Moved to tears by cruel and silly humans

JUST because I had nothing to read, I watched MTV’S Fear Factor some days ago. But first, a flashback to a Fear Factor sort of show in the distant past. It went something like this.

A couple of contestants were forced to choose which species’ penis (grilled) they would eat.

All this, of course, in support of audience enthusiasm and broadcast television’s tireless international mission to improve humanity.

There was an elk, a moose and a deer – although you had to take the host’s word on this. Nobody thought of ordering a vole or maybe a dormouse. Meanwhile, back in the near present, Fear Factor featured four teams of two contestants each, who competed for the grand prize of $50 000. There were three events, only the first of which will concern us here. Called “Beat the Beasts”, it involved two contestants at a time with their heads sealed inside a large transparent box.

In the box were many little lizards, each one truly charming and a credit to their species. A tiny hole allowed the entrance of a thin cord, one end of which triggered the discharge of quite a lot of live crickets into the box, while the other end was stuck in the mouth of a contestant.

Using their lips, they had to ingest (but not swallow) the cord until, with a jerk of the head, the cricket-box trapdoor was opened and the crickets added their biomass to the box full of human heads and tiny lizards. This indicated the end of the bout.

Now the thing about lizards is that they lack agency and choice as we liberals understand it.

Not one of them was excited by the attention, and most of them crawled over the human heads, into mouths, maybe ears, who knows. Lizards, like most species under threat, void their bowels. This means the box full of cordsucking human heads was also full of lizard droppings. I have nothing more to tell you.

And now for the end of the world, or more specifically the ocean, accompanied by a whimper and sure as hell not a bang. I refer, in some pain, to the final episode of Blue Planet 2, the BBC nature movie that currently has most of its audience enthralled and weeping. Why do they weep? Because out of all the life forms on Earth only humans are truly vile. They – and I’m looking at you – not only invented plastic but they throw it in the sea. It reappears in albatross vomit

(who knew?) and impairs the life choices of untold billions of non-humans. To quote Lenin – admittedly addressing both a different crisis and a totally different audience – “What is to be done?”

As with all sin, confession is the first step. We humans, except for vegans, are completely responsible. Assisting us along the ecological Via Dolorosa is the saintly presence of David Attenborough, now old and therefore not only wise but good. His whispery indictments of human vileness are chilling and demand recompense and retribution. Most of his demands are completely beyond the capacities of individuals to affect events, and sadly, individuals are all we’ve got. Let us remember that at the time of the Roman Empire the spaces occupied by the Sahara Desert were fertile wheat fields.

Why did they all degrade to sand? Maybe the divinities on Mount Olympus felt it was time for some cosmic punishment, given that Noah’s Flood was only a partial success.