The mind is like a medieval castle, and the yard behind its walls can never be penetrated from beyond by screaming hordes of peer-pressuring thoughts, unsubstantiated beliefs or generally bad ideas that were launched from the castle grounds of others. Primed, influenced, hit by a figurative arrow or two—sure. But an unsullied nullipara, the human mind is and shall ever remain.
That means celibate, more or less.
Not that it doesn’t get up to some closed-door naughtiness when it can. But it does so of its own accord.
(Maybe ‘celibate’ was the wrong metaphor.)
Among a host of other answers we demand from our partners, bosses, kids, teachers, landlords, local criminals, Mother Nature, life and never receive, is an answer to the scientific question: When exactly did the early Homo species—those great x 1097 aunts and uncles of ours in monkey form—stop grunting, spitting, eating feces, playing with feces, running around naked and being food for larger carnivores and start to become “human”. Painting horse hands inside cave walls, inventing things like wheels, bathrooms, agriculture, language and spears to prevent them from being carnivorous dinner—science has a general idea when these things appeared, but not what sparked the ingenuity. God? Drugs? Aliens? Alien gods? Alien drugs? Gene mutation? Omega-3s? Climate change?
The mystery isn’t a real mystery because those monkeys didn’t keep diaries. Or even know how to write. (Unless flinging feces counts.) Or think abstractly. So, technically, there are no real answers to unearth here.
What we can determine, however, is a vague point in history where the linear evolution of the modern world as we know it turned a corner, saw daylight, hit the gas and never stopped, with little nitrous boosts in growth after the inventions of the printing press, sea travel, the Industrial Revolution and penicillin, and that one freakishly giant, exponential Evil Knievel ramp jump in the middle of the twentieth century.
It may be known, it may not be known. It also may not be one exact instance but a collection, occurring at different moments and in different minds over a general period, most of which may not even have been original in nature, but the result of some humanish monkey watching some other humanish monkey do something and thinking, “Sh–, I could do that. Sh–, better than that stupid monkey, that’s for sure.”
It’s asking ‘why?’. That’s all—some human monkey to hop or swing or take a header into the mud, look up at the world and ask (very likely out of necessity, possibly covered in mud, possibly feces), ‘Why is this like this? Can this be any better? Do we have to keep getting diarrhea from eating poison berries? Do we have to keep getting feces-whipped by that other monkey tribe, who somehow understands the concept of mechanical leverage better than we do? Do I have to keep tripping face-first into the mud (or feces) every time I try to run or swing or carry heavy objects? Can currency be invented so I can overcome all my insecurities by accumulating the most of it and become the alpha humanish monkey I always believed myself to be? Can we better protect ourselves from predators, because I really don’t want to die like Thag did: beaten to death by that massive kangaroo and dragged away, limp, by his remaining leg while that little baby kangaroo watched the whole thing with those creepy, bulging kangaroo eyes from inside that weird little pouch in the front?’ And, from that point on, decide, ‘Well, let’s figure it out’.
Abstract thinking is a crucial component of this, of course. So is time. But that aside—for the former is a skill we’ve all assuredly acquired by now—all a person needs to do to keep evolving is ask ‘why?’ each and every time they’re presented with some bit of information for which they don’t actually know the reason. “How come that really happened? Well, let me try to figure it out.”
Little kids do it all the time. “Why? Why does that have to be like that?” And are told mostly by their exhausted or non-education-minded parents to sit down, shut up and stop asking so many g—damn questions.
Scientists don’t ask other scientists, “Hey, how come there’s all these little dots appearing here in pretty much just these five vertical columns? ‘Interference’? What? Nah, that’s not right. What? Why? But…? Nah. Couldn’t be. It’s because nature forms colonnades. God finds that form most pleasing to the eye. That’s what my first wife’s uncle told me, and he heard it from a ninth degree Freemason who was into extreme sports and had public object objectophilia. So.” They figure out the answers themselves. A thing most kids aren’t taught themselves to do.
Sometimes the answer is obvious. Sometimes there isn’t an answer at all. Sometimes someone knows the answer and refuses to accept it. Sometimes you’re the one being asked the question, and all you want to do is tell everyone to sit down, shut up and stop asking you so many g—damn questions. But the importance doesn’t change. If there’s a datum you’re being presented and you don’t actually know if it’s true or not, you need to allow yourself to ask the question ‘why?’.
From that, of course, stems a whole slew of others, because the answer you get from a single ‘why’ is often never the entire story.
“Mommy, why did Mr. Marbleturds die?”
“Well, sweetie, that’s just the way it goes. All living things die, and when they do they go to heaven.”
That doesn’t come close to answering the question.
“Mr. Marbleturds died from a bacterial abscess from a fight with another rabbit, likely that prick Mrs. Clambeard. We also found signs of myxomatosis in his blood during the autopsy. Plus, he had stage 3 colon cancer. And there is no evidence of heaven. So.”
That makes more sense. A further explanation of average rabbit lifespan versus humans would bring more to light, and so would talking to the rabbit about its ailments, if that were even remotely possible. Plus, a crash course in pathophysiology might help.
Now, you can’t really tell these things to a child, because they don’t have the capacity to understand. But you know who does? Adults, who believe the exact same kind of answers they’re given without bothering to delve any deeper. Who don’t see any reason to, because they trust the person, public figure, celebrity, politician, government, media outlet or otherwise-corporate entity telling them whatever it is they want to hear.
Why did Russia invade Ukraine in 2022?
Why did Hamas and others rampage and kill Israelis, taking hundreds hostage?
Why has Israel, in response, slaughtered 50,000 people, mostly women and children?
Did the Biden administration actually destroy the U.S. economy from 2021 to 2025? If not, why would people say it did?
Is there as much waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government as my favorite politicians, news networks and tech billionaires keep telling me there is? If not, yadda yadda yadda?
No, really. Why would people say something is the case when it really isn’t? If there’s far more to the story, why wouldn’t they want to say anymore about it?
Because sometimes it’s in the best interest of public figures, celebrities, politicians, governments, media outlets or otherwise-corporate entities that you retain the cognitive capacity of a humanish monkey your entire life.
And you sit down, shut up and stop asking them so many g—damn questions.
