Earth Day

Earth Day

“The earth remembers what we forget.” Tell me in your own words what you believe these words mean. We have been exposed to the life and times of Jane Goodall, who you know worked with primates. These words however were not written or spoken by her, but by her protégé, Wilhelm Brick, an integral figure in the “Monkeys Are Us” program at Florida’s astronaut training center. The apes are attempting to teach astronaut initiates how to be human once again, as many involved with the NASA program have noticed over the years a sense of arrogance surrounding those who once in space, loose the ability to be empathetic and caring, while expressing their disdain for those not intelligent or physically capable of qualifying for space exploration.

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I teach a class as Don Key University. The campus is located on the grounds of the former Jefferson Davis Memorial Library which was demolished apparently because of the lack of interest and the fact that every book in the library had been banned for no doubt subversive reasons. My purpose is to test the minds of those locked into their own self-awareness and no longer capable of understanding that empathy unused turns to apathy, which results in empathetic apathy, which serves no purpose but to further muddle the thinking of our future leaders. I must return to my lecture or I’ll have a room full of uninspired muddled dreamers.

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Monkeys Are Us, is an organization dedicated to reversing the self-aggrandizing that occurs once one is in space. The condition now referred to as project “Lost and Found.” Wilhelm Brick had never been farther from the ground than a modest 20-story office building, because of his fear of heights. He managed the feat by keeping his eyes closed and with a massive dose of hallucinogens. He’d been observed by several prominent behavioral psychologist, a highly respected engineer, and Father Jake from the Saint Francis of Lost Causes church. They all failed to come to a conclusion of what was causing his psychotic beliefs and Wilhelm had to be released on his own recognizance.

Wilhelm’s theory was based on the fact that perfectly normal human beings upon having returned from orbit and having experienced the re-entry process, which several trainees fresh from the antigravitational simulator have indicated, was as close to being born again as they had ever experienced, and that included being on Byzantine Bob’s Televangelist HO-Down talk show.

Wilhelm's theory was that space travel interfered with the evolutionary process. Being exposed to unredacted radiation had a tendency to reverse the evolutionary process placing those exposed to accelerated rates of change, confused about which direction they were going. Their minds ability to always look forward and follow the bread crumbs left by previous experiments, caused them to wonder about their sudden abundance of hair.

Wilhelm believed that once you began to reverse the evolutionary process, there was no tuning back. The slippery slope of conventional thinking regarding evolution began to race toward the final conclusion, that man would once again become an ape in order to survive. It had been suggested that they change the name “Apes Are Us” to “We Are Apes,” but it was voted down by the evolutionary guard, who is in charge of confusion regarding the matter and other related activities.

Wilhelm believed that if human beings had been exposed to the truth behind evolutionary theories, man would continue to move forward, when the truth couldn’t have been further from the beliefs of the Apes Are Us scientists. They believed unanimously that humans had been exposed to far more education than we had an evolutionary right to, and therefore would have to reverse the process, or suffer the consequences that were becoming more evident with each hurricane, drought, and forest fire. “We humans have exceeded our ability to control our destiny and now have only the earth to look to, for not only inspiration but guidance.” The words inscribed on a paper plaque that hangs above the entrance door to Righteous Hall, if any of you had cared to notice.

“Wilhelm Brick was offered the opportunity to lecture at the Goodall Institute but turned it down, stating that he did not wish to contribute to the further deterioration of humanity by increasing the knowledge necessary to disregard the instinctual process that had made human development possible. “The further we remove ourselves from the arrogance of education and begin to develop our instinctual resources, the sooner we will begin to heal.”

Wilhelm was convinced that because humans no longer feared progress, the moon orbiting the earth, the earth orbiting the sun, the swallows returning to Capistrano, that we no longer learned from our mistakes, but have learned to deny they even exist. He often used the analogy of man’s ability to extract ore from the earth and turn it into weapons capable of destroying not only the truth, the earth, but civilization as well.

Many associated with Wilhelm Brick believed him to be a sick man. Other’s believed him to be a visionary, while others thought his concepts were stolen from a comic book series called the Magnificent Descent. The comic book consisted of stories without heroes and whose intent was to reverse fact, as fact often interfered with the creative process. “Once the truth has been eradicated, we will once again be able to unleash our creativity and watch it lead us back into the past, where a decision can once again be considered; is it worth going forward into the abyss of uncertainty the future holds or should we remain stagnant but safe in the ignorance we have conjured from the ill-conceived decisions we have come to cherish as wisdom?

