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Repetitive Futility

Reading 'The book of lists' by Umberto Eco triggered some thoughts on how humans have got themselves comfortable to living a fairly predictable and repetitive life. Think about it. We know our year has 365 or so 24 hour units broken in 52 weeks with the days numbered (pun intended).

That we also have variety of gadgets to track this elliptical passage of earth around its sun. Depending on what part of the rock we occupy tend to have rituals and customs to engage socially and do the same thing again and again at specific time of the year. Entire industries are built on these patterns. From back to school shopping to Christmas or Diwali lights to pulling out buried rodents to check on weather forecasts - what is the point of that? Or is it like the swinging pendulum with no point holding it up - nothing?

Is this orchestra playing for someone? Or is it merely an optical illusion? Are the characters on stage changing (although more are being added than removed every day) to come and do the same old routine over and over? Some traits are genetically inherited and some are acquired or learned over time. The outcome of all that learning still tends to drive us humans to not be phenomenally different than the generation prior.

Outside of the core activities of eating, shitting, procreating and resting the species has not yet done anything truly truly remarkable. They may have increased life expectancy by some measure but that merely prolongs the inevitable. We eat more than our ancestors and have issues with that approach. We do not sleep as much and are getting screwed because of it - the one thing we do seem to be not having trouble with is procreate. That too is lame since the most procreation is going on in areas of our world where people are uncertain of their offsprings' future and therefore are doing the lottery - the more you crank out the better the odds of having one carry the family name.

So back to zero?

Comments

  1. Even the family name idea to me sounds futile. How many Red Indian family names live on today, for instance?

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