Every day, the papers are full of stories about people who died doing something really stupid while they were drunk. A couple of recent examples include the girlfriend dangled from a twenty-third story balcony, or this woman who ran out onto the freeway after “drinking at an apartment complex”. Unsurprisingly, both of these people died.
A century ago, seemingly senseless deaths like these would have been banners for the Prohibition movement. Surely (the argument went), these people would be alive and well today were it not for the evils of drink!
Polimom has a different explanation: Darwin’s Natural Selection.
The human species has self-selected and evolved since we were mere motes in space (or a gleam in God’s eye, or whatever your preference), but technical and medical advances are allowing the human race to evade the natural process. As a result, the genetic pool is not as self-limiting as it once was.
Yes, there have been hard-to-overcome diseases in the last several decades which some have offered as alternate methods of selection. HIV and Ebola, in particular, have been used as explanations of God’s will.
Polimom thinks it’s every bit as likely (if not more so) that drunkenness, in the face of all evidence to its stupidity, is just another natural control on humanity. When drunk, this genetically-flawed branch of the human race has a great attrition record, and if they weren’t putting non-drunks at risk with their behavior, I’d be inclined to foot the liquor bill to hasten their decline.
As it stands, though, Polimom simply reads these stories and thinks, “Well, one less in the gene pool. I’m so terribly sorry that anyone else was hurt, cuz that’s the real tragedy.”
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