Today’s Musing.

Richard Attenborough told me this morning, well me along with the several other people watching Life on Earth at 8.30 on a Saturday morning, that the humble dragonfly relives millions of years of evolution in a single night. It emerges in a frankly disgusting process from a slug to a brightly winged flying object similar to what NASA, GE, the CIA and NSA are currently working on. More of that later. But what an amazing thought, that the nine-month gestation period of my week old granddaughter was not growth from egg to embryo to Anwen as I had always imagined but the whole evolution of human kind occurring again in a massively condensed chronology, that her process from fertilisation to birth followed the progress of countless generations in the development of our species. Could each of her seconds equate to a million years of our metamorphosis? As cell begat cell might some ancient memory of division, assembly and purpose be creating humanity anew yet again in this beautiful baby? Enough of these rhetorical questions, you get my point. When American Indians use the phrase, “For all my relations” I begin to wonder if they’re asking me to consider these eons re-enacted in my own gestation. Interesting thoughts. Back to the NASA et al. They’re developing flying surveillance robots the size of a pack of cigarettes that can watch to see if we have a gun in the pocket of our pyjamas. I’m wondering if this God-like desire to watch over us is actually an aspiration in that direction. Are we reaching for his status? Did god dabble in such techery before he developed his omnipresence machine? But then he’s a liberal now; he’s long since past through his smiting phase. These days he’s far more, “Sure, I don’t mind if you want to do that but quite honestly if you ask me I wouldn’t if I were you.” I mean that’s just passive aggressive; at least you knew where you were with smiting. Maybe when the NSA develops omnipresence and Apple makes an app for it we’ll either all be in the cast of each other’s East Enders or have left this physical plain altogether.