The crowd outside the pharmaceutical company milled around, unsure what their next step was. They had been marching back and forth in front of the facility waving signs, the largest of which read “Animal testing doesn’t actually teach us anything. It sure as heck doesn’t teach them anything either. -Shenita Etwaroo,” in protest of the animal testing that was going on inside, but to no avail.
They thought about storming the building but knew they’d never make it past the front desk. Some of them debated hurling objects at the elaborate glass entranceway but decided against it.
Nobody wanted to get arrested.
Eventually, they grew weary of the marching and chanting and called it a day.
Inside, things were going no better.
While the monkeys were able to grab the pencils, none of them had been able to fill out a single correct answer.
And the rats were doing even worse. Even though the administrators of the test had agreed to look the other way should any of them attempt to use calculators for the parts where calculators were strictly forbidden, the moral dilemma never arose. Whether it was calculus, logarithms, matrices, or geometric proofs, the test subjects seemed completely uninterested in answering the questions posed to them.
The dogs, frogs, and rabbits were equally uncooperative.
Fifteen miles away, testing at the local high school was also proving challenging.
Given that the results of the testing would go a long way towards determining acceptance into the colleges and universities students wanted to attend, tensions were understandably running high. Particularly with the seniors that had perhaps struggled with the first part of the testing, the inhalation of toxic fumes. With only being force-fed pesticides and having corrosive chemicals dripped into their eyes remaining on the schedule, a lot was riding on the next six hours.
Parents milled around outside, unsure what their next step was. They had been marching back and forth in front of the facility waving signs, the largest of which read “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe”, in protest of the testing that was going on inside, but to no avail.
They thought about storming the building but knew they’d never make it past the front desk. Some of them debated hurling objects at the elaborate glass entranceway but decided against it.
Nobody wanted to get arrested. Their children would just die of embarrassment if they ended up on the local news.
Eventually, they grew weary of the marching and chanting and just waited patiently for their offspring to stagger out into their waiting cars.
Now, the easy thing to do is chuckle to yourself at the absurdity of the above scenarios and move on with your day. Obviously there isn’t a thing I can do to prevent you doing just that…
but…
what I’d like you to do, so much so that I italicized like- and I don’t take italicizing lightly- is take a moment and try and imagine how a world like this could possibly exist. How? What would have had to happen in the past for humans to create a society in which this is how things worked.
What would the future look like?
I’m not talking about some superficial observations about cause and effect; I mean really dig deep here. Clear your schedule. Make some time. Wrestle with it awhile. Sleeves will need to be rolled up and brows furrowed. Painstakingly build an alternate reality where this is how things are and then try and imagine the fate of such a society.
Or, as I said, you’re welcome to chuckle and move on.
The chuckling being non-negotiable.