Theory is Just an Evolution
I spent the past weekend in Kansas City, Kansas . . . Okay, that's not true exactly. I actually spent the weekend mostly in Kansas City, Missouri, but I stayed in Kansas, and got to see some of that part of the heartland for the first time.
My first observation upon arrival was that I was more confused about the two Kansas Cities than I thought I was. The entire metropolitan area spans two states in a hodgepodge of apparent drunken city planning. It's as if Mel Gibson and David Hasselhoff were playing with Legos and Lincoln Logs, and the result was the two Kansas Cities. To me, the entire layout is needlessly confusing. But that in itself adds to the charm. Well, it pretty much is the charm, but you get the idea.
For the uninitiated, let me see if I can sum it up:
There's a Kansas City, Kansas, and just across the river, where the Missouri River meets the Kansas River, there's a Kansas City, Missouri. Kansas City, Kansas is the third largest city in Kansas, and is the county seat of Wyandotte County. Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in Jackson County, but the suburb of Independence is actually the county seat of Jackson. Kansas City, Missouri is also the largest city in Missouri, although St. Louis, which sits at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, has a larger metropolitan area. Kansas City, Missouri is the center of the 26th largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States. In the Midwest, Kansas City, Missouri is the 7th largest city (sitting statistically between Cleveland, Ohio and Omaha, Nebraska) with a population of 441,545. Combined with Kansas City, Kansas, however, the population is 588,411. And the entire metropolitan area (in both Missouri and Kansas) is approximately 2,015,282.
Did you get all that?
Yeah, it kinda gave me a headache, too
Anyway, once I got past the needless confusion of having two cities with the same name right next to each other, I went in search of interesting people. In particular, I wanted to see if I could find the type of person we've all read about; the type of person who would teach Intelligent Design (ID) as science in public schools.
You might remember that ID was recently deemed to be simply a trumped up version of Creationism by the Supreme Court. It basically says that the universe is too complicated for men to understand, so a super intelligent being must have created it. ID dismisses every shred of wonderful scientific discovery man has ever made about the world around us in favor of a "god did it" explanation.
Now, I know it's possible Kansas has gotten a bad wrap because of a handful of yokels that happened to rise to positions of prominence. And I know that Missouri hasn't been defamed in the same way that their neighbors in Kansas have. Hell, I even know that there are a great many over-churched, ID people right here in my home state of Texas. But you've got to figure that a sizable portion of the population has to fit the un-enlightened, conservative mold in Kansas for the state board of education to be in the news regarding a creationism controversy as late as November of last year. I just wanted to see if I could find any of them.
Turns out I could. And it didn't take me long.
They are everywhere. There is no shortage of ultra-conservative, right wing Christians in Kansas. I had no trouble finding folks willing and able to converse about subjects that ranged anywhere from the King James Bible to Republican politics to the Living Bible. Oh and some of them are fond of country music, too.
But you know what? I think I understand them a little better now that I've been there, now that I've met them face to face. I mean, I still don't think they are right by any stretch of the imagination. I don't think that because the average person doesn't understand every detail of the workings of our universe that an all-powerful contractor built the thing. (By the way, if there is a creator, he has to be a contractor. Who else would have taken 25 billion years and still not be finished?) But when I got them in my figurative crosshairs, I noticed some things about them, and I now think I understand their mindset a little better.
For the most part, folks in Kansas (indeed the entire Midwest) are well fed and hardy. They are wholesome --- in a physical sense. They are people of the land; milk fed; corn fed. They are sturdy Christian folk. Not just a handful of them, but all of them. It's as if Pat Boone and Sandra Dee were playing The Sims, and the result was the Midwest. This is a collection of people who have a breeding population big enough to avoid the pitfalls of inbreeding, and who, so far, live in a predominantly whitebread area of the country. They are sturdy white people, encapsulated in a protective shell of sameness. There is no one different from them anywhere around. There is no truly down-and-out portion of the population. There is no advanced intelligentsia. There are no real vagrants or homeless. There is no political vanguard or social elite. The sick and mentally ill are whisked away and hidden. Geographically, they're not even all the way west, or all the way east. They're Midwest. They are right in the middle. They are the very definition of ordinary.
In short, these people don't believe in evolution because they don't see evolution.
They don't see the survival of the fittest that takes place in the bigger cities every day and poor rural areas. They don't see the mutations in their offspring, because they are all the same, and their environment is unchanging. They're not cynical and pissed off, so they don't stop to think. They don't notice that the church is shining them on. They don't consider that the Bible could be wrong.
It takes differences and hardships to make people think about what's going on around them. It takes at least one new experience to trigger the curiosity necessary to begin to explore and to question. Aside from the occasional tornado or drought, folks in the Midwest only ever see the sun rise and the sun set and the winter turn to spring and the summer to fall. They live a median existence.
But it must be a nice existence. It would certainly seem so. I don't want to use the trite expression that ignorance is bliss, because these folks are most certainly not ignorant. They are well informed about many things the rest of us are oblivious to. How many of us could raise a crop or work on a dairy farm? Probably not many.
Still, given the number of them acquainted with life on the farm, it's odd that so many of them can't or won't recognize a pile of bullshit when it's right in front of them. Oh wait . . . Did I just refer to ID as bullshit. Sorry, that's a mistake. I should have referred to it as Grade A bullshit.
But you know, I don't mean to criticize too harshly. I honestly did enjoy my time in Kansas, and I would go back again and recommend everyone visit at some point. It truly is a nice place to be. The points in this post are just observations I made. I can't possibly understand the workings of an entire society. Hell, I had a hard time with two cities named Kansas City being right next to each other. So I don't claim to be right.
