It’s kind of weird to think that we’re just thrown into the middle of this world. All this stuff has already happened, and we can’t change it. The stuff that has happened has landed us here, in a world full of hatred towards people who believe different things, full of a caste system (don’t act like we don’t have one) in which certain people are powerful and certain people aren’t, full of nations, lines dividing the earth into human defined areas. We weren’t there at the beginning; in fact, no one was there in the beginning. There was no “first person.” We evolved, and at some point the animal that became us started forming these things, these countries and power structures and belief systems, and now we’re stuck living with these systems that are thousands of years old. Hell, you can’t even find a person who has a cell phone that’s more than three years old because it’s outdated, but these things, these religions and social classes, we cling to these like there are no alternatives. Just because there was at some point a reason to create these things. Can you just imagine how corrupted good ideas can become over thousands of years? Shit, if you don’t clean your house for six months, it’s going to be a pigsty. Who the hell knows what anyone at the beginning of society was thinking. Even our founding fathers, people like to go on and on about what they would want when they’re arguing points like gay marriage and such. That was only a couple hundred years ago, but I guarantee you that if one of those guys walked in our country today, he’d hang his head and ask what kind of monster he’d created. We can’t act like we know what good intentions people had when institutions were founded, but we sure do like to try.

On the other side, imagine being here at the end. There was no first person, but there will be a last person. At some point either the universe will kill us off or we will. I’m guessing the latter. Imagine being the last person alive, a great red sky above and death all around. There is literally no one left alive to talk to, and you pass away. In that moment, when you’re gone, nothing that ever happened to the human race matters at all. All the petty disagreements, all the religious and ideological differences, all the technological advances, all the money, all the achievements and failures of humanity, it’s all erased in one great split second, because nothing that remains living on this earth gives a flying fuck about any of it. Weird to think about, right? And then who’s to say that some little lizard colony that survived the end of humanity by hiding under a rock won’t come out of hiding, find an entire world to play in, and grow, evolve, become intelligent. They’ll dig our bones out from under the earth and wonder what kind of animals we were. They’ll have their chance at running the place, and maybe they’ll do a better job than we did. Maybe they’ll grow to gigantic sizes, and instead of trying to form a society, they’ll run in packs, just trying to survive. They’ll rule the earth. Maybe a meteor will hit causing climate change that wipes out the entire population and makes a small mammal be the only thing to survive. And that’ll happen over and over and the sun will explode and the earth will be swallowed and in the vast infinite space and time that is the universe, none of any of that will ever have even happened. And maybe because of that we should all lighten up a little bit and just try to be happy and make others happy while we’re here.

Thus ends Adam’s strange, seemingly drug-fueled hippy days. Next time: Things that are illegal that shouldn’t be!