Die by my hand

I read a recent post by Heartless, and had to scramble through my archives, because I thought that I had earlier posted something related.

I guess not. I must have left it as a comment on someone's blog. Let that someone grant me a bit of leeway, now, because I have just a bit to say.

I used to feel very strongly about stupid people. Waste of money, waste of education, waste of fucking space, etc. If there were a club devoted not to intelligence (Mensa... J, what ever happened?), but to hating stupid people, I would have been the first in line.

But one night I had a dream.

I dreamed that a plague had covered the Earth. The mortality rate was outrageous, and no one knew how to stop it. But before the last of the scientists died, it was discovered that some aspect of the mentally retarded, which in dream-logic also applied to people that could barely write their letters, was somehow immune to the plague.

In some way, that which made them "special" also made them special.

Evolution is a harsh mistress, and she cares shit for our "ginormous" brains. There's no way to predict what's around the corner, so there is no way to prepare. We've been lucky so far that intelligence has gotten us to the moon. But should we trust in it to preserve the species? It's all a crap-shoot - we should embrace as much diversity as possible, because any trend toward specialization only makes us more vulnerable.