The Wall

This is the story of two Perspectives. While doing a common chore, they view it differently. Our narrator calls it a 'Wall,'  While the neighbor calls it a 'Fence.' 

Consider these two words... They are very different. 

The Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it

'"Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours

Robert Frost

The Plague of Stupid People

           I have a friend, who, when someone gets themselves killed because of stupidity, likes to say, ‘Natural Selection at work.’ The trouble is; I have come to agree with him.

          In the past, we have had to fight off various plagues, Small pocks, Polio, Scarlet fever, Yellow fever, the black plague and we have had plagues of locust, plagues of flies, mosquitoes so on and so forth. All of which raise havoc among those affected.

Let us first deal with the word stupid: Stupidity does not lend itself to a physical deficiency, (Idiot) or a lack of education or information, (ignorance), but instead describes a person who is dull, senseless, and makes poor decisions even though there is nothing physically wrong with them, and has the proper information and/or education.

          I believe we are a mist a plague of stupid people, we don’t see it, because we don’t tend to think that way. I mean, they’re people. Are they not due respect, aren’t we told that all people are alike, somehow equal, somehow deserving.

          Well, a little over a hundred years ago, mankind entered into the industrial revolution, and with it came many wonders. Ain’t life good? I have to say, yes it is. But along with the industrial revolution came a quieter revolution, one whose impact we may just now be feeling. The Safety Revolution.

          In the old days, if you were stupid, you didn’t really last very long. Something got you. You would do something stupid, and wa-la, you were dead. Stupid people didn’t live long, and those who did, were few in number. As a result, stupid people didn’t reproduce much, because they didn’t really live long enough.  The laws of evolution, or natural selection, only the best and brightest survived to reproduce, thus a positive DNA trend…

          So you have to ask yourself, ‘what has the safety revolution done for me?’ Well, it has made the work place safer, recreational facilities safer, and consumer products much safer (sometimes to the point of being useless). It has made our coffee cooler, and automobiles complicated beyond belief.

          Unintended consequences; perhaps we are unintentionally preserving the fate of stupid people, and thus have increased their number, and if they aren’t being killed off due to interference (safety revolution) with natural selection, then they live long enough to reproduce, and what is it that stupid people teach their children? Do I dare go there?

          Now, don’t misinterpret what I’m saying, because I indeed, am just making an observation based on the information at hand. I don’t think it can be fixed, because it is something only nature can deal with. But let us suppose I’m right, would there not be a downward or negative DNA trend, according the laws of evolution? ©

George Henry Nichols