Some People Know How to Spoil Everything

Have you ever noticed how every now and then adventurous humans seem to discover an exciting new hot spot, and before you can even think about taking a selfie there, everyone’s  already on the way?  Isn’t that just like us humans – never satisfied where we are.  Always wanting to get to the new “in” place before the hordes come and spoil it.  And always a day late and a selfie short.  In a degrading sort of way, it’s sound thinking, because if there’s anything humans are good at, it’s spoiling a place.  Besides taking selfies I mean.    

            It all started when the main wave of intrepid humans left Africa and eventually not only discovered the Fertile Crescent, but how to create a civilization.  This could not have been easy when you think about how uncivilized they were at the time.  Then the next thing you know, the place is a desert, and even the rain stays away.  They say it was great while it lasted though.  I say that’s all well and good, but I’ve never heard of uncivilized people ever spoiling a place like that.  Not counting, of course, those barbarians who slurp their soup in public restaurants. One look around the world and I’m thinking there must be a little Mesopotamian in all of us. 

            Europe sounded like a new and exciting land for awhile, but they don’t call it the Old World for nothing now.  Just try and get in to see the Vatican without Divine intervention, or to kiss the Blarney Stone without the luck o’ the leprechaun, or to see the Louvre without both learning to speak French AND apologizing for being a tourist.  In fact, Europe hasn’t had a hot spot since the Fire of London, and that only attracted pyromaniacs and other future selfie takers.  As a result, it has become a very cool place to visit, which is to say it’s been spoiled for so long I don’t think even global warming can make it hot again.

            And so it went around the globe, with one adventurous detour to Australia and the South Pacific Islands even causing people to think they had discovered paradise.  But it seems that one person’s paradise is just another’s penal colony, or luxury vacation resort, depending on the point of view.  Either way, the real points of view were eventually spoiled.      

                It looked to be a new game though when a land bridge opened up the Americas, with their two continents full of hot spots, and no reservations.  At least not yet.  But it took the more experienced Europeans to demonstrate how to properly spoil a continent or two, and they went at it like a plague of locusts.  Or was I thinking about real estate developers?  Anyway, just look at Florida.  Once believed to be the home of the legendary Fountain of Youth, now it’s so full of old people and golfers, who are really just old people before their time, that even Native Americans still laugh at the idea of a New World.  The idea of golf probably keeps them in stitches.  It does me and I’m a golfer, though my scorecard might accuse me of exaggerating too.

            At that point, it appeared that earth was about as spoiled as could be, what with there being no more land bridges to magical places and all.  But who needs magic when you have oceans to turn into garbage patches, and enough space in earth’s orbital zone to store so much more, 130 million pieces of it at last count, that it’s imperiling satellite transmissions.  There has been a noticeable uptick in prayer transmissions though.  Personally I think I would have quit well before selfies were just another reminder of a spoiled world, but what do I know.  I certainly didn’t know that billionaires were already putting their money on other worlds.  Though it’s not currently known whether there are hot spots on any of them, how can you spoil a new world if you don’t try? 

            Right now, the billionaires are busy building spaceships that can take you for a suborbital ride, an orbital ride, or a ride to the International Space Station.  Those billionaires, always ready to take you for a ride.  A fifty million dollar ride and a last chance to take a selfie with earth.  I don’t know if that will work in the long run as a business slogan, but something tells me they’re not in it for the long run.  Whatever, it has apparently been going so well that they’re now spending more money on designing spaceships that they hope will take them to new hot spots than the rest of the world is spending on saving this one.

            Some say the earth is in trouble.  Others say it’s never been better.  Still others say if you really want to understand what’s going on, follow the money.  I say if we do, we’re gonna need a bigger spaceship.