What if Jacob had a blog? Would the below be a post 100 years from now?
Not a sci fi fan, but oddly this is what poured out of me today.
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I first experienced the world poisoning me at 5 years old. At the age of five, I was diagnosed with a rare pediatric cancer, which I had no genetic markers for. Instead the world around me produced a tumor with tentacles that wrapped around major arteries in my body, the ones that sustain life. So my first brush with the world and its environment threatening my species was at five, but I didn’t understand it until I was closer to seven.
Like many of you I was a young child during the pandemic of 2020. Where mankind as a whole got a taste of the story that only fossils can tell. It was not until 2020 that I understood that the world with simple pleasures like playgrounds and ipads could also be life threatening. Both threatening in different ways.
But it wasn’t until I was much older that I learned that the world was just ticking as usual, continuing its evolutionary march of change.
The march of progress.
The march of evolution.
The exact rally cry of humans. Onwards! Progress! Innovate! Build! But they didn’t understand that the world does not revolve around them. They would have to revolve around the world.
The time of reckoning of the human species came as oddly a surprise. Even with the knowledge of so many species before them with museums dedicated to their fossils. One would think they saw this coming especially since we knew that we had brought extinction to species ourselves. That simple things like cutting down trees can bring down an entire animal that existed prior to our time.
Humans, however, believed they were immune. They forgot that they too need air, water, and are surrounded by microbes that can invade the body. They thought they were bigger than the world.
They had some good reason to believe this. The human species has been remarkable. I’m proud to be one of them. Skyscrapers 100’s of stories high, self driving cars, labs full of miracles in bottles. They had a good track record too of fixing the “unfixable.” Polio, measles, etc. But it was that exact narrative that blinded them. Hubris was not lacking. They felt invincible.
And when the numbers did not appease the narrative of their success which often meant bigger, faster, brighter, richer, they were ignored or suppressed. There were indicators everywhere. Like pediatric cancer soaring and the climate boiling, but we kept moving, shouting the exact words that ironically the earth had for us, PROGRESS! Onwards!
Evolution never stops.
It was only my generation that had 20/20. We saw the blip. We saw the pattern.
But unlike others species, we didn’t take extinction lightly and continued to fight. We had the ability to learn and that is what we did, we adopted. We mutated. We mutated with our inventions. We became one with them.
I remember my first mutation. A Mask. Just a simple cloth allowed our species to survive for a bit. It wasn’t a big deal to me. It was the adults and young adults who had issues. It was them that couldn’t adapt, but us kids did fine. The mutations that followed happened quickly. By 15 I had a special suit to help with the smog so I could leave the pod houses safely. Humans had finally learned that the air was causing cancer. By 20 I had a device that swept the wifi away from my brain as I worked.
And now at 102, I continue to adapt. I continue to live, just now in a new body. I love my new body. See below. That’s my consciousness in there. Still Jacob, just new digs. Look at my moves!
I sometimes feel sad for my parents. I miss them. They were of the “last generation” as they have been now coined. The last generation to die.
I wish they could see the new world my generation has created. One where there is no race. One where there is no haves and have nots. One where everyone can slam dunk a basketball and no need for cars, I can run to California if I so wanted to.
I think my dad would really love it.
And I have found joy here, because that is how us humans are wired. We find a new normal and build within it to find peace.
We march onwards.
We progress!
But we now understand who is leading who. The world leads, the new humans follow.
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