Do you ever listen to the news and wonder about the sanity of humans? Sometimes it looks like humans have gone completely insane and everyone, to one degree or another, is crazy. Except for you and me of course and I do wonder about myself occasionally.
If it is any comfort to you, the world of humanity has always been this way and all you have to do, is study a little history to discover this. Not only do humans do the darnedest things but then they make up stories to explain why they are doing them.
Think about pyramids for a moment. It takes a lot of time and the effort of a whole bunch of people to build one. You have to move, cut and shape an enormous amount of rock to accomplish your goal. Why do people build them? Well it seems they built them in Egypt so that their rulers could have an easier trip to the after life and to show how great they were. In Mexico and South America, they were built to impress people, to get a better view of the countryside and so that when the priests killed human sacrifices, they were closer to the gods.
Now if someone came up to you and asked would you be willing to spend a good part of your life working on building one. I don’t think so. Sounds like a crazy thing to do. Yet here in Yellowknife, the city is building an enormous structure out of bales of garbage at the edge of town. It is already the highest hill around and yet it seems to have no purpose.
We aren’t going to use it to intern our former mayors or premiers. We don’t do sacrifices on top of it. So, can anyone explain why we are doing this. It seems like a colossal waste of time and effort unless we come up with some sort of use for it. Personally, I think we should turn it into a Mayan type pyramid with a flat top that could be turned into a viewing platform. Both residents and tourist could go to its summit to see city or the northern lights. The dump should also be declared a bird watching site because we have created the ideal place for scavengers to congregate and as a nesting site for sand hill cranes. See what I mean about the insanity of humans.
Now speaking of birds, I like watching them because they are the most common critter around and I see them as modern-day cousins to feathered dinosaurs. So, by watching them I get a glimpse into the world of dinosaurs and how they behaved and lived.
There is a long-standing debate in the birding community about Redpolls and how many species of them exist. We have Redpolls in Yellowknife summer and winter and they are the most common bird that comes to my feeder. Some people claim that there are anywhere between two and five species. Or some like myself argue that there is only one. A Redpoll is a Redpoll regardless of slight variations in an individual’s feather colour or pattern.
It would be like arguing that there are different species of humans based on the variations in their hair colour. Black, brown, blond, red and two new species, green and purple, that seem to emerge around graduation time. To me a human is a human and a Redpoll is a Redpoll. But I seem to be in the minority on that and our country is certainly going in the opposite direction.
If humans will argue over pyramids and Redpolls, you know they are going to argue over all sorts of things. Recently the East Coast Music Award nominated a person for the Indigenous artist award. But, then some argued that he wasn’t indigenous enough. So, they withdrew the nomination, which seems like a rather mean thing to do.
Also, it seems no one really knows how Indigenous a person would have to be, to get nominated for an Indigenous award. Human nature and human biology is such that this is the only way to know your ancestry for certain would be to take a DNA test. Besides being crazy, humans like to make things really really complicated.
This of course brings us back to the concept that everyone is crazy. Maybe we need a craziness meter to cadge just how crazy any given country or topic is. I know that this may sound like a crazy idea, but I have been known to have them. Crazy is as crazy does, after all.