On the origin of the species

Tell me. Seriously. Who doesn’t like daffodils? They're awesome

Daffodils bring back happy Summer memories from my childhood. Memories of a round-faced little me (complete with Dame Edna style giant round spectacles) romping through the grounds of a manor house (that had been transformed into my Dad’s place of work) with my angelic blonde brother in tow.

We selected only the finest Daffodils – not yet opened but always with a fully bloomed, healthy set of peers so to give them the best chance of growing up to be the same (that’s right, even six year old me had an inherent grasp of probability and genetics).

Throughout the Summer our house was emblazoned with yellow. It was great.

However, in a travesty that would never be allowed in the modern molly-coddled society, my negligent parents never instructed me nor my brother to, at all costs, avoid eating the daffodils.

They never told me that daffodils were poisonous. They never told me of the risks of abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhoea or (worst of all) loss of appetite that could come from eating daffodils.

I am truly blessed to still be here today given all of the opportunities to eat daffodils that have confronted me over the years.

Or am I?

Alternatively, Is it actually the case that because I was endowed with (debatably) more than a full gnat’s goblet of common sense and an IQ that miraculously stretched out of the single digits that I decided that eating flowers, pretty flowers that are there to look at and smell, was a bad idea?

Given the plethora of Daffodil Poisoning advice websites and recent news stories such as this¹ you’d think this trend warranted one of those apocalyptic-disease-pandemic Hollywood films (or at least a series of 24). Supermarkets genuinely had to attach multi-lingual “do not eat” labels to daffodils in order to contain this deadly phenomenon.

Whatever happened to natural selection? Why do issues like the daffodil one and signs like these even have to exist?

Throughout the ages (unless you believe in a literal interpretation of the bible, or scientology etc.) natural selection has promoted survival of the fittest. If it’s been good enough for the past few billion years, why are we trying to resist it now?

There’s quite often a theme in object of my invective. Stupidity, incompetence and ineptitude figure pretty damn regularly and this is the reason that the “death of natural selection²” scares the bejesus out of me.

Here, I am going to artfully sidestep all arguments involving social class, religion, politics, the education (and in particular higher education) and stick to the cold hard statistics³

Quite simply. Intelligence is genetic. Statistically, the number of progeny is inversely proportional to intellect (i.e. stupid people have more children). Thus, the average intelligence of the population is being diluted.

Peoples is done getting stupider.

It’s for this reason that whenever one of my friends or colleagues (assuming they are intelligent of course) announces impending child-based emburdenment I am not just happy for them but also happy for me.

To these fine folk I say “Go forth saviours of tomorrow and reproduce!”

“Let it be known to your young - and their young that follow - that they are of a dying breed and it is their duty pass on genes that society has forgotten!”

¹OK. OK. I get that this was mainly caused by cultural differences with the local Chinese population, Daffodils being placed near produce in stores and Daffodils looking like a Chinese cooking herb but give me some artistic license here please?!?

²Technically “the death of natural selection” is completely the wrong way to look at it. Natural selection involves the survival of those who adapt best to the environment that they are in. What has actually happened is that our societal environment has developed in such a way that it has eradicated certain selection pressures that would otherwise exist. Namely, there are fewer and fewer selection benefits of intelligence.

³As provided by the music video for Korn’s “Evolution” and the (terrible) 2006 movie “Idiocracy”. An Indisputable pair of statistical sources if ever I saw them.