn't seem to fit in somehow. Please move if deemed to be in the wrong place. Thanks! Bcool
It occurs to me on reading the many articles, letters to the Editor and editorials on euthenasia or the right to die that have appeared in the news lately that we, as a species take ourselves far too seriously. I believe that serious consideration should be given to an hypothesis that has occured to me, namely that the right to die maybe inherent in all of the species on earth.
Consider the case of a buffalo a few hundred years ago, wandering about the Prairie in the middle of winter; for all we know his train of thought may have been, “Why am I here in the middle of all this ice and snow, freezing my nuggies off and facing the same old thing day after day? And when this lot thaws, well then it’s black-fly, mosquitoes and those two legged blighters trying to hit us with sharp pointy sticks. Boring, boring, boring!” He may, at that point, have shuffled his dreary way over to the nearest cliff and thrown himself off, and perhaps the other twenty odd thousand of his herd may have seen someone finally doing something interesting and gone over and done the same thing. Anthropologists have decided that we ingenious little humans drove them over that cliff in order to eat them, ignoring the possibility that sheer ennui maybe led them to toddle off the cliff-top.
What about the proverbial big frog in the little pond? He may have become so jaded with swimming around the same boring little bit of water, likely developing a distaste for flies, never meeting a lady frog because the pond wasn’t good enough for her. Maybe he decided to just float to the top and bob around aimlessly until a heron took pity on him.
And if you want more hard data, what about our own species? You can’t tell me that beneath the fanaticism for strapping slippery lengths of plastic on your feet and throwing yourself down the side of a mountain in the freezing cold; or strapping a bag with a big piece of flimsy material in it on your back and jumping out of a plane at fifteen thousand feet; or falling off high bridges with just a piece of elastic wrapped round your ankles; there lurks the black cloud of depression and boredom that says, “Hey ho, hey ho, it’s down the Styx we go....”
And just because we do not see the other species voluntarily doing themselves in very often any more may be because we’ve made things more exciting for them now. I mean, every day is a battle for survival for them - ponds being drained and cliffs having condo’s built on them. I would think ennui is the least of their problems.
So lighten up folks, we must be the superior race - we’re the only species that is so bored we have the time to quarrel and quibble and create rules against what comes naturally.
_________________
June 1995
Death From Ennui
It occurs to me on reading the many articles, letters to the Editor and editorials on euthenasia or the right to die that have appeared in the news lately that we, as a species take ourselves far too seriously. I believe that serious consideration should be given to an hypothesis that has occured to me, namely that the right to die maybe inherent in all of the species on earth.
Consider the case of a buffalo a few hundred years ago, wandering about the Prairie in the middle of winter; for all we know his train of thought may have been, “Why am I here in the middle of all this ice and snow, freezing my nuggies off and facing the same old thing day after day? And when this lot thaws, well then it’s black-fly, mosquitoes and those two legged blighters trying to hit us with sharp pointy sticks. Boring, boring, boring!” He may, at that point, have shuffled his dreary way over to the nearest cliff and thrown himself off, and perhaps the other twenty odd thousand of his herd may have seen someone finally doing something interesting and gone over and done the same thing. Anthropologists have decided that we ingenious little humans drove them over that cliff in order to eat them, ignoring the possibility that sheer ennui maybe led them to toddle off the cliff-top.
What about the proverbial big frog in the little pond? He may have become so jaded with swimming around the same boring little bit of water, likely developing a distaste for flies, never meeting a lady frog because the pond wasn’t good enough for her. Maybe he decided to just float to the top and bob around aimlessly until a heron took pity on him.
And if you want more hard data, what about our own species? You can’t tell me that beneath the fanaticism for strapping slippery lengths of plastic on your feet and throwing yourself down the side of a mountain in the freezing cold; or strapping a bag with a big piece of flimsy material in it on your back and jumping out of a plane at fifteen thousand feet; or falling off high bridges with just a piece of elastic wrapped round your ankles; there lurks the black cloud of depression and boredom that says, “Hey ho, hey ho, it’s down the Styx we go....”
And just because we do not see the other species voluntarily doing themselves in very often any more may be because we’ve made things more exciting for them now. I mean, every day is a battle for survival for them - ponds being drained and cliffs having condo’s built on them. I would think ennui is the least of their problems.
So lighten up folks, we must be the superior race - we’re the only species that is so bored we have the time to quarrel and quibble and create rules against what comes naturally.
_________________
June 1995