Wilhelm believed the only hope for civilization existed in the past. The industrial revolution which had taken years of survival techniques and turned them into cliches that appeared irrelevant, once exposed to the smelters and coal black skies of a new age. Wilhelm traced the evolutionary change back to the renaissance painters who depicted what had been the only hope for mankind, trees, streams, flowers, ponds, and meadows that resembled heavens on earth. Whereas the dingy atmosphere of Dickens and Holmes represented progress, by way of sunless days and devious nights of debauchery dedicated to forgetting dreams and embracing the illusion of wealth.

Wilhelm often quoted Allison James. She had written a book about devolution brought on by the uncontrolled desire to have a better life than the previous generation, and in the pursuit of its perceived advantages, abandoned the wealth that already existed. She talked about the slow deterioration of the atmosphere, the skies becoming incrementally gray, the sun less bright, and the exchange of wealth for a few, at the expense of the health of the many.

Wilhelm’s only argument with Allison James was her insistence that God was to blame. “Had he not revoked the privileges afforded Adam and Eve in the Garden, which she referred to as Good and Evil, the concept of betterment wouldn’t have materialized because you cannot become better than the best.”

Wilhelm believed God had nothing to do with it. “Blaming the test for the failure of the student is not only stupid, but ushers in the notion that man is flawed by the concept of challenge, which is the compulsory ingredient in accessing knowledge. It is not the knowledge that becomes evil but the way it is used in the detriment of humanity itself, under the guise of progress I might add. Progress steals not only your health, both mentally and physically, but leaves you a spent excuse for a human being.”

Their two philosophies framed the debate during the 1800’s when everything according to Wilhelm Brick, “went to hell without the proverbial hand basket.” Wilhelm was not a painter but appreciated the subtle truth art could provide a thirsty nation. His favorite reproduction of a painting by Prichard Picard, hung from a wrought iron bar above Picard’s publishing establishment. It was a square 24 inches by 24 inches, painted midnight black, with no extenuating circumstances. To most it looked unfinished, to Wilhelm it encapsulated the future.

Wilhelm Brick spent his entire life attempting to convert people through his writing and lectures, that as a populace, they were headed in the wrong direction evolutionarily speaking. When asked about his adopting of the future in the form of a printing press, he dismissed the question as it being a small price to pay for enlightening the people to the ills associated with what was considered to be progress. He often brought up the mass production of the Bible as a way to justify progress while dispelling the need for it.

Many years after Wilhelm Bricks death, he died of black lung disease, he was sitting by a rivers edge watching the sky dance with electrons from a nearby nuclear power plant and could see how beauty could take many forms, even a form that would kill you.

He could see his shop that had become a bicycle repair shop, and someone he didn’t recognize attempting to electrify a bike, eliminating the need for human energy. He had watched over the previous 100 years the progress increasing in its momentum to reach its final destination before the consequences would be realized. The earth was in the process of reverting back to a time when Noah was thought to be a crackpot for building a boat in the desert.

Wilhelm could only smile as the predictions he’d made became reality, and those who claimed it was a scheme to somehow stop the advancement of civilizations trading their wealth for mountain top acreage, and clear skies above the cloud level, and leaving those who would drink the Kool-Aid in the future to consider their inability to distinguish progress from folly, from doing so.

Wilhelm watched the mountain tops explode, as the earths revenge shot from their summits in the form of a majestic stream of molten rock that devoured the security it purported to offer. For many it was the last thing they saw, while for others it provided a canvas of potential beauty for those who were unable to distinguish a camel hair paint brush from a toilet plunger.

Wilhelm took no pleasure in knowing he’d been right, although for the wrong reasons. Poorly painted pictures he realized, were not nearly as dangerous as poorly conceived ideas, where consequences were ignored in favor of a gilded frame and a 144 square inch canvas painted black in memory of the consequences that hadn’t needed to occur but for the insistence that all progress was good, or the psychological unfolding of another dictator.

I thank you for your attention, and hope that Wilhelm has shown us, that need can only be appreciated when want has been recognized as…this damn speaker system.”