It’s very simple. Humanity began as a harmless organism, eater of nuts and berries. We coexisted with the other wild harmless organisms. But then Old Hairy tied a stone to the end of a stick and the mutation had started. In your body at this moment are many micro-organisms that do not harm you. But should one of them mutate dangerously, you will sicken. You may die.
We were supposed to stay in the forests and eat the nuts and berries. Ecologically we were sound. By so eating we spread the seeds of the forest plants. But a cell went wrong. We outgrew our purpose.
We were an ecologically harmless organism, but we mutated.
As soon as they were able to get around to it, they sent a sanitation squad to clean up the mess, cure the sickness. Because to them the earth is the important thing, not the organisms that infest it.
They had come with their sprays and their poisons to clean out the potato bugs.
We don’t know who or what they are, or their function or where they come from.
Do we try to tell them about our perception of beauty and truth? Do we attempt to explain to them the human soul? The human soul, with its overtones of both Beethoven and Dachau?
What’s the defense?
Do we drop some bombs on them? Do we send a sickly child charging with a tack hammer? Same probable effect.
What answer does the virus give to the physician as he prepares the needle for the injection? What do potato bugs write on the petition they present to the man who runs the big spray truck?
In all the yarns somebody has always come up with an answer. Unless somebody does this time, in 15 or 20 years all the works of man will be neat rubble carefully covered with new green life. To come up with an answer means we must justify our existence.
Want to take a crack at it? Want to explain to them why they should leave us alone?
All the Columbus stations went off the air at 11:21 this morning.
