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"Crushing Identity Politics"
April 3, 2005
It turns out that these scientists have discovered that fun existed before there were people to have it. Our DNA likes to party. This can only mean two things; one, that fun is necessary for survival, and two, that fun is necessary for reproduction. In fact, this fun response that the scientist were able to induce in the rats by tickling them is the same high pitched squeak they emit during sex and before getting a shot of morphine. Drugs and sex, therefore, must also be fun. The study mentions nothing about Rock ‘n Roll. This is probably because the study was only two-thirds funded, and the scientists were not able to study the Rock ‘n Roll part without a large grant from the National Science Foundation. Last year, new government rules against promoting Rock ‘n Roll with federal tax dollars went into effect. Hopefully, the private foundations will step in to fill this void. Are you listening Paul Allen? Thanks to science we now know that fun is important to the survival of the species. If humans go extinct, the animals will still be having fun. The self-willed squirrels will barely notice our absence, except that there will be a lot more of them to not notice it. Given the sorry affairs of human existence today, the total amount of fun being had on this planet would actually go up. Humanity needs fun, but fun doesn’t need humanity. We should be worried that fun may be getting tired of trying to make us happy. People are always saying we need to have more fun if we want to attract people to the conservation movement. I have always thought the conservation movement (particularly the more rural elements and the big-city campaign organizations) was far more fun than the party on the left. A lot of the reason for this is based on a common love of the outdoors. Many activists are avid wilderness enthusiasts. They are the desert rats and river runners, the alpine crowd, the rock climbers, birdwatchers and even surfers who are involved in the day-to-day work of conservation. Historically, these folks have a reputation for wild, uncontrolled revelry. Many of the largest and most conservative environmental organizations in the In Rock ‘n Roll, when it stops being fun, you lose money. Then a garage band comes along and puts the fun back into it for a while, until the suburban kids start doing it and it’s no longer cool. I have seen similar trends in the conservation movement. I meet Earth Firsters now who cannot set up a tent or mix up a batch of MRDs (Margaritas Ready to Drink). How many times have you heard some speaker at an environmental conference say we must have more fun, and then afterwards they won’t stop talking about work? Fun is easy to talk about but it is sometimes harder to have, especially in these PC days where all pleasure is of the guilty type. Finding the right balance between work and play has confounded humanity since the dawn of the Sixties. Before the sixties you did not talk about drugs, sex and Rock ‘n Roll, you just did them. In the sixties you could talk to people while you were doing them and by the eighties people where talking about it more but doing it less. Now you can’t even talk about it unless you are paying a counselor at least 200 bucks an hour or are under oath at your own trial. Here at Lowbagger we are committed to fun. We are always on the lookout for it. We will report on it if we see it. But in order to maintain our objectivity, we will not be having any. Just like those hard-working scientists who study fun in rats, we want to keep our distance. We just like to watch. But we do know how you can have more fun. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Meet other people half way. Understand that this wildness within us is our primitive self trying to have a little fun, because fun is important to our survival. Even those we disagree with can be fun to hang out with sometimes. We would not be conservationists if we thought that the threats to the planet’s life support system were not serious. Most of the public today thinks we have no sense of humor. They don’t understand that to have any hope at all in days like these requires a good sense of humor. We just may need some new avenues to express to the world just how funny we think this whole situation really is. And when we are done laughing, we will get back to work. Mike will be traveling the country holding educational seminars on how to make a MRD and sleep on the ground in a beautiful place.
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