HCH 5 / July 2015

NOPE 6000!, by Tussah Heera

(Drawing by Tussah Heera, April 2015)

I decided to take a short break from practicing for my recital next week and draw a lighthearted depiction of our poor planet’s resentment towards growing older. Given the worldwide human hatred of aging, why would the very planet we live on feel any different about it?

The inspiration for this cartoon comes from my dad. Last year, we watched Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey together (which, by the way, was nothing short of awesome), and every time Neil DeGrasse Tyson mentioned a milestone event that took place before 10,000 BCE (example, “dinosaurs walked the earth 65 million years ago”), my dad would without fail sarcastically retort “NOPE 6000!” at the screen, in reference to the claims of those who believe the world we live in was whisked into existence by a regionally customized sky sorcerer just around the time the dog was domesticated. Soon, this evolved into a regular inside joke (as of now, an outside joke), and “NOPE 6000” is now our reflex sentence whenever we hear any mention on TV, books, or the internetz of the *obviously* nonexistent years before the Mesolithic era.

On a serious note, it is getting rather tiresome to see so much controversy over pure scientific facts, and I feel that people’s priorities are seriously misguided. Why fret over convincing people to believe your made-up versions of science when you can be a useful force and convince people to care deeply about the planet they live on and to coexist harmoniously with all its inhabitants? Why can’t everyone agree upon the established facts, and do their best to protect our habitat from the horrifying consequences of environmental disregard stemming from a widespread culture of mass production and rampant consumerism?

It’s truly sad when personal views, political correctness, and the delusion of ecumenicalism are given a monopoly over science and reason. It’s especially disheartening when people in important positions, such as lawmakers and politicians, are pressurized into embracing pseudoscience to win elections and save their careers’ asses. Imagine if these people were zealous about preserving our planet’s living environment instead of preserving an illusion of its youth or a personalized distortion of its history. I would be totally cool with street preachers holding up signs saying things like, “IF YOU USE PLASTIC BAGS AT THE GROCERY STORE, THE DEVIL WILL BARBECUE YOU FOR LUNCH!” or “GOD HATES GAS GUZZLERS!”

I’ve been asked if I believe in evolution, or believe in global warming, or believe that the Earth is not in fact 6000, but 4.5 billion years old. My answer is that I don’t believe in any of it – rather, I simply accept it all as established factual information. That’s the beauty of science: it doesn’t require belief or faith for validation, as its veracity naturally manifests all around us. It simply requires mindful acceptance and understanding in order for humanity to further its progress by discovering more and more. For instance, scientists don’t need to join their hands and repeatedly chant “Gravity is real, gravity is good” to affirm the existence of gravity, because its existence has already been affirmed by plenty of observable physical evidence – a part of said evidence being that nobody just randomly floats away from time to time because gravity “works in mysterious ways”.

Ultimately, applying the word “believe” to the laws and facts of nature is akin to a small whine into the vast macrocosm of the universe, and serves no purpose except to aid in the propaganda of human superiority. Let me put this simply: in the expanse of our planet (let alone the whole universe) we are just as significant as dust specks, and despite what you may think, your sanctimonious, truth-allergic butthurt doesn’t suddenly make you the center of the universe – it just makes you a rather butthurt dust speck.

Thus, as a beautiful, insignificantly significant human being – a mere animal, evolutionarily endowed with a brain full of thoughts to think and words to say – it’s important to save your convictions for things that matter. Even though not believing in science means absolutely nothing to science’s actual existence and renders you a hindrance to progress, believing in the prospect of a clean, peaceful, non-polluted world is an invaluable, much-needed position.

Just some food for thought. Now back to the piano…

Tussah Heera, L. A., April 21, 2015

First published on April 21, 2015 in Tussah and the Wolf

TO READ IN PDF (pp. 71–73): HCH-5-JULIO-2015