Wheels, garments and sarcasm

Life is a system of props (stay with me for a minute).

As a highly-evolved species (damn we're speciocentric), we have remarkably (painfully and sinfully at other times) little internal purpose. Face it, a red ant knows why it exists. Understands? Hmmm... maybe, maybe not (but not really my direction for this rant) - it's debatable. But, they know what they need to do. And they do it. (Hey, Nike... new market!) They have a purpose that is not manufactured.

In this sense, they have more self-awareness than the average college senior - and a decided cushion over each of us at a desk, computer, or conference.

We, the ones with the opposable thumbs and proportionately gigantic brains, have no purpose. Or is it that we don't yet know what it is. I posit the latter.

We dream up things like inventions and innovation and other intriguing things like, the word "intriguing" - which, for your education, was invented in 1650: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/intriguing. What did we ever do without "intriguing"? *shudder*

What is it that requires us, the self-proclaimed masters of the world, the world's most dominant species, to have a manufactured reason for ... anything? Do we not believe, in our social psyche, that we deserve our lot? Are we, in the strangest melange of narcissistic and Draconian tendencies, forcing upon ourselves a script? What are you here for? Reading this blog (and thank you anyway) and surfing this 'net and making your pork - why? Why invent before you know the reason? Who took a long look at the wheel and said, "Why?" Does getting things from here or there to somewhere else with less effort really play a pivotal role? Is there something in the exchange between people and their neurons that creates purpose?

Shouldn't we all be working together to accomplish something? Ants cooperate for survival, transportation, and communication - among many other things. We do the opposite.

Our survival is based on our ability and, more frighteningly, our willingness to destroy or dominate others (geez, we're smart). Our transportation is designed to remove any social aspect - holding a telephone to the ear transforms one from capable, top-o-food-chainer to imbecilic, miss-guided-missile. And communication on this planet is so fragmented and estranged to the majority of us that it clearly represents the most poignantly ironic expression of a misnomer in the whole of all time.

So ... why the stage? Is the simple (though not easy - to swallow or accomplish) evolution of our kind the goal for our kind?

To exist must we progress? It would represent an insight of histrionic impact if we were one day to discover our purpose is nothing more than ... motion.

Scary to think that NASCAR and Dancing with the Stars may have just figured-it-out.