I Have Seen the Future, and It is Yesterday

Scientists around the world are in agreement – or rather they will be, once this paper receives its due accolades and I, Pinky Tourette, collect my raft of Nobel Prizes (I’m fully expecting a sweep of Best Scientist, Best Supporting Scientist, Best Scientist Hair and Best Scientist Costume) – that mankind as a species has plateaued. Yes, “plateaued” is a word. It rhymes with “flat toad,” which is a phenomenon I’ve experienced far too extensively along dusty, brittle roadsides during my copious travels with Thee Tourettes back and forth across this great country, with its fruited plains and purple mountain majesties. And yes, I must admit there were more than a few occasions when the girls and I were elated to share a fleeting meal of flat toad to tide us over for several bleak days in our endless travels along long, lonely stretches on Highway 9, chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected and stepping out over the line.

But I digress. Remember Darwin? Forget him, he’s dead. And so are his theories. Evolution is over. Mankind has peaked and plateaued. Humanity rose from the primordial muck (certain politicians notwithstanding) like Swamp Thing, only prettier, and learned how to create fire, war, Brazilian waxing, TikTok, and various other things. And then we stopped. Sure, we still invent stuff (a candle that smells like Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina is clearly one of humanity’s crowning technological achievements), but are we evolving? Nah. Science is keeping us alive longer, so we have more years to complain about our sciatica and our clueless, ungrateful offspring. Technology keeps improving, so we can spend more time sitting on our asses staring at screens. But evolution? Peh.

For countless eons, our species changed and adapted, morphing with the times to develop dazzling new features like opposable thumbs and armpit hair. Maybe armpit hair is a bad example. You get the point. We stand upright. We see and hear in stereo. We developed critical thinking. (Certain politicians notwithstanding.)

And then we stopped. When was the last time we saw an evolutionary leap? Raise your five-fingered, opposable-thumbed hand if you can answer that question. Been a while, huh?

In fact, top international scholars and philosophers (me) have put forth award-winning (pending) arguments that evolution has taken certain missteps, removing valuable features from the sapiens corpus, actually lowering us on the evolutionary scale. For example, toes. What the hell good are they? What purpose do they serve, other than giving us a place to park nail polish and a slot to insert flip-flops?

On the other hand (or foot), look at our ancestors and second cousins twice removed, the primates. They have opposable toes. Lucky bastards. They can pick up things and peel bananas and poke each other in the eye with any of four limbs. Now wouldn’t that be handy? Wouldn’t you like to be able to play tiddlywinks while swigging a beer, swiping left, and scratching your balls all at the same time? Well, you can’t. Blame evolution.

For that matter, monkeys have an effective fifth limb in their tail. They can use their tails to swing from trees or wield a paintbrush at least as well as Jackson Pollock, all while spending a million years typing the works of Shakespeare.

Even dogs, who cannot swing from trees (yet) effectively use their primitive tails to communicate. Dog tails don’t lie. When a dog tail wags, it’s sending a message. You know that dog is happy. When a tail is raised and rigid, it means they’re alert and cautious. Tail between the legs means scared or sorrowful.

So why did mankind evolve the tail into extinction? Wouldn’t it be profoundly useful to spot someone approaching and know at a glance that they were genuinely pleased to see you? Or, alternatively, that they were cautious and tentative? Wouldn’t it give you a wisp of warning to see someone ambling your way with a stiff and upraised digit? (Again, maybe not the best example.)

But ultimately that’s the point. Evolution erased our tails so we can lie more effectively. We’ve evolved into a race of deceptive, deceitful, dishonest beings who hide behind smiles and fist-bumps. Progress!

One last point. How much dog do you understand? Not a lot, I’d wager. One bark sounds more or less like another. Oh, they’re talking to you, all right; you’re just not understanding. Yet they understand at least a modicum of human speech. A dog will sit on command, or heel, or fetch the TV remote. (I’m still working on that last one.) When you say pizza, they salivate. When you say tequila shots, they slink under the couch and get out of the damn way. What kind of biological, intellectual, and psychosocial development gave dogs the ability to understand human speech while keeping us “advanced” beings completely in the dark about whatever the hell they’re barking at us? Evolution!

I know what you’re thinking. What has all this to do with Thee Tourettes? A valid question, and I direct the question back at you. Why am I telling you this? Answers on a 3 x 5 card, please, mailed to the PO box listed on the back of Thee Tourettes’ new caffeine-, sugar-, and cannabis-infused breakfast cereal, “Buzzy-O’s,” available at fine retailers everywhere. (Shameless plug department.)