The Social Sciences are fighting a losing battle. The purpose of the entire department is to understand the complexity of mankind, which has proved to be a preposterous and impossible goal. The male members of society have sought to understand the other half of mankind for thousands of years, with about as many results as you can fit inside a jelly jar.
Nevertheless, this field of academia trudges on. And just when you thought they had finally trudged themselves into admitting that the trudging was all in vain, someone wrote an article on the nature of trudging and how it was final undeniable proof of the innate nature of capitalism. This of course sparked enough debate to walk the entire field of study down exactly thirteen rabbit trails and through a parking garage, right back to where they started.
Many have pondered how a being as simple and lethargic as a human can be so blasted difficult to predict. In order to answer this question, all the most esteemed authorities in Social Sciences were invited to a conference entitled: “How Trudging is actually a Marxist Idea.” The title was, of course, a ruse to ensure a good turnout.
The Sociologists insisted that humans are complex because the presence of other humans compounds their potential for complexity. In order to put a stop to this, they insisted that it would be best if humans were genetically engineered to have a second nose instead of a mouth, thus rendering it impossible for them to speak, form communities, and create behavior too complex for the social sciences to explain. The Genetic Engineers were, of course, not present at the conference, however they were soon sent a request for double-nosed humans. If any success was made, they did not (or could not) speak of it.
The Psychiatrists declared that all humans are actually terribly afraid of their own bodies. This makes them appear complicated because they spend all their time trying not to think about how scary it is to be themselves. They suggested that the best solution would be to force all humans to watch “Friday the 13th” at the age of three. Then people would spend the rest of their lives more terrified of everything external to their existence than they were of being themselves.
The Historians insisted that it is mankind’s ambition that makes him complex. Tens of thousands of years ago, Caveman frowned at his humble cave and longed for something more. He decided that day to dedicate his life (and the lives of his descendents) to inventing language, building civilization, developing theories of Reciprocity and killing other people with rocks. Thus, Caveman began his bloody campaign towards complexity and mastery of his environment. The Historians cared more about Herodotus’ left knee than they did about future or present events, so their solution only consisted of some scribbles of stick people with little spears in the margins of Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War.”
Nobody ever heard what Philosophers thought, because they were the only ones to realize that it was impossible for them to find the answer to such a question while being themselves human. They skipped the conference and used their stolen time to ponder the relationship between the physical and spiritual nature of the human experience. Onlookers claimed that they were actually dropping cherry bombs down manholes in quiet neighborhoods. Nobody really minded their absence because the philosophers asked frustrating questions and ate more than their share of the deviled eggs.
In reality, all of these theories were wrong. The real reason that humans are so complicated is a secret, but I can tell you this much: it has a lot less to do with people themselves and a lot more to do with deviled eggs.
