The State Of The Species Address
By Ron Marr (01/01/04)
You no doubt remember the flick 2001, A Space Odyysey"...Stanley Kubrick's momentous tribute to a sentient Gateway 2000 computer possessed of a borderline personality disorder, a whiff of body odor and maybe even the heartbreak of undulant fever? You recall that cinematic descent into the obscure and arty?
It's the one which opened with homicidal monkeys dancing around the ol' stainless steel mulberry bush while cracking open each other's noggins with the femur bones of a stegosaurus or a tyrannosaurus or - well hell - maybe it was just a used Ford Taurus. I forget. My brain is not what it once was, as many readers will no doubt agree.
However, my mental faculties are not so depleted that I would forget just how much I disliked - or how little I understood - "2001..A Space Odyssey." In scientific terms, Kubrick was weird. If I'm ever forced to watch his final cinematic travesty - the one starring the kid from Top Gun and the cute Aussie chick who dumped him - I think I just might go voluntarily comatose. I'm told "Eyes Wide Shut" makes less sense than 2001, and it doesn't even include Cheeta or Bonzo or Kong.
But I digress. Sitting here in the Premium Stock Bar at Kansas City International Airport, slugging down over-priced JD and water while the patrons stare at the funny Montana guy in the biker jacket who has his laptop cranked into maximum overdrive, I'm tempted to believe that maybe Kubrick, 2001 author Arthur C. Clarke and their lice-pickin' simians had it right all along. Just how much has our species evolved over the millennia? We are now a few years into the dawn of the new century, and thus it's a fine time to look back and take stock. If we don't like what we see, it's also a fine time to make up a few semi-convincing lies regarding the spiritual and emotional progression of our species.
Oh sure, we've got technological doo dads out the ying yang; the completion of this column in the aforementioned setting is living proof of that little fact. We've got cellular gee gaws and wireless jim cracks and cybernetic whiz bangs that'll make your head spin faster than Linda Blair's skull at an Exorcist XIII casting call. Technological evolution is simple. It's the hard stuff, the real stuff, the human stuff where we Homo Sapiens run into problems.
You know, the indomitable and eternal spirit thing. Kindness. Peace on Earth good will toward men. The alleged qualities which supposedly exist in abundance from Christmas Day to New Years but are rare as hen's teeth the rest of the time.
Have we progressed at all over the last twenty or thirty thousand years? How about the last three or four hundred thousand? Geez Louise, how about since 1950? Have we taken a few small steps for mankind, or is the transmission locked in reverse? I sometimes suspect the latter, on cynical days believing we might be loitering dangerously close to the outer borders of chimparoonie-land.
Back to the point. The state of the species address. I have just managed to con my way into a free first class upgrade on Delta's KC to Salt Lake City run - receiving a decent steak, flirty stewardesses and a hot lemon towel to the face for my efforts. Such being the case, I can now categorically assert that - since our culture possesses the ability to provide a certain degree of creature comfort - there is hope for mankind. This airport trek has provided a perspective I don't normally find while hanging with my pups in the hermit confines of the northern Rockies. It has offered a revelation.
You see, an airport is the perfect microcosm for society, and today I've seen society in all its myriad forms. I've seen smiles and hugs and laughter and kindness. I've seen snarls and growls and threats and anger. In short, all is as it was yesterday and as it will be tomorrow. Come back in the year 3001 and take a look. Though we might then be traveling via Star Trek transporter and communicating telepathically, the smart money says that we will continue to love and lust and laugh and hate. We will covet our neighbor's power tools, give a hand to those in need, and start bloody wars over a few square miles of dirt. Our minds will expand, but it seems the bedrock of our nature is timeless, our soul immortal. Technologically speaking, we evolve at a breakneck pace. Spiritually and emotionally our ascension is geologic.
I am happy to report that the state of the species is fine. We remain unchanged. Gridlock is good.
I do find it highly uncivilized that airport bars gouge their patrons with outrageous drink prices, but other than that we seem to be doing ok.
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