Birds, the Pursuit of Happiness, and the End of the World

The birds must think we’re all a bunch of idiots. We have this wonderful little planet all to ourselves, and we’ve divided it into little sections. We build walls and fences, and we draw lines in the sand. We build little cages around ourselves. We use all of our energy trying to keep Them out, and trying to keep Us in. It’s a waste of time. We waste much of our time trying to make temporal things eternal. We try to fight our own mortality by constructing things that we hope will last forever. But after we die, our creations turn to dust. Birds know that their nests are impermanent, and they don’t claim ownership of the sky and water. And yet we call them ‘bird-brained’!

There’s really no rhythm to it. Some people live easy and carefree lives and some hate every minute. Some people make peace with the fact that their lot in life is lousy (and then they stay up until 1:23 AM writing about it anonymously on the internet). Some people can never make peace with the fact that they live a life of extraordinary privilege. Some people have everything but want nothing; some people have nothing but want everything.

At some point in the future, everyone who is now alive will be dead. At some point in the future, our species will go extinct. That isn’t good or bad; it just is. It’s misleading to use ethic tests the world never knew. A jellyfish doesn’t understand right or wrong, although it might have its own morality (which would be incomprehensible to humans). Death is like a jellyfish: neither good nor bad. It might have its own rules, or it might have no rules at all.