Every museum and history has a section dedicated to Örj, and we were no exception. Örj the Consumer, Örