Scientist tell us that, according to the best evidence so far, humankind first appeared on this Earth in a Garden of Eden which is central Africa. The region is still a paradise, but perpetually punished for its past, present and potential resources.

For millions of years mankind lived in busy harmony, in complex tribal groups full of life's richness. Humanoids gathered leaves, roots, berries, and seeds. They hunted animals and fished. They prepared and preserved them in elaborate ways, and shared subtle skills of building, tool making, carving, and decorating. Each evening they sat around a fire and shared their stories and dreams. They regularly celebrated their blessed life and ritualized the harmonies of nature. They knew that life was fragile and short. Each person knew all the others, and each person knew grief in the loss of loved ones.

There were never any strangers - well, hardly ever. Intertribal life mostly concerned the expansion of the gene pool, usually the unbegrudging duty of the young people. They seemed driven by their evolutionary machinery to seek a squeeze outside the tribe. This was a big deal and received the delighted attention of everyone, a prime-time program. Prospective mates found each other, one way or another, and if she was a good egg, a deal was struck, and a celebration was held.

Conflict was never rare. That's family. But life's fragility led to a gentleness that our medical skills no longer demand of us, now that surgery is so much better and life is so much cheaper.

Of course, there were the Obnoxious People, OPs: bullies, little brothers, mothers-in-law, ambitious men who wanted more, and ambitious women who wanted them. That's family. But when things got too tight, they and theirs would break off, cut loose, get kicked out, split. The OPs would migrate out of Eden, often toward the north. Stable people got along, stayed home, developed the arts, made steel and enjoyed the good life. The OPs did the best they could away from home, but returned occasionally for a reunion, or a raid.

In this way, early man moved out of central Africa, gradually expanding throughout the world. The pattern of expansion was about the same. The obnoxious ones, OPs, would leave home and take what they could, often returning to trade or pillage. OPs made villages of their own on the frontier.

But even these OPs had a few among them who just couldn't get along. These Obnoxious OPs, OOPs, moved farther into the forests of the north. Surviving the winter demanded the foresight and labor to accumulate food and clothing. The stressful climate demanded a frugal and hard working disposition. This resulted in a character structure called `up-tight'. Being human, these OOPs defined their crucial new quality as a virtue and arrogantly lorded it over the lesser folk of the south.

Migrating from tropical paradise to wintery north forced certain evolutionary adaptations. Seeing one's children starve in the snow focuses the mind, hardens the heart, and may even raise the SATs. Lunch becomes less free and must be planned months ahead. Subconscious memories of ejection from Eden and awareness of the green grass of milder climes smolder as envy and rage. OOPs resented the lazy southerners, kept contempt for their life and culture, planned revenge on the softies and enjoyed their conquest and subjugation.

Incidentally, life north of the fortieth parallel resulted in deficiency of sunshine vitamin D and the consequent disability from rickets. As a result the skin adapted by giving up its protective pigments, the hair by thinning and lightening, all affecting a sickly pale look.

By such migration and adaptation, human civilization expanded, getting more obnoxious at each step. Perhaps ten and twenty thousand years ago the most eager ones made it across the Bering straits to what is now called the New World. The later migrations settled in the austere north, pushing the earlier invaders to the south, where they were unfortunate enough to find gold.

Some of the OOPs settled in the irrigable Middle East, crossroads of the continents, where the victors built elaborate empires on the backs of the vanquished, then formulated most of the world's religions to alleviate, perhaps to justify, their position.In recorded history, barbarians of the north returned to sack the Roman Empire, already well debased by its aristocracy of indigenous OOPs. These North Men had some competition from Huns who were returning from Asia with their superior horsemanship. The Huns invaded most of Europe. But couldn't stand the smell and returned eastward to Asia where they settled to the south, slightly pacified by the elegant culture and cuisine of China.

Selective breeding of the Huns and the Northerners, over centuries of the survival of the fittest, has created the most brutal race of mankind that has ever cursed the earth. The archeologist confirm this impression by counting the number of human-induced injuries these obnoxious people inflicted on each other.

Ferocious raids from the Northerners conquered and brutalized the Central Europeans, who had previously ravaged what was left of the OOPs in Italy, who had in turn.... Treacherous and justifiably paranoid, the Europeans built fortified castles to protect themselves from their loved ones. These Northerners were called Norsemen, then Normans, unified as Brits as they expanded from the northern forests to conquer and subdue the entire world's population, ". . . in a fit of absence of mind, as it were".[ From the classic on British-Indian history, *Moon's *IMPERIALISM.]

From these dark ages it took only a few centuries before the healing nature of organic social life made it possible for traders and craftsmen to wander from one fortified settlement to another without being slaughtered. These brave ones, denying their true intent as economic conquerors and calling themselves merchants, blossomed along with the new technologies. These newly rich gradually replaced the OOPs aristocracy and finally triumphed.

In recent centuries, OOPs discovered that descendants of those humans who began the human venture still lived in the original paradise of central Africa. Not only were their women gorgeous but the men were strong, perfect people for enslavement. They worked hard, survived adversity, thrived on punishment, and persisted through generations. The weaker ones perished, the stronger were gleaned, traded and bred.

The merchant class is now having its way with mankind. What shreds of noblesse oblige had developed in the stability of feudal Europe seemed to decline in the face of the new mobility and alienation. Whereas people had lived throughout the evolutionary period in a familiar circle of tribal life, now the outsider, the stranger, became commonplace. Today most people are strangers. The richness of organic social life is displaced by an abstract life, a culture of ghosts lacking the bonding experiences of earlier times.

Religious leaders, such as Mohammed and Marx, called attention to the nature of merchants and capitalists as warriors. Their battle is being lost, OOPs triumph. OOPs are so devious that they can deny reality, even to themselves. They make a virtue of greed and oppression. They take no responsibility for the suffering of their victims. They even deny the genteel brutalization of their own lives.

Even the OOPs in Europe had Obnoxious People, who by their own orneriness and ambition left home, or were forced out. These OOPs crossed the oceans one way or another to plunder distant climes. Those earlier OOPs who had made it across the Bering Straits ten million years before had healed considerably. Some were living in comparative harmony with nature, worshiping the blessed life. The new wave of OOPs made short work of subduing and slaughtering them, after establishing colonies on the eastern coasts. They relished the harshly cold winters and the harshly hot summers of the New World. They had deeply internalized the stresses of being OOPs and enjoyed the thrill of suffering. To this day they go out of their way to harass and oppress each other with garbage, taxes, and leveraged buy-outs.

But even these OOPs had among them people who just couldn't get along - if it can be said that living in such an adversary culture could be called getting along. These OOPs were strongly advised to "Go West". West they went to plunder, pillage, and sack the great natural cornucopia which was America, laying waste the forests and peoples who had lived there.

The southern Europeans, a slightly softer race, settled the warmer climes of what is now Latin America. While the Catholics thought of the indigenous people as humans and therefore worthy of erotic exploitation, the Protestants of the northern Europe considered them sub-human and set about killing them. These two policies were not all that different, except that the Latin Americans look and cook differently from the Anglos.

Now, in California, the culture of the OOPs flourishes. They embrace the earth with their machines and media. Smart weapons protect the developed world from its own people. Movies and other entertainments penetrate the farthest corners of the globe, from mud huts in Africa to the suburbs of Paris. OOPs suffocate the world with their military, business and culture. Their diabolical technology increasingly terrorizes, subjugates, and enslaves whomever is in their path for whatever labor and resources can be developed and plundered.

The spread of OOPs is approaching its logical extreme: the subjugation and exploitation of the entire globe. The OOPs are blossoming, the `survival of the fittest' has become `the triumph of the barbarians, TB'. The OOPs may yet have their way with the world resulting in sudden or gradual demise, through nuclear or ecological disaster. The world may end with a bang or a whimper, oops!

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