Trust Me, I'm a Human
Working in retail and living in Cheshire, it's remarkably easy for me to view humanity in something of a negative light- a seething mass that can be divided down the middle into 2 basic schools of idiocy; those who drive 4x4s that are cleaner than a laboratory at Intel and those who got pregnant on the same afternoon that puberty kicked in. However, in the cold light of day I can accept that these are the sort of sweeping generalisations that are responsible for such evils as bigotry, persecution and Richard Littlejohn.
Humans are, when you think about it, pretty impressive. A milion or so years ago we were at the top of the evolutionary charts, but the gap to the next smartest creatures wasn't really that impressive and, in the water, dolphins could give us a run for our money and alligators had already spent many millions of years as a streamlined killing machine. But since then, whilst the rest of the Earth's creatures have floated contentedly along without developing so much as a single cave drawing, homo sapiens have forged ahead with basic tools, farming, complex constructions, masonry and the ability to kill pretty much awhatever we damn well please and then eat it. And we're not resting on our laurels either- in just the last century we've split the atom, gone to the Moon and made 'Die Hard'.
All things considered, it's a hell of a track record.
So why, exactly, can we not be trusted?
Right now at work I'm getting inundated with 'self-help' books (question: if it's 'self' help, why has someone else written it?) mostly concerned with pointing out in excrutiating detail what people should and shouldn't eat, how to have a more organised brain or how to give up smoking (hint: don't buy fags). The basic message is simply that you are utterly incapable of looking after yourself and therefore someone else, usually Carol Vorderman, Paul McKenna or some half-wit food Doctor, will have to do it for you. If anything, the TV's infinitely worse and is currently about 3 months away from simply dedicating at least half of it's airtime to getting a variety of 'experts' to yell directly into the camera at each and every one of us to point out even our tiniest flaws whilst liberally calling us "lazy, feather-brained cockflaps" or something.
I mean, what exactly have we done wrong?
Sure, religions have been around for a good few milennia now, trying to keep people on the straight and narrow but they generally focused on drumming it into everyone that murder was wrong at it'd probably be best to lay off the robbing and adultery as well which is all fair enough when you think about it. Plus Christianity took the time to strike out early and take a stand against what must have been a deadly wave of coveting thy neighbour's ox in ancient times. We may have spent quite a lot of the time having wars with each other, but human history has constantly shown that a major conflict gives technology and invention a bit of a push and if it wasn't for the amount of time we spent trying to kill anything that moved, there'd be no Internet, no Space Shuttles and no Dad's Army.
It's obvious that when humanity's living on the edge it's at it's best and yet now, with no wars between the major nations of the Western world for quite some time, it's been decided that no-one should be allowed to suffer in any way, ever, even if it's by their own choice. So now, you're going to be chastised for smoking, eating the wrong food, wearing the wrong clothes, drinking alcohol, lifting incorrectly and having your i-pod on too loud.
And these are all things that you choose to do yourself and do no real harm to anyone else. And don't suggest that smoking really has any greater secondary effect than making pubs look better. I'll happily not smoke at the bar but anyone else in the place who's going to be bothered by a bit of smoke ought not to allowed into such establishments and should instead stay at home, reading the Daily Mail, sheltering from either global warming, a killer winter or the people who murdered Princess Diana.
The real worry here is that there's a danger we're going to slow down our exceptional rate of progress as a species. As we all know, creatures survive and evolve through a process of survival of the fittest but thanks to the health and safety brigade a large number of, and let's be honest here, pea-brained muppets are being allowed to survive and, as a trip to any McDonalds would make obvious, reproduce at a staggering rate.
For example, Amy has a hairdryer which bears a warning saying it should not be used in the shower. Now, the intelligent ones among us know that if we were to use it in the shower two things would happen to us. Firstly our hair wouldn't get any dryer, and then we'd die in a shower of sparks. But there's a chance that someone, somewhere was warned off from doing just that by this warning label and promptly the human gene pool missed the opportunity to had their rather crooked DNA removed from it. Add to that all the people who needed a notice of some sort or other to tell them not to use a lift during a blazing inferno or not to get out of their car at Whipsnade and take close up photos of the lions and you'll see that the we could be in danger of experiencing a little backwards evolution. We've already got rid of Concorde, our descent on the slippery slope back to the slime has begun.
