So I was sitting there at work talking to a coworker.
People were thinking about trying resurrect mammoths. You know, the big, fuzzy-elephant-like creatures that used to roam the Siberian wastes. Of course, they weren't all that waste-like back in the day. The mammoth appetites and mammoth poops (forgive the mental image conjured by "mammoth" being the adjective that shares this creature's apt name) helped make the Siberian plains hospitable as well as the whole ecosystem that surrounded the species. The bugs that fed on the dead, the plants that nourished them on the waste of the bugs, the whole world that was allowed with the fertile soil leading all the way back to the mammoth eating it. Good enough reason to try to resurrect them I guess.
But then it kinda hits you. What ABOUT all that other stuff. First off, it'd take a long time to recover that ecosystem even with the mammoths stomping and pooping the ground back into happy shape. But second off, who would teach the mammoths how to be mammoths? Is there some kind of genetic memory? Would a mammoth wake up and be like, yeah, I should go eat some of -- uhh-- that stuff looks good? Surely some of us will believe that mammoths might be like, yeah, that mammoth bitch is super mondo, I'm gonna go tap that mamma and make oxymoronic miniature mammoths which will soon be all over youtube. But my point is I am not quite sure.
Where does mysterious genetic memory end and cultural memory begin?
It's the place just past the boundary of reality. It's the place where you look around and are simultaneously sucked inward because of how terrifyingly alien it feels and pulled outward, connecting to everything via sheer and unstoppable deja vu.
It's a place I've been chilling in all day. That place so alien-- yet so staunchly familiar in ways I can't put my finger on. I feel... I feel like I've got these large portions of that inherent human nature simply missing from my heart. I sometimes feel like a mammoth walking among elephants if that makes any sense. Similar, but ... just not the same.
But whatevs~ I'll just go talk to people on the internet for now. Peace.
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