It feels like I hadn’t been to Lettuce Lake in a quite a while so when I had a middle-of-the-day opening, I decided that would be my destination.
The last time I had been there, they were in deep COVID crisis mode and the boardwalk which runs along the shoreline was a one-way mandate. I wondered if it would still be so.
Not because I had a problem with the extra walking involved, but because there is a lengthy stub of the boardwalk at one end that they are unable to have one way traffic on. So, they had it closed off.
It happens to be my favorite section of the boardwalk because it is the section that has afforded me my only sightings of owls there, and deer, not to mention the snakes and turtles that seem to prefer that section of the park.
So, yes. I was disappointed to see when I got there that the same system was in place. I disagree with them keeping it closed off at this stage of the pandemic, but I accept their right to do so.
I just wish I had known in advance, because I wouldn’t have gone, in truth.
There are three entrances to the boardwalk at Lettuce Lake and for years I have entered at the mid-point, walked all the way to the north end (the stub) and then looped back to the south end, before looping back once again to where I entered at the mid-point.
But now, because of the one-way system, I entered at the north end and got off at the south end and then walked back along the road edge to my car. The walk back to the car is tedious and you see nothing, but hey, it is what it is.
Anyway I was only 10% into the initial stage when I encountered the first people coming the wrong way. A couple my age, who should really know better. I frowned as they passed me by.
But I should have saved my frowns, because I started counting around ten and ended up counting 37 people coming the wrong way along the boardwalk. 37!!
I mean, seriously. Someone must have left the gates open at the idiot farm because they were all out. Young families mostly. Some carrying young kids on their shoulders or holding their hands.
The one way signs were everywhere. Felt like every fifty feet there was one, but that didn’t deter the idiots. Their loud mask-less faces ensuring no silence was going to be afforded to any of the law-abiders.
Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind breaking silly laws when I am in a public setting. Speed limits. Trespassing. That kind of shit. My actions there aren’t hurting any of those that abide by these laws.
But when throngs of maskless morons crowd the walkway and breathe their idiot-fumes in your face when they push by you … well, to me that is unacceptable.
And what were they teaching their children, when they pass by all these one-way signs in the wrong direction? I know I am using the word “teaching” in a very liberal fashion here because I doubt that the idiot-gene allows much learnin’ beyond the basic three “R”s (readin’, rightin’, rithmatic). I guess all they need to understand in life is to tick the box that says (R) on the ballot paper. Another “R” … go figure!
Anyway, suffice to say I did not have a good time and got back to the car as quickly as my old legs would carry me.
I have added a few images that I managed to take along the way, including one that I altered at the very end. I noticed a very suspicious looking burrow in the ground to my left and imagined something was in there looking back at me. That one.
So, I drove home. Fuming most of the way.
At the best of times, I don’t understand people. But I will never understand those who willfully choose to be stupid.
And I began to think about the whole evolution story and I developed my own current-view theory on it.
Evolution is very much derived from a need to survive. Those that need to lose their tail and walk on land, or grow feathers and take to the air, do so. Over millions of years, survival of the fittest drives a chain of changes within all types of creatures (almost) that allows them to survive or even excel in different environments.
But evolution is more than just physical changes. It is also a mental development. To us humans this development has been largely witnessed in a short time frame. Speech and communication drove a lot of it and so a few thousand years bears witness to how we have evolved in this manner. But there is also a significant amount of change driven by information (availability of) and we can see by the writings and theories of a short few-hundred years ago, that today’s human has been able to handle information much moreso than past generations.
Technology in particular has helped us evolve into creatures that can process information in demanding and novel manners. Information that can’t be taught to us by out-of-touch parental figures.
Look at the current generation of smart kids and the skillsets that they have when it comes to mobile devices for example. They don’t just learn, but they intuitively work their way through processes that leave us old-folks in their wake. “How did you know how to do that?”, I have often find myself asking my kids.
Now, there is nothing new in my theory so far, but here is where I diverge from others perhaps:
You see, while there is an elite learning group that is absorbing all this technology and thinking, they tend not to have large families.
No, the large families tend to come from those who have not evolved to this next level of learning. Idiot parents tend to have lots of kids. You see procreating doesn’t need any level of intelligence and so procreating without thought is bread and butter to these folk.
People who are intelligent enough to plan futures tend to limit their offspring in lines with their future plans. But idiots don’t have plans.
As the idiot what he would like to be in five years and you are likely to hear “rich” and if you follow up with a how type question you will likely see their version of a plan is to win the lottery.
Idiot evolution has taken in important developments over the centuries like tying a shoelace, opening cans, and using simple hand tools like a shovel.
But each of these developments have been directly linked to their survival.
The shoelace so they don’t trip as they walk (although velcro shoes have relaxed this development a bit), opening cans allows them to have dinner and drink their beer afterwards, and hand-tool use gives them their avenue for gainful employment.
And as I said, survival has been the main instigator of evolution for millions of years. For examples, Alligators and Sharks are perfect examples of great survivalists who had no need to evolve and so they didn’t. Fossils of both from pre-historic times show essentially the same creature, while mankind lost his tail, came down from the trees, and found a way to increase his numbers beyond all expected levels.
If dinosaurs hadn’t become extinct, we would likely still be in trees and our numbers would be significantly smaller.
In general, the survival driver for humans has largely dissipated. In the last hundred years or so, we have found food and safety relatively easy to assure for the species and so our evolution has largely ceased.
In fact, our minds have moved so far away from the threat of survival that we don’t even re-posture ourselves when the survival of the planet is raised in discussion. While thinkers will debate it and try to gain traction, the idiots treat it as white noise.
They see it as little more than a one-way sign to be ignored.
They and their children push loudly past the signs and head in the wrong way without any thought or concern.
And it is their children that become the basis for the final devolution of humanity and the destruction of the planet.
You see, because the idiot children far-exceed in numbers the children of evolved people, they will live like idiots littering and abusing the planet until she breaks. And as they become idiot-adults, they vote in more idiots to make sure that humanity loses its ability to even save itself.
Let’s dig for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Let’s dig for oil in the gulf. Let’s relax emission control on vehicles and polluting plants. Let’s frack the shit out of the shale to get at that natural gas.
Only the idiots in the world think any of that stuff is a good idea.
So, why does it happen? Because there are more idiots out there voting in idiots.
And with evolution grinding to a halt, the numbers of idiots will far exceed those who think.
This my friends, is why I think democracy is destined to fail in the long term. One man one vote only works for the good of everyone when each “man” is of equal intelligence. If they are, then political shift occur only because of social or religious viewpoints.
When there becomes a disparity, we end up with a polarized view of life, such as we have here in America. No liberal intelligentsia will ever be able to discuss with a conservative idiot that first and foremost, the planet is the most important thing on the planet.
(footnote: not all liberals are intelligentsia nor are all conservatives idiots. Just at the extremes, they tend to be.)
In the meantime, we can put up as many signs as we want but if the idiots can’t read them, who exactly are the signs for?
… just a thought.
