It was about 3 in the afternoon when I thought to myself, "Just this mail" then a quick smoke and then lunch. It was almost 4 hours straight on my comp without a break.
As it progressed, a typical day being spent chasing deadlines and managing expectations, suddenly it seemed like a swarm of zombies emerging out of their graves walking straight towards whoever that appeared to be in their senses.
The zombies, progressing slowly with a one track mind to feed on the mind and spirit of any human still alive, if not already numb by the dead heat and repetitive pointless mundaneness of it all.
WTF..??
It just seemed like the pandemic was touching upon every human alive. And it seemed that it was defying any precaution or preventive cure that one might have taken. Everybody knew exactly what the cause of the disease was, but nobody knew the cure. All you have to is roll your dices and take your chances on symptomatic cure.
How did it all begin? Was this disease always there in a dormant state or it is one of those modern lifestyle diseases we have all come to accept the existence of while blaming ourselves and our meaningless lives for it? Well, whatever might be the case, it sure has spawned a lot of zombies.. But surely they are not the ones like you see in the movies bus seem a lot alive, almost like live humans. They talk like them, walk like them, behave and even laugh like them. But make no mistake, you wanna stay away from them. And because they look and move like humans, it is still illegal to hurt them... So lo and behold, they are living, eating and making love with the remaining human beings. Making them one of their own one at a time.
Well, that brings us to how this pandemic started. How did it all happen? Where did these zombies evolve from? Was it an experiment of some psychologist's criminal ultra toxic experiment gone out of control? Doesn't seem so.. Probably it was the socialism of intellect which was facilitated by somebody who invented press which started to distribute knowledge among everybody who knew how to read. Even then it was restricted by discretion, by the people who had enough individualism to decide whether to live life the way they decided to accumulate information to painstakingly derive a make believe virtual world nothing but faux enlightenment.
But there is a reason far graver. It started with the civilisation itself. When man learnt to live with nature. When he started fabricating things to save him from the vagaries of nature. However, there was no moral science in whatever schooling system they had, if they had one. Somebody invented religion to instil a fear of god so that they don't screw others and try to live with whatever they got. Be happy. Systematic mind control. Life and its ways just got institutionalized..
Then, suddenly he got intelligent and philosophy happened.
He started questioning everything. Why should he submit to the powers that be if he has already invented to enable him to live his life in "convenience"?
As he had realized early enough that the man is a pack animal.
Thus began the story of profession. There were three professionals:
The Gatherer
The Farmer
The Hunter
The gatherer relied on whatever the world offered him. He meandered for the bounty. The farmer was the less moderate one and he grew what he wanted. He could sell his produce to buy stuff that he didn't.
Finally, the hunter. He stalked his prey for dinner. He relied on his own guts and his weapons.
And then he evolved.
He became the ruler, he became the thief and he became the original businessman. Eventually, somewhere down the line, a major cross pollination happened and a shrewd farmer and a twisted hunter mingled to become a politician.
Farmers lived the life of convenience. They nurtured and tilled what they already had. Following the same process of tilling the land, sowing, irrigating, maintaining, harvesting and then the same story once again. It was the same produce year after year in the same quantity and quality albeit with the blessings of natures annual gifts like timely rain and condescending weather
They also evolved. Some good, some bad. The vehicle of evolution was going in full throttle. If the world was originally Flintstones, it had already turned into Simpsons going full speed to Southpark.
One of the great human tendencies have been to expect. That spawned many other vices like ambitions, aspirations, hopes etc which started driving humans to develop greed and aspirations. The gurus started chanting "Live the Dream" and the followers followed on!
Futures which held promise to take care of the meek and decimate the string. The hunters were soon being derided and punished. The gatherers and farmers were ganging up. So were the hunters but this all was not making sense! Democracy was being discovered in a totally different light.
At that point in time, probably in the dark ages, these professionals began to cross pollinate. And thus began the downward journey of human evolution. He started forsaking the innate nature and fast adopting the fruits of prosperity and general civility. History was fast being (re)written by the winners and make believe futures being created.
Then one day, someone decided that why should the great means of living the good life lie with people who have figured out how to.. It should be commoditized and sold over the counter. Moreover, it should be affordable enough for the dumbest gatherers to wallow in the luxury.
The whole mankind started to reap the benefits of modernity. Content went up, Creativity went down. Inventions stopped, gadgets started evolving. Every thing was marketing. People lined up to pay to be different. Other people lined up just to belong. People paid more to be visible. Needs were grounded but desires were high. However, dreams could not rise above needs, and desires could never go beyond dreams.
Justification of existence has suddenly become infinitely more important than the existence itself. They want to prove, they want to belong. Going literally by the core definition of civilization as the basic premise of social approval and hence coexistence. The unending clamor to live which basically translates into approval. Concurrence.
This manifests itself into a lot of implications which have gradually become a part of our daily lives. Everyone has a role but roles keep on overlapping because of dependencies and hence the there is a monkey fight on two things: Who to blame and where to claim glory. That's where the individual qualities of the Farmer, Gatherer and Hunter start to come up. Not to rise as a team, but find reason in chaos. Find a foothold in the bus which is just about to leave since, like, forever. Frantically trying to get the last ticket to Noah's ark which is already lifting the anchor..
Coming back to present. Phew! 10 slides more and I am done! Yet another campaign for yet another convoluted need infested dream of a cross pollinated professional.