This is an imaginary discussion that would have taken place 15 million years ago - if years had been devised then - between Glop and Gloop, two members of the tribe of Algae-Zooplanktons. Glop, being a couple of millennia older than Gloop, stands in loco parentis, more loco than parentis, to the younger Algae-Zooplankton.Gloop: What's the meaning of existence? I mean, does existence have meaning? Or does meaning have existence?Glop: That's a meaningful question, Gloop. I'm glad you asked it. As we're just a bunch of carbon molecules, with a dash of hydrogen thrown in to make for a nice biological cocktail, we do exist, but only in a proto-existence way. A sort of dress rehearsal, as it were, for the real show.
Gloop: If we're just a whatsis existence, how come we can talk, not to mention discuss the meaning of existence?Glop: That's because we're an anachronism. And anachronisms can do anything they want, anytime they want.Gloop: Knackronism? Does that mean having a knack for doing things that you shouldn't be able to do?Glop: Sort of. Being an anachronism - or a knackronism as you'd have it - I can travel back and forth in time and tell the future.Gloop: You can? Wowsie!Glop: I can. Our future is going to be very wowsie indeed. In an upcoming avatar, we're going to become the fountainhead of something that'll be called 'Modern Civilisation', except it won't be civilised at all. Nor very modern when you consider that the whole kit and kaboodle will be based on what'll be called fossil fuels which are 15 million years old. How modern is that!Gloop: We're going to become these fossil thingummies that Modern Civilisation will be based on?Glop: You bet your sweet batootie we will.Gloop: So, how do we stop being Algae-Zooplankton Knackronisms and become these fossil thingies? Do we say Abracadabra, or Chhoo Mantar! or something?Glop: No, no. All we have to do is wait for something called sedimentary compression that'll squeeze and squeeze and squeeze us and turn us into hydrocarbon compounds called fuels, such as oil and natural gas.Gloop: Goodness! That sounds like a real gas!Glop: It sure will be. Because something called a tectonic shift in Earth's crust will take us, like riding up in an elevator, from the bottom of the ocean where we are right now, to dry land, where we'll be buried thousands of feet underground, and Modern Civilisation will dig wells to get to us so that it can create itself.Gloop: How will Modern Civilisation go about creating itself?Glop: To create Modern Civilisation, the human race - which is so called because it will always race hither and yon to catch up with its own tail -will invent the internal combustion engine, so that instead of racing around being dragged by horses and other animals, it can race around being dragged by the horsepower of something called cars and other motor vehicles.Gloop: Modern Civilisation doesn't sound like such a big deal to me.Glop: It won't be. Because it'll become so dependent on us that it'll go to war within itself to see who gets the most of us and who gets zippo and zilch.Gloop: Gosh. Going to war with itself doesn't appear to be very modern or very civilised, or even very sensible.Glop: Exactly. A far-sighted fellow called Willy Shakespeare will write about it before Civilisation becomes Modern: 'It is a tale told by an idiot, fuel of sound and fury, signifying nothing.'Gloop: So, what'll happen to Modern Civilisation in the end?Glop: What'll happen in the end is that having used up all of us that Earth has, in the race to be more Modern and Civilised than the next guy, in something which will come to be called 'poetic irony', Modern Civilisation will turn itself into a fossil.Gloop: You mean...?Glop: Precisely. From hydrocarbon thou art, and to hydrocarbon thou shalt return...(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com.)
