The Virtual Rambler

Number twenty four: 20^th May 2012

Natural History

In certain parts of the world you couldn’t throw a fossil skull up in the air without it landing among a Wildlife documentary crew. They may be filming a lion family working in concert to pounce on the young or infirm of a fleeing herd of antelopes. Or it may be a seaside scene of penguin chicks taking their first and last dip into the waiting jaws of offshore seals. A regular favourite features lurking crocodiles snapping the throats of desperately thirsty wildebeest in the river to which their five-day trek through the dry season has brought them. Enhanced filming technology treated viewers to the Venus fly-trap in action , to avian egg-snatching from temporarily abandoned nests , to the spider cocooning its live larder of future meals , to the slow-motion flick of an extended reptilian tongue securing some unwary insect. Down the gullet they all went. What was the attraction in watching these scenes of innocents providing meals for well-armed predators ? That’s life ? On the contrary , that was sudden or lingering death , brought to your living-room screen with a hushed voice-over from Saint David of Shepherd’s Bush. In ancient mystical accounts of the origin of life , when the Infinite Light shrank and grew dim in order to make way for Creation , insanity was born. The world of matter and deeds became an insane asylum in which might was forever right.

Modern Evolutionary theory proved to be popular with rationalisers of social injustice from the start. The concept of uninhibited , instinct-driven , creaturely life feeds on a ‘framing’ of nature that’s long served to proclaim violence as an unchangeable given in social and individual lives. That version of Nature was called upon by the Nazis to buttress their hierarchical view , that some of the human population must always be succumbing to other , superior races. Hegemony in general always opts for the self-presentaion of domination as nature. Television shows featuring nature's ways became direct descendants of shows in the Roman Coliseum. Appropriately enough , their ending credits gave way to News programs full of armed conflicts in which - depending upon the West’s economic vantage point - protagonists were bringing either stability or disruption to the region in question. Under the thin veneer of our culture and language it seemed that we were just ‘Naked Apes’ re-enacting primitive genetic imperatives. Those who subscribed to Corporate Culture welcomed documentaries depicting the 24/7 scurrying of the social insects’ teeming and well-integrated life. So that in our workplaces , as in our sex-lives and recreational behaviour , Nature was the best tutor.

It can get to a point where you can't even clean your teeth without feeling part of a paramilitary campaign to flush out troublemakers lurking in their dental fox-holes. A woodland stroll engenders images of struggle: a myriad of leaves competing for light , tangled roots all groping for sustenance in the soil. In the D.I.Y. store , I was transfixed by shelves boasting an arsenal of biochemical weaponry in defence of domestic hygiene and order in the garden. Root Out those unwanted tree saplings , stumps and brambles. Repel birds and other nuisance critters from your fruit and vegetable gardens. Guard against the avine fouling of cars and washing lines with Terminal Solution. Deathlac was guaranteed to zap cockroaches , ants and other crawling insects …. but new technology used blue LED light to lure flying pests - mosquitoes , midges and flies - into its high voltage killing grid. All necessary measures for upholding the traditional values of a nice , clean home. The Naked Apes now speculate that locomotion in organic life came about some five hundred million years ago , when the advent of hunting sped up the very tempo of Evolution itself. Reviewing the fossil evidence of those original predators , we recognise features we ourselves became sadly familiar with. A sudden turn of speed to take the enemy off-guard. Blitzkreig ! Ever more powerful raptorial appendages. Pincer movements ! Stereoscopic vision to prepare an attack and then growing considerably larger than any victim to ensure a successful outcome. Operation Barbarossa⁽¹⁾ !


Wig

⁽¹⁾ Code-name for the Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia in 1941 , when Hitler left his Western conquests under the control of German garrisons keeping their eye on subordinate native governments , in order to concentrate the majority of his armoured units and almost all the Luftwaffe on the Russian border , amassed to deliver a knock-out blow as quickly as possible.

Archive

Virtual rambler #1 – Posturing, 9^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #2 – Managerialism, 17^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #3 – Nostalgia, 27^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #4 – The Alpha Male, 13^th April 2010
Virtual rambler #5 – General Elections, 3^rd May 2010
Virtual rambler #6 – The Leisure Industry, 15^th May 2010
Virtual rambler #7 – Guide to The World Cup, 15^th June 2010
Virtual rambler #8 – Human Nature, 12^th July 2010
Virtual rambler #9 – Communities, 13^th August 2010
Virtual rambler #10 – Worlds Apart, 6^th October 2010
Virtual rambler #11 – Dawdling, 22^nd November 2010
Virtual rambler #12 – ELVIS, 24^th December 2010
Virtual rambler #13 – Transience, 4^th February 2011
Virtual rambler #14 – Regional Accents, 15^th April 2011
Virtual rambler #15 – The Afterlife, 21^st July 2011
Virtual rambler #16 – Bizspeak, 27^th August 2011
Virtual rambler #17 – Night Walks, 3^rd October 2011
Virtual rambler #18 – Bob Dylan & Charles Dickens, 8^th November 2011
Virtual rambler #19 – Another Nutty Professor, 16^th December 2011
Virtual rambler #20 – Customer Choice, 17^th January 2012
Virtual rambler #21 – Wearing Shorts, 18^th February 2012
Virtual rambler #22 – A Brief History of Progress, 17^th March 2012
Virtual rambler #23 – The Myth of Sisyphus, 16^th April 2012