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Too much introspection for one night
Jan. 2nd, 2003 10:55 pmSo last night Animal Planet had a special about the Beasts Of The Future, speculating about what might be living hereabouts in 100 million years. One of the taglines they kept repeating was that the theoretical critters were far more amazing, spectacular, and bizarre than anything that ever walked the earth in the times of man or earlier. While the show itself was fascinating, this one statement bothered me quite a bit. Yes, megasquids and cutesy little burrowing quail are marvelously fascinating and bizarre... but what makes them more bizarre or spectacular than a cat, or a gazelle, or a tortoise?
There's an overwhelming belief that I've run into, even in my own head sometimes, that something new or uncommon is automatically special and better and more interesting. Whether or not they're actually significantly different from the things we experience everyday is beside the point - it's the newness and uniqueness that catches our minds. I wound up in a fairly heated argument on this topic with an acquaintance at one point - we were discussing the possibility of making unicorns real, and he insisted that their mere presence would make the world more magical. I felt then, and I still do, that they're far more magical as mythical creatures than they would be as living beings. No matter how beautiful and powerful they are, the glamour wears off when they're grazing your garden, getting hit by cars on I-95, or being brought to the vet for stomach trouble. Once they're everyday, they're not so shiny and mystical.
On the other hand, it's also a good reminder to me that seeing something every day doesn't necessarily make it less incredible or fantastic. The chameleon that I saw today, stretching out its tiny arms like a miniature monster rampaging over the Tokyoid turf of my shoulder, was exciting and adorable and a fun change of pace. That shouldn't mean that the dogs and cats and canaries are any less interesting to me. The same amazing and indistinguishable-from-magic powers drive them, the same miracles of tendon and muscle, molecular reaction, heartbeat and bone reshaping and nerve impulses run in all of them. And in me, too.
I need to stop this here, before I spend the rest of the night staring in fascination at the backs of my hands, watching skin flex and tendons pull and veins trace along through me. Then again, there are worse things to wrap oneself up in....
There's an overwhelming belief that I've run into, even in my own head sometimes, that something new or uncommon is automatically special and better and more interesting. Whether or not they're actually significantly different from the things we experience everyday is beside the point - it's the newness and uniqueness that catches our minds. I wound up in a fairly heated argument on this topic with an acquaintance at one point - we were discussing the possibility of making unicorns real, and he insisted that their mere presence would make the world more magical. I felt then, and I still do, that they're far more magical as mythical creatures than they would be as living beings. No matter how beautiful and powerful they are, the glamour wears off when they're grazing your garden, getting hit by cars on I-95, or being brought to the vet for stomach trouble. Once they're everyday, they're not so shiny and mystical.
On the other hand, it's also a good reminder to me that seeing something every day doesn't necessarily make it less incredible or fantastic. The chameleon that I saw today, stretching out its tiny arms like a miniature monster rampaging over the Tokyoid turf of my shoulder, was exciting and adorable and a fun change of pace. That shouldn't mean that the dogs and cats and canaries are any less interesting to me. The same amazing and indistinguishable-from-magic powers drive them, the same miracles of tendon and muscle, molecular reaction, heartbeat and bone reshaping and nerve impulses run in all of them. And in me, too.
I need to stop this here, before I spend the rest of the night staring in fascination at the backs of my hands, watching skin flex and tendons pull and veins trace along through me. Then again, there are worse things to wrap oneself up in....
