absolutely pathetic

I once read a book in which an ordinary Earthman was transported to a distant planet that was technologically thousands of years behind Earth. The civilization had already discovered fire and invented several tools, but it was rampant with disease and disorder. Although the earthman believed that there were ways to create technology and revolutionize the civilization, he could not figure out how to bring about this change. So he thought about the most advanced aspect of Earth technology he could both explain and execute. And it was making a sandwich.

My initial reaction to that story was to refute its implication by rationalizing that the described Earthman is especially inept. I came up with all types of arguments for the intelligence of Earth people; through science, we have documented the entire genome of organisms, we understand the spread of disease, the progression of weather. Through history, we understand the factors that act together to influence the outcomes of certain political disputes. The younger generations know how to manage computer technology. But after I examined myself and my own environment, I realized that none of my arguments amounts to understanding. They are more or less a narrowing of the mind through abstractions that have little relevancy in day-to-day, biological life. Our confidence in our human abilities is grossly mismatched with our actual abilities; as humans, despite our idea of progress, there is still very little that we are capable of doing.

ERICA.
What.
I can’t get my website to work.
You don’t own a website.
I want to check my website.
You mean your e-mail?
I don’t know, help.
Here, let me show you…

This conversation has taken place, without exaggeration, about twenty times. My mom types with one finger of each hand jabbing at the keys. Since she has realized she can not look simultaneously at the computer screen and her poking, she moves her eyes from keyboard to screen after each poke to ensure that the letter appeared where she wanted. I explain to her how to open the browser, type in the web address and click a few buttons and she will log into her e-mail account. When she listens to me, it works. But I have absolutely no idea how.

I do not know how to make the internet, a computer, a telephone, aside from the one made from tin cans on a string, or a napkin dispenser. I do not know how to make napkins, I do not know how to make paper or how to make furniture, cloth, or how to safely process food. I can navigate the internet, type on a computer, talk on the phone, use napkins from the dispenser, write on paper, sit in chairs, wear clothes and eat food. But I cannot actually do a damn thing. I am trapped in an environment I depend on, but since I cannot explain or recreate it, I am helpless and worthless in it.

Last year was my first year living in a city, fully submerging myself in that synthetic environment I cannot explain. My dorm was near Fenway Park, on the corner by the 711 that drunkards frequented on their way to a game. The dorm I lived in was an old convent converted to suite style residences and the walls bulged with water mold collecting under the plaster. Because of the unusual shape of the walls, my bedroom window did not fit with its frame so it was impossible to shut. Over time, I grew accustomed to the ambulance sirens and drone of car engines and deluded myself into believing that the sounds were coyote howls and ocean waves.

The only nearby escape from the city, since the college lacked a defined campus, was the park next to the Charles River. I used to sit on the benches and stare into the river, focusing on the reflecting sunlight instead of the car lights behind me on the busy road circumscribing the entire park. Squirrels combed the grasses looking for acorns. They flicked their tails and stuffed acorns into their cheeks, then hopped to a patch of dirt that they dug into with their paws. It made sense. During winter, food is scarce, and by storing acorns in fall, there will be food available later. The squirrels had adapted to and had control over their environment.

Occasionally, humans with wires attached to their ears ran across the path to the wooden workout station. They kicked against the wooden blocks or stepped on top, then down, top, down, with robot legs and heavy breaths. They ran in circles around the station and their vision was fixed on the air in front of them and some ran with cell phones to their ears at such a slow pace that they reminded me of the sickly wildebeests struggling at the back of the pack that eventually got picked off by lions.

My friend told me that the reason my legs and lower back ache so much is because humans weren’t meant to be bipeds – walking upright is recent in our evolution. Infatuated with that idea, the next time I was at the park, I pictured everyone as circus bears. The joggers hobbled along the path, awkwardly waddling with each step, and they were dressed in bow ties and top hats. This image made more sense to me; since they were moving unnaturally, their movements were more matched to trained circus bears, brainwashed into humiliating themselves and following commands for reward. The joggers were trapped in movements without biological purpose, existing in the realm of human abstraction without realizing their dependence on their park paths, exercise stations, cell phones and Ipods. But release a circus bear into the wild, and nature takes hold and exposes the bear’s helplessness to survive.

Several years ago, when the power went out because of a winter blizzard, the entire neighborhood was at the edge of sanity. In my house, my brother tapped the keys on the computer as his hands shook in nervous withdrawal. My dad had to put the iguana under his shirt to keep it from dying, because the heat lamp wouldn’t turn on. And all of the lawyers and doctors that lived on the top of the hill stayed inside their houses for about a week because the snow plows never came through. One neighbor, a blue collar worker with little college education, ended up devising a system to make it possible for the white collar workers to descend from their hills and go back to their jobs. They came out of their houses in snow suits and huddled around the man, and the common man had complete power over the intellectuals of the neighborhood.

It appears that the world in which man is able to exist is the world that he, in all his lack of understanding, perpetuates. Mankind has evolved into a fragile species that is only biologically fit for its own synthetic environment. We are misled into believing that the world we created is a world in which we belong; when in reality, we are nothing more than hairless apes with crooked backs duped into believing that this how we are meant to exist, that we understand and have control over our environment.

I recently ordered a sandwich from the Gate, telling the girl plainly enough that I wanted cheese, lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, and sprouts – no meat. She put on the cheese first, one slice per side, the first step in a well-crafted sandwich. She then stacked the lettuce, tomatoes, sprouts on one slice, and the peppers alone on the other. When she had finished this step, she looked at the sandwich with notable discomfort; her forehead was pinched and her eyebrows furrowed as she concentrated on the slices in front of her. She shifted her eyes back and forth, one slice to the other, as she held her gloved hands with her fingers splayed, apparently deciding which side to grab. Eventually she went for the peppers. Although I am confident that she calculated the amount of centripetal force necessary to keep the peppers stationary before she flipped over that slice, of course they still spilled onto the floor and flew into the turkey. Apparently, that book was wrong; man was not even advanced enough to be capable of explaining and executing the concept of sandwich. And with every bite of that sandwich, I felt more pathetic.