I'll take a ticket backwards thank you

Are human beings devolving? As I watch the American election in full swing, I look to my own countries politicians (who in the bigger scheme of things are pretty much just as bad) and the people around me who are voting these clowns into office and I wonder. Are we going backwards?

It feels as though – in the context of natural selection – human beings have peaked as far as evolution goes. Is all we have to look forward to a ticket back to Amoeba-ville? Perhaps we need to devolve so that the planet has a chance of reclaiming and rebuilding an Earth that is not covered with human beings from head to toe?

While the Internet has opened so many amazing doors for humanity and allowed us to meet with and communicate with people all over the globe, theoretically “shrinking” a planet that once felt vast and overwhelming in its size, has also exposed us to so much horror and stupidity. We live in a world now where people’s “outrage” at the reporting of an event out shadows the event itself. Where we can watch full-blown incompetence become an accepted part of everyday life. Where disastrous incidents, which should change the way we think and act as a species, are swept away in the never-ending current of a 24 hours news cycle. We have no time to learn, no time to reflect and no time to grow. Education has become a thing to be either reviled or revered. There’s no in between. Either you want to remain an imbecile, keeping the status quo and not fulfilling your full potential or you become part of a system where the only thing that matters is your grades. We treat the world like a disposable nappy. Filling it full of shit while assuming we’ll always be able to get another one at the store.

So are we going backwards? It feels as though we are. As soon as we learned to automate we were on a mission to devastate, with the only winners being the corporate thugs and rich assholes who could give a rats arse about the people "below" them in the food chain. It all feels pretty grim doesn’t it? The irony is that as a writer the wholesale destruction of the planet is a treasure trove of ideas. It’s like drinking a martini as your house burns down around you. It’s both mortifying and exhilarating. I guess every cloud has a silver lining, even if that lining is made of acid, burning your nose off to spite your face.