Illustration copyright 2010 Romeo Esparrago
Last lecture delivered from the podium of the Department of Philosophy of the Free University of San Francisco.
- July the 4th, 2184
Friends, academics, and fellow mutants, I address you today in my capacity of new Chairman of the Socratic Society, on the first, and probably the last day of my tenure.
Thank you for electing me. Thank you for placing your trust in me. Thank you for trusting my intellectual credentials in spite of my outer deformities.
As you can see, I am one of the last of the old humans. Those of you who resemble me have become so rare that we are seen as “mutants”; though, of course, we are not a new variation of species, but the last representatives on Earth of a human life form that has been dominant for more than thirty-thousand years.
From my point of view, and from the point of view of those of you who resemble me, we are, of course, not mutants at all.
Permit me to explain the world as seen through my eyes. At the risk of being controversial, I want to enlighten you, I want to open your eyes to a perspective on our history which is fast becoming obsolete. In fact, this perspective has become so utterly unfashionable that this may very well be the last lecture of this sort ever to be delivered from this podium, or any university podium, ever.
In the presumed words of Thomas Beckett, and with due apology to T.S. Eliot, who so eloquently dramatized the demise of that great man: “Death comes to us all, my lords.”
I shall begin my lecture from a position of inaccuracy. I am thus making a declaration of ignorance – however painful for me, especially as newly elected Chairman of this prestigious Society, to admit to such a fallacy. Fortunately I am by no means alone in my uncertainty.
I don’t know, and I am not sure if anyone knows, exactly when and where the change began. Some say it is a recent development; others believe that the evolution of Man had already reached its pinnacle with the development of the large-brained, gentle-natured Neanderthals, who were shoved into extinction by the first competitive, patriarchal Cro-Magnons. Be that as it may. We can only begin to see the bigger picture now, in retrospect, the few of us who escaped the results of the latest massive reversion.
To describe the change as a “reversion” or, even better, a “regression”, is an utterly discredited statement, I know. But bear with me for the moment, while I lead up to my central argument.