Don't read too much into all this. After all, it's just a theory.
My first observation upon arrival was that I was more confused about the two Kansas Cities than I thought I was. The entire metropolitan area spans two states in a hodgepodge of apparent drunken city planning. It's as if Mel Gibson and David Hasselhoff were playing with Legos and Lincoln Logs, and the result was the two Kansas Cities. To me, the entire layout is needlessly confusing. But that in itself adds to the charm. Well, it pretty much is the charm, but you get the idea.
For the uninitiated, let me see if I can sum it up:
There's a Kansas City, Kansas, and just across the river, where the Missouri River meets the Kansas River, there's a Kansas City, Missouri. Kansas City, Kansas is the third largest city in Kansas, and is the county seat of Wyandotte County. Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in Jackson County, but the suburb of Independence is actually the county seat of Jackson. Kansas City, Missouri is also the largest city in Missouri, although St. Louis, which sits at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, has a larger metropolitan area. Kansas City, Missouri is the center of the 26th largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States. In the Midwest, Kansas City, Missouri is the 7th largest city (sitting statistically between Cleveland, Ohio and Omaha, Nebraska) with a population of 441,545. Combined with Kansas City, Kansas, however, the population is 588,411. And the entire metropolitan area (in both Missouri and Kansas) is approximately 2,015,282.
Did you get all that?
Yeah, it kinda gave me a headache, too
Anyway, once I got past the needless confusion of having two cities with the same name right next to each other, I went in search of interesting people. In particular, I wanted to see if I could find the type of person we've all read about; the type of person who would teach Intelligent Design (ID) as science in public schools.
You might remember that ID was recently deemed to be simply a trumped up version of Creationism by the Supreme Court. It basically says that the universe is too complicated for men to understand, so a super intelligent being must have created it. ID dismisses every shred of wonderful scientific discovery man has ever made about the world around us in favor of a "god did it" explanation.
Now, I know it's possible Kansas has gotten a bad wrap because of a handful of yokels that happened to rise to positions of prominence. And I know that Missouri hasn't been defamed in the same way that their neighbors in Kansas have. Hell, I even know that there are a great many over-churched, ID people right here in my home state of Texas. But you've got to figure that a sizable portion of the population has to fit the un-enlightened, conservative mold in Kansas for the state board of education to be in the news regarding a creationism controversy as late as November of last year. I just wanted to see if I could find any of them.
Turns out I could. And it didn't take me long.
They are everywhere. There is no shortage of ultra-conservative, right wing Christians in Kansas. I had no trouble finding folks willing and able to converse about subjects that ranged anywhere from the King James Bible to Republican politics to the Living Bible. Oh and some of them are fond of country music, too.
But you know what? I think I understand them a little better now that I've been there, now that I've met them face to face. I mean, I still don't think they are right by any stretch of the imagination. I don't think that because the average person doesn't understand every detail of the workings of our universe that an all-powerful contractor built the thing. (By the way, if there is a creator, he has to be a contractor. Who else would have taken 25 billion years and still not be finished?) But when I got them in my figurative crosshairs, I noticed some things about them, and I now think I understand their mindset a little better.
For the most part, folks in Kansas (indeed the entire Midwest) are well fed and hardy. They are wholesome --- in a physical sense. They are people of the land; milk fed; corn fed. They are sturdy Christian folk. Not just a handful of them, but all of them. It's as if Pat Boone and Sandra Dee were playing The Sims, and the result was the Midwest. This is a collection of people who have a breeding population big enough to avoid the pitfalls of inbreeding, and who, so far, live in a predominantly whitebread area of the country. They are sturdy white people, encapsulated in a protective shell of sameness. There is no one different from them anywhere around. There is no truly down-and-out portion of the population. There is no advanced intelligentsia. There are no real vagrants or homeless. There is no political vanguard or social elite. The sick and mentally ill are whisked away and hidden. Geographically, they're not even all the way west, or all the way east. They're Midwest. They are right in the middle. They are the very definition of ordinary.
In short, these people don't believe in evolution because they don't see evolution.
They don't see the survival of the fittest that takes place in the bigger cities every day and poor rural areas. They don't see the mutations in their offspring, because they are all the same, and their environment is unchanging. They're not cynical and pissed off, so they don't stop to think. They don't notice that the church is shining them on. They don't consider that the Bible could be wrong.
It takes differences and hardships to make people think about what's going on around them. It takes at least one new experience to trigger the curiosity necessary to begin to explore and to question. Aside from the occasional tornado or drought, folks in the Midwest only ever see the sun rise and the sun set and the winter turn to spring and the summer to fall. They live a median existence.
But it must be a nice existence. It would certainly seem so. I don't want to use the trite expression that ignorance is bliss, because these folks are most certainly not ignorant. They are well informed about many things the rest of us are oblivious to. How many of us could raise a crop or work on a dairy farm? Probably not many.
Still, given the number of them acquainted with life on the farm, it's odd that so many of them can't or won't recognize a pile of bullshit when it's right in front of them. Oh wait . . . Did I just refer to ID as bullshit. Sorry, that's a mistake. I should have referred to it as Grade A bullshit.
But you know, I don't mean to criticize too harshly. I honestly did enjoy my time in Kansas, and I would go back again and recommend everyone visit at some point. It truly is a nice place to be. The points in this post are just observations I made. I can't possibly understand the workings of an entire society. Hell, I had a hard time with two cities named Kansas City being right next to each other. So I don't claim to be right.
Don't read too much into all this. After all, it's just a theory.
posted by Sam Ogden at
2:10 PM
1 Comments:
I completely disagree regarding ID.
No WAY it is Grade A. Not happening.
By
Steven Brett, at 4:44 PM
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