INTELLIGENT DESIGN FLAW....

....aka Unintelligent Design

"You know that I do not love war or want it to return. But at least it made me feel alive, as I have not felt alive before or since."

So quotes psychologist James Hillman of a French woman after World War II in his book A Terrible Love of War.

Perhaps that simple statement puts its finger squarely on the crux of the flawed design of our species, Homo sapiens.

Homo sapiens is the name given the biological classification of what we consider "modern man". Deriving from Latin and meaning "the wise human", is that a misnomer if there ever was one, or what? For, As Hillman tells us, in 5,600 years since man started writing down a record of his foibles, he has recorded over 14, 600 wars.

Well, I think this is admissable evidence against the guilt of our species. In Dada's layman grasp of genetics, in the past five and one-half thousand years, man has made no progress towards subduing his aggression gene, which is too dominant, or his dominance gene, which is too aggressive.

And then there's the little question of our "God gene" which demands we subvert, conquer, or just annihilate those whose God genes differ from our own and are obviously mutated. The God gene also manifests in varying levels or intolerance for gender, sexuality, race and social class allowing us to justifiably slaughter others with the blessing of God's love because as George Bush put it--so succinctly--"if you're not with us, you're against us".

I realize this is way too simplistic. There are bunches of factors that make we Homo sapiens what we are today: a species hell-bent on our own destruction. Libraries have been written on the subject. But whether you're a creationist, Darwinist, atheist or, like myself, an intelligent design advocate of mankind's genetic tweaking thousands of years ago by some extraterrestrial lifeform to work us as slaves in their mines in Africa, the outcome is the same whatever the truth. And that is, we're in some very deep, deep shit and I don't see a happy ending in this for any of us.

For however disinclined or incapable we are of resolving our natural impulses to destroy, we have moved leaps and bounds in our creative ways to do so. To totally destroy the planet for life as we know it now.

Perhaps that's what we're all about. Perhaps as that French woman said who never felt more alive than when living with death, we are on the threshold of achieving our ultimate capability or desire--total annihilation!

I seriously doubt our capacity to change ourselves, to love life more than its annihilation. To save ourselves from ourselves. Perhaps Peter Russell, in his book The Global Brain, put it best when speaking of our ability to transcend to the 'next level':

"Mother Nature" (Dada note: here, substitute your own most meaningful noun/s, God, The Cosmos, etc. The important thing is to TRY not to want to kill Russell should his God gene differ from your own.), "from her cosmic perspective, is not going to be too perturbed if we do not make it. She is not brought to despair by every blade of grass that is crushed underfoot, by every cell that dies, or by every seed that fails to germinate. Indeed if humanity is aborted it will be for good reason. As far as Gaia as a whole is concerned, it will be as satisfactory an outcome as if we passed the test."

Okay, okay. Time for my first cup of coffee and the morning news. To see how many were killed in Iraq as I slept. God, it just makes you feel so fuckin' alive, doesn't it?