The Rat Sage
Trip Start
Aug 07, 2007
1
81
109
Trip End
Ongoing
Uijeongbu,
Korea Rep.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
My ancestor is a rat and a smart one at that
He waited in tall grass for the beasts of death to pass
When for one day it came
Great balls of fire coming down from the sky in ruthless reign
This fateful day the rats happy to see
From the carnivores death grip we were no loner to be
We were no longer to cower and run
Once the great lizards were gone it was our time to move on with evolutionary fun
Now we have travelled in your ships to lands anew
We hide in your sewers as your time will come too
Except your demise might not be from a fire ball from space
It will be your own bombs that will make die your race
-The rat sage in the distant future as he reflects on the history of dominate species on Earth.
The rat sage comes to me after reading a piece of Richard Dawkin's work in his book called: The Ancestors Tale. It goes like this:
A world without rodents would be a very different world. It is less likely to come to pass than a world dominated by rodents and free of people. If nuclear war destroys humanity and the most of the rest of life, a good bet for survival in the short term, and for evolutionary ancestry in the long term, is rats. I have a post-Armageddon vision. We and all other large animals are gone. Rodents emerge as the ultimate post-human scavengers. They gnaw their way through New York, London, and Tokyo, digesting spilled larder, ghost supermarkets, and human corpses, and turning them into new generations or rats and mice, whose racing populations explode out of the cities and into the countryside. When all the relics of human profligacy are eaten, populations crash again, and the rodents turn on each other, and on the cockroaches scavenging with them. In a period of intense competition, short generations perhaps with radioactively enhanced mutation-rates boost rapid evolution. With human ships and planes gone, islands become islands again, with local populations isolated save for occasional lucky raftings: ideal conditions for evolutionary divergence. With 5 million years, a whole range of new species replace the ones we know. Herds of giant grazing rats are stalked by sabertoothed predatory rats. Given enough time, will a species of intelligent, cultivated rats emerge? Will rodent historians and scientists eventually organise careful archaeological digs (gnaws?) through the strata of our long-compacted cities, and reconstruct the peculiar and temporarily tragic circumstances that gave ratkind it's big break?
As a man that searches for more than just simple biology at work, a sense of faith and something bigger, I am brought to a halt as I continue to read and study evolution and the poetry of Richards Dawkins. I always considered there to be something more. Not in terms of god sitting upon a throne in the sky, but some sort of magic or thing beyond our understanding. Yet grinding to a halt I read more and more about how we have come to be on this rock called Earth, a petri dish that has come to be home to species that have come...and gone. Not afraid of scientific fact as it is known to be the real truth as to how we have come to be. I have often envisioned another life after this one yet maybe I should realize that this is it, one life only, a life that should be lived as though there will be none other; a life that should be filled with love and kindness for all and the occasional beer with good friends.
Thanks for reading
