Mother Nature is a Cold Hearted Bitch

Okay, I suppose the title is a bit harsh. After all She creates rainbows. Rainbows and hemorrhoids. Orgasms and earthquakes. And a baby’s laughter and AIDS both result from putting your pee pee in a place that initially seemed inviting.

But I don’t wish to discuss Mother Nature here in her entirety. Let us forget the judicious spin of electrons or the beneficial tidal effects of the moon. Let us instead confine ourselves to biology, to living things and the things Mother Nature seems to command us living things to do – whether we like it or not.

More specifically violence and competition. The distressing thought occurs that Mother Nature’s favorite son might be much closer to Adolph Hitler than to Jimmy Carter. For in nearly every mammalian species – and reptilian as well – Mother Nature insists that males engage is nearly constant, brutal and deadly battle for dominance and the right to spread their seed.

Mother Nature seems to love bad boys.

If we men are indeed put on this planet primarily to battle and to muscle ourselves to the front of the pack by whatever means necessary, might it be some sort of sacrilege to protest or to resist?

Who are we but puny individuals? Who are we to say that Mother Nature is clumsy and primitive and that sharing and universal brotherhood are a much better way generally? For if universal brotherhood were indeed a better way in the long run surely Mother Nature would have discovered that somewhere in the last 3 billion years. But She has not. On the contrary She continues to arrange things, hormones and claws, so that we males continue to invigorate ourselves with blood before we expel semen.

But modern man has attempted to fool Mother Nature. He uses flowers and chocolate and jewelry instead of rape. He uses credit cards and sports cars instead of hand to hand combat or healthy little wars. And worst of all he uses condoms and other forms of birth control in order to have his jollies without issue, thereby short-circuiting totally Mother Nature’s ultimate purpose for creating him!

While Mother Nature intended us males to have sex with as many females as we can gain access to, She never ever intended males to shoot blanks. At least not to deliberately do so.

And for those who maintain we need to get back to nature, to live in pact with nature, I wish to point out that the whole history of humankind has been that of using the artificial to outfox, subdue and civilize nature. We made spears as the artificial extension of fangs. We learned to weave flax and fibers to make clothing, and even the previous wearing of animals skins to ward off the cold was an artificial contrivance to improve on nature. Everything we have and everything we do has been an improvement on the harsh limitations of Mother Nature. Our laws, our countries, our customs, our schools, our hospitals, our taxes. Nearly ever moment of every day is spent countermanding the demands of a cold-hearted Mother Nature.

So if you find yourself condemning Tiger Woods for having sex with dozens of women, praise him for his restraint. For Mother Nature would have allowed and encouraged him – as the leader of the pack – to have sex with many thousands.. as long as he didn’t use a rubber.

Give and Take

It's often noted that many people make the transition from Liberalism in their youth to Conservatism in their more mature years. The quip, often attributed to Churchhill as well as others, that, “The man who is not a liberal in youth has no heart, and if he is not Conservative when he matures he has no head,” is the most famous example of this.

It is also remarked as being strange that few people move from Conservatism to Liberalism. Why is this? Why does it seem to be only one-directional?

Well, the most simple reason might be that when we are young we are used to getting an allowance from our parents – and thus we utilize and praise a system that takes care of us. But when we mature we have to subsidize our own brats with money – and we rarely receive either noticeable gratitude nor better behavior from our reluctant hand-outs. In other words, payback is negligible.

At its most extreme, some youths and liberals do believe Big Daddy or Big Mama should provide everything for their children, so that those provided for can lie back without a care in the world and do nothing to contribute other than spend the money that magically rains down like manna from heaven.

And the most extreme form of Conservatism does consist of bitter, cynical misers who will contribute to police, prisons, teargas and concentration camps – as long as their contributions are voluntary and someone is horribly punished – but they won’t willingly contribute to much else.

These extremists on both sides may well be many in number but they are of little interest once mentioned. Of far more interest is the average citizen who lives in perpetual confusion, vacillating between being the loving, giving sharing individual, and the hard-hearted and hard-headed rugged individualist primarily interested only in his or her own happiness. A quick way of describing this majority might be “I genuinely want to help others.. but only when I feel like it ..and I only want to help those I choose myself.”

This feeling, whether conscious or subconscious is understandable. But it’s no way to run a sophisticated society. If our government, in its folly and its fear of the populace, allowed each of us to choose what should be supported from the common treasury, we might find that public libraries might cease to exist along with orphanages, charity and veterans’ hospitals. Voters already, in their bizarre logic, often vote for longer prison sentences for criminals while voting down bond initiatives for building more prisons!

Americans must and need to live with the painful fact that Washington is, in fact, often more sensible and far-sighted than the average citizen while at the same time being more corrupted, as this sensibility and far-sightedness is largely motivated by the politicians’ desire not to kill the goose who lays all those golden eggs.

The average voter seems to be eternally waving an ax, threatening to kill the goose for any number of selfish private reasons.

You know your reasons and I know mine.

But remember, while your tax dollars go for my Medicare and college scholarships for my kids, my tax dollars go for your prisons, B-2 bombers and napalm. So shouldn’t we all be happy?

P.S. Remember that Truman spent billions to revive war-ravaged Europe and save it from communism with his tax payer funded Marshall plan. And his successor, Eisenhower, did the same for Asia - while at the same time building the Interstate Highway System that mainly benefited rural America in the west with money mainly originating in the urban north east. Socialism or practical farsightedness? Call it what you want.