When I walked into my office/music room this morning, there sat Charles Darwin. Of course, it was the Alien C.W. shapeshifted, but gosh, he looked like the photos of Charles Darwin. I couldn’t think of an appropriate greeting. I finally managed, “Dude.”
“I never said it,” came the reply.
“Never said what?” I sat my coffee on the desk and
sat.
“Most of the things they attribute to me.”
“The ‘Mark Twain Effect’ you mean.”
“What’s a mark twain?”
“A person,” I said, remembering that C.W.
sometimes gets deeply immersed in his character when he does what he calls “enphasing.”
“Elucidate.”
“False attribution,” I said.
“Expand.”
“Saying someone said something they didn’t.”
“Clarify.”
“Like when you said my wife said you could borrow
our car when you said I said it would be okay.”
“Embellish.”
“Misquoted. Now what’s up?”
“I never said it.”
“Said what?”
“That evolution was ‘the survival of the fittest.’
That counts for two misattributes or whatever you call them.”
“Two?”
“Yes. I never used the work evolution.”
“I think I read that somewhere.”
“Then you know I never attributed descent through modification
as ‘survival of the fittest’ or such nonsense.”
“So I understand.”
“How silly,” he said. “If it occurred over
millions of years that blindness would allow some of your species success in surviving
on scarce resources, causing a change in sight characteristics, would that mean
they were fit in all respects?”
“Not by the standards of the film industry.”
“The what?”
“Never mind.”
“And what if it happened that the unknowing, uneducated,
unlearned, and non-cognitive were to prove more adaptable to seizing political
power? Fitness or extinction?” His face dropped, the long white beard forming a
cushion. Then his head rose. “Tell me,” he said. “If A equals B and B equals C,
does A equal B?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said. “There’s hope. But you have no power,
do you?”
“Not a bit.”
His head dropped again. After a long silence, I rose
and turned to leave the room. As I reached the door, I heard a soft snoring.
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