And frankly, if Stockport's anything to go by, it won't take us anywhere near as long to get there is it did to get out of it.
Humans are, when you think about it, pretty impressive. A milion or so years ago we were at the top of the evolutionary charts, but the gap to the next smartest creatures wasn't really that impressive and, in the water, dolphins could give us a run for our money and alligators had already spent many millions of years as a streamlined killing machine. But since then, whilst the rest of the Earth's creatures have floated contentedly along without developing so much as a single cave drawing, homo sapiens have forged ahead with basic tools, farming, complex constructions, masonry and the ability to kill pretty much awhatever we damn well please and then eat it. And we're not resting on our laurels either- in just the last century we've split the atom, gone to the Moon and made 'Die Hard'.
All things considered, it's a hell of a track record.
So why, exactly, can we not be trusted?
Right now at work I'm getting inundated with 'self-help' books (question: if it's 'self' help, why has someone else written it?) mostly concerned with pointing out in excrutiating detail what people should and shouldn't eat, how to have a more organised brain or how to give up smoking (hint: don't buy fags). The basic message is simply that you are utterly incapable of looking after yourself and therefore someone else, usually Carol Vorderman, Paul McKenna or some half-wit food Doctor, will have to do it for you. If anything, the TV's infinitely worse and is currently about 3 months away from simply dedicating at least half of it's airtime to getting a variety of 'experts' to yell directly into the camera at each and every one of us to point out even our tiniest flaws whilst liberally calling us "lazy, feather-brained cockflaps" or something.
I mean, what exactly have we done wrong?
Sure, religions have been around for a good few milennia now, trying to keep people on the straight and narrow but they generally focused on drumming it into everyone that murder was wrong at it'd probably be best to lay off the robbing and adultery as well which is all fair enough when you think about it. Plus Christianity took the time to strike out early and take a stand against what must have been a deadly wave of coveting thy neighbour's ox in ancient times. We may have spent quite a lot of the time having wars with each other, but human history has constantly shown that a major conflict gives technology and invention a bit of a push and if it wasn't for the amount of time we spent trying to kill anything that moved, there'd be no Internet, no Space Shuttles and no Dad's Army.
It's obvious that when humanity's living on the edge it's at it's best and yet now, with no wars between the major nations of the Western world for quite some time, it's been decided that no-one should be allowed to suffer in any way, ever, even if it's by their own choice. So now, you're going to be chastised for smoking, eating the wrong food, wearing the wrong clothes, drinking alcohol, lifting incorrectly and having your i-pod on too loud.
And these are all things that you choose to do yourself and do no real harm to anyone else. And don't suggest that smoking really has any greater secondary effect than making pubs look better. I'll happily not smoke at the bar but anyone else in the place who's going to be bothered by a bit of smoke ought not to allowed into such establishments and should instead stay at home, reading the Daily Mail, sheltering from either global warming, a killer winter or the people who murdered Princess Diana.
The real worry here is that there's a danger we're going to slow down our exceptional rate of progress as a species. As we all know, creatures survive and evolve through a process of survival of the fittest but thanks to the health and safety brigade a large number of, and let's be honest here, pea-brained muppets are being allowed to survive and, as a trip to any McDonalds would make obvious, reproduce at a staggering rate.
For example, Amy has a hairdryer which bears a warning saying it should not be used in the shower. Now, the intelligent ones among us know that if we were to use it in the shower two things would happen to us. Firstly our hair wouldn't get any dryer, and then we'd die in a shower of sparks. But there's a chance that someone, somewhere was warned off from doing just that by this warning label and promptly the human gene pool missed the opportunity to had their rather crooked DNA removed from it. Add to that all the people who needed a notice of some sort or other to tell them not to use a lift during a blazing inferno or not to get out of their car at Whipsnade and take close up photos of the lions and you'll see that the we could be in danger of experiencing a little backwards evolution. We've already got rid of Concorde, our descent on the slippery slope back to the slime has begun.
And frankly, if Stockport's anything to go by, it won't take us anywhere near as long to get there is it did to get out of it.