71% of the earth’s surface is covered in alcohol, drug of choice, creature of fate.

Did some early hominid win the Nobel Prize for his discovery of alcohol?  Is this what separates us from our gorilla and chimp cousins?  We’ve been shit-faced at most of the great moments of history and many of the lesser ones.  Is alcohol the agent of mutation that gave us the DNA that makes us human?  At the very least natural selection seems to have given the drunken apes a better chance of survival than the others.  You don’t argue with Mother Nature.  I don’t see too many Amish elders in the ranks of dot.com movers and shakers.  I see a lot of semi-reformed slackers raised on reefer and bathed in beer.  I doubt that the ranks of science and intellectuals are all that much different, just a bit more bookish and near-sighted.  I know the ranks of artists aren’t.  Imagination seeks its own catalysts in its quest for freedom and creativity.  Talk is cheap, but a little buzz doesn’t cost much more.  We humans are capable of more than just turning carbohydrates into hydrocarbons in the short span of individual and collective existence.  Somehow somewhere a consciousness was born and the world changed, for better or worse.

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