Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Inner-space part 1.5- Godzilla vs. King-Kong.

Well, in the last one, I said I'd get into the software side of things, but before I do, I need to take a slight detour, and dissect the hardware a little bit more...

At the least, to give a better visual fix on the whole thing.

Well, let's rewind a bit.
Say, a few hundred million years.

To our reptilian ancestors.

It's from them that we get the limbic brain.
Which is why we call it the reptilian hindbrain.

Let's call this plucky fella "Godzilla".

Now, let's wind ahead, to our primate ancestors.
Up to where our brains get bigger, and we become social primates.

You can see watching the apes, they have affection, kindness, altruism, they're quite, well, decent people.
Generally.

Sometimes they can go psycho, like in recent news stories.
Ayep, Godzilla can rear his head in them as much as us.

But, like us, they have higher emotions, and social order to try to keep Godzilla in check.

And in our caveman ancestors, this social order got mixed up with superstitions, and then religions became part of that social ordering.

So, this overall bit of monkey-stuff, that's not quite reptilian, not quite angelic, I'll call "King-Kong".

And you look at human history, it's been a pretty tense struggle between King-Kong and Godzilla.

In a future chapter, I'll get more into this viewpoint lined up against history.

But for now, here's the quickie summary.

So, Godzilla and King-Kong kick, punch, bite, and wrestle across the face of the planet, leaving piles of corpses, and ruined towns and villages in their wake.

As you'd expect.


Then, one day, a bunch of folks got sick of the shenanigans of Godzilla and King-Kong, and they pitched in, and built Jet Jaguar.


And Jet Jaguar built cities, and kept Godzilla and King-Kong out, and inspired all kinds of art and inventions, and things were pretty good.

Occasionally, baby King-Kongs popped up within the city walls, but Jet Jaguar found he could keep them small and docile by turning their religions on themselves, and herding them with them.

And occasionally, a baby Godzilla would pop up, and they refused to play nice with anyone, so they had to go away to a special camp.

And outside the city walls, King-King and Godzilla raged on.

But, some of the offspring King-Kongs out there were getting sick of it, and saw Jet Jaguar's city, and wanted some of that action, so, they either built their own Jet Jaguars, or dressed up as them, and built their own cities.

And so, the Jet Jaguars, and the King-Kongs in Jet Jaguar suits all got along fairly well, and kept the Godzilllas and King-Kongs out of their cities.

Occasionally, a King-Kong in a Jet Jaguar suit would succumb to his inner Godzilla, and try and take over a Jet Jaguar city, and sometimes, he'd succeed.

And then things went on like this for awhile.

And Jet Jaguar would get his butt whupped by Godzilla here and there, but he'd pop up in other places.
No matter how many outbreaks of Godzilla would occasionaly scourge the planet, Jet Jaguar would always be around.

Waiting for King-Kong to beat back Godzilla's wilderness, for it to be safe to come out and rebuild.

And within these Jet Jaguar cities, some interesting mutations and cross-breedings occurred.

Sometimes, you could herd a baby Godzilla, and these docile baby Godzillas became the freak-show.

And of course, in response, some of the Jet Jaguars became Ring-Masters.

And some of the Jet Jaguars that either couldn't, or didn't feel like being Ring-Masters, became Clowns.

And in these circus-cities, the clowns seemed to be the only ones that told the whole truth.
But, this scared people, hence the fear of clowns.

And one thing the best clowns told the whole truth about, was the whole King-Kong, Godzilla, Jet Jaguar situation.
Some more subtle than others.

So, this is just about where we're at in the cycle.

Can we break it?

Can Jet Jaguar finally either conquer, or even make peace with Godzilla?

Don't ask me, I'm a Clown, not a fortune teller.

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