What are we all doing?

I'm wondering what we're all doing. I'm sitting here dipping my quill pen in the ink jar and trying to dream up something stupid to say. And my crystal ball shows me that you, dear reader, are soaking up sun on a tropical island. That's good: so we both got our wishes to come true. 

Now I'll consider that same question from a different angle. Instead of taking it as meaning "What are you, my best friend, doing at this moment?" let's say that it means "What are we humans collectively doing as a species?" (I hate that word "species"; it sounds like the plural of "penis", which is another word I hate.) And the answer is that we're going nowhere fast. That's what my crystal ball assures me. So that's good too; for at least nowhere is open-ended — if we were headed to a specific destination, it might be a trap, or, at best, the dead-end pathway of a maze.

A fair amount of snow fell yesterday, where I live. And today is Wednesday: garbage day. This means that I must shovel the snow from my driveway and put out the recycling and trash bins. 

Just now a thought came to me, about Tim Burton's 1989 movie BATMAN. If I remember right, at a certain point in that film there's a flashback that shows the hero as a child walking thru the city with his super-rich mom & dad; then some mean jerks approach and slay the kid's parents, leaving the little boy an orphan. Now, since this child is ultra wealthy, he need not spend his time on wage-labor; therefore he decides to put on a bat suit and engage in hand-to-hand combat with individual criminals. But here's what I think: He should instead just use his billions of dollars to make poverty impossible: THAT way, all crime will vanish naturally; and he will have fulfilled his mission in life. The city will look clean, and everyone will be much happier.

I think, however, that people would rather feel that they've done a lot of tough, physical work to gain what they need, instead of having to acknowledge that they've been aided by a benefactor. People stubbornly want to feign independence. For instance, if some crazy inventor walks by and sees a man preparing to paint his house, the inventor might say to this man: "Dear fellow, wait a moment; let me show you this thing that I just built: it is an automatic house-painting machine. All you need to do is turn this wheel here, to select which color that you want your house to be, and then press the 'DO IT' button. The device will then miraculously paint your house in a fraction of an instant." — Instead of being glad that this inventor is willing to save him an entire afternoon of tedium, the man sez "No, thanks. I'd rather do the job myself." And then he sweats and grunts all the rest of the day, in the hot sun, globbing paint all over his siding. Then, when it's time to eat, the dinner bell rings, and this man climbs down from his ladder, enters the house, and takes his seat at the table: After murmuring grace ("O God, bless this food that You have provided us; and save us from the punishment of the hellfire") he then reaches forth to take a morsel of lamb; but the red paint drips off his hands like blood, and it drips onto the meat, and all over the rest of the meal, and it drips over everyone. Now the whole family is covered in red house-paint, which no scientific invention could ever wash clean. 

P.S.

Just before I got into bed last night, I looked out my window and happened to see a rabbit dash forward and stop directly before my personal frame of view. "Are you going to put on a show for me?" I asked, despite my bedroom window being closed (so I don't think my visitor heard the question). This creature appeared extremely well-fed. He or she stood stock-still for fifteen minutes and then sprinted away and hid behind some shrubs.