Reading Henry Adams

“Such a working system for the universe suited a young man who had just helped waste five or ten thousand millions dollars and a million lives, more or less, to enforce uniformity…”

Henry Adams, 1867-68

Natural selection

to natural evolution

to select uniformity

Here was a

philosophy

that mankind

could live for

or die,

as the case may be

What was the waste

of a thousand million dollars

or a hundred million lives

when it was natural

to have selection

such as this?

Was there any cost

too great?

To bring

to this earth

a Darwinian paradise

for the strong

that would survive?

And for those

that object

to a civil uniformity

resistance to the descent

would be flaunting

natural law

And law

is the only thing

that separates us

from the brutish sort,

those undescended,

with unending possibilities

to be selected

as the starting point

for select civil uniformity.

2/24/05