Survival of the fittest

Survival of the fittest

Mar. 22, 2001

'Smatter of Fact
By Katharhynn Heidelberg

Dear High Commission of Mars:

Thank you for funding my semester abroad to Earth. I have landed in "Hollywood," which seems to be command central for both entertainment and perfection.

This planet Hollywood is a weird world. Beautiful beings, largely devoid of intelligence, called "celebrities" masquerade as humans, while equally strange life forms build them up as ideals to the masses. These life forms call themselves "journalists."

You would be amazed at what Hollywood and its associated units can pass off as entertainment. There is something called "reality TV" — ironically popular in a society that considers day-to-day reality "boring." Strangely, the things which are admired on this "TV" (I think the humans regard it as a household god) would be ridiculed in real-life situations.

A possible case study is a soon-to-be program, "Fear Factor," where earthlings test their mettle by leaping from one moving semi-truck to another. The motivation for such a dangerous enterprise appears to be greed.

Plans for future shows include rats, snakes and attack dogs, while still another program features eight earthlings who — virtually speaking, of course — hunt each other down. The survivor of this game is rewarded with a large amount of earth’s currency.

Outside of the TV’s box, however, a young woman perished after an attack by real dogs. Far from considering it entertainment, most earthlings were horrified. In an earlier incident, two young males went on a hunting spree and murdered 13 people. Few earthlings regarded it as a game.

The trouble is, what logical humans see as shoe-ins for earth’s Darwin A-wards, or as egregious pandering to violence, Hol-lywood sees as "hot." Most earthlings will be prone before their electronic god when it dispenses "Fear Factor," possibly raving about what others will do for money, but watching nonetheless. Hollywood knows this. And it’s the only thing that counts.

We turn now to concepts of perfection and fitness, which also seem dictated by Hollywood.

Human beings spend much of their time thinking about "fitness" — their own, I mean. But the strange thing is that they don’t care about fitness because they want their internal functioning to be efficient and healthy. They care about it because they want to appear attractive on the outside.

Lured by Hollywood’s distorted perceptions, earthlings go to great extremes to circumvent their own genetic makeup. For advice, they turn to a god called "Internet." Internet will seduce the earthlings who seek it out for this cause, by first offering solid nutritional and psychological advice. But to gain wealth for its acolytes, Internet then appeals to vanity, not logic.

Internet gives power to many "experts" (whose weapon is guilt), and who ask such important questions as: "What would you give to look great naked?" Apparently, this is much more important to humans than reducing risk of disease, or gaining the ability to climb a flight of stairs without gasping for breath.

The (male) expert quoted above also informed female earthlings that, "Every woman has the ability to look great naked...There are techniques women can use to maximize their appearance and look great naked by virtually anyone’s standards."

I conclude that looking "great" means more than feeling happy, because neither Internet nor TV praise the earthlings who are not thin, even though many of them exercise daily, consume proper nutrients and achieve inner peace and beauty.

In all, I am not certain which is stranger: that Hollywood uses false people to sell false dreams, or that real people happily buy into them. In such an artificial world, however, it is a pity no human has perfected artificial intelligence.