Someday, the world will explode.
We're going to breed ourselves to death. We'll be an enormous ball of flesh expanding at the speed of light because everyone thinks they're outstanding parents and that their children will save the world. Their children will solve the problems of cancer, AIDS and world hunger.
The trouble is, 99% of them are wrong.
Most of these children will only contribute to ills of the world. They'll develop cancer, they'll contract and pass along AIDS and they'll only keep breeding and contribute to world hunger themselves. Seventy-five percent of them will be perfectly mediocre as they loaf along through their lives. Fifteen percent will form a crust on the world, becoming an oozing, festering scab the rest of us want to pretend isn't there but can't help picking at. Seven percent will lead exemplary lives, aspiring to great heights most of us will never achieve. Two percent will become the most beautiful people - the supermodels, the super-wealthy, other descriptors containing the word "super."
The final one percent, that fragile, tremulous and tender tiniest bit, might just save us all.
They'll be the actual brain surgeons, rocket scientists, researchers, holy people. They will try to save the world, to save us all, including the seventy-five percenters, even the fifteen percenters - those who wouldn't stop to help them change a tire in the middle of the desert.
Do we have to create the other 99% to produce the 1%? Are the rest of us necessary? Or is it just one, gigantic, ironic, unending, vicious circle? We need the 1% to save the 99%.
I am not part of the 1%. I'm somewhere between the 75 and the 15 and the seven. I suspect that most of us are, which is a bit impossible, statistically speaking.
I'll be a part of the exponentially-expanding ball of flesh because I do not excel. I do not force myself to excel.
Thus, I am a flaking scab on society.
The trouble is, 99% of them are wrong.
Most of these children will only contribute to ills of the world. They'll develop cancer, they'll contract and pass along AIDS and they'll only keep breeding and contribute to world hunger themselves. Seventy-five percent of them will be perfectly mediocre as they loaf along through their lives. Fifteen percent will form a crust on the world, becoming an oozing, festering scab the rest of us want to pretend isn't there but can't help picking at. Seven percent will lead exemplary lives, aspiring to great heights most of us will never achieve. Two percent will become the most beautiful people - the supermodels, the super-wealthy, other descriptors containing the word "super."
The final one percent, that fragile, tremulous and tender tiniest bit, might just save us all.
They'll be the actual brain surgeons, rocket scientists, researchers, holy people. They will try to save the world, to save us all, including the seventy-five percenters, even the fifteen percenters - those who wouldn't stop to help them change a tire in the middle of the desert.
Do we have to create the other 99% to produce the 1%? Are the rest of us necessary? Or is it just one, gigantic, ironic, unending, vicious circle? We need the 1% to save the 99%.
I am not part of the 1%. I'm somewhere between the 75 and the 15 and the seven. I suspect that most of us are, which is a bit impossible, statistically speaking.
I'll be a part of the exponentially-expanding ball of flesh because I do not excel. I do not force myself to excel.
Thus, I am a flaking scab on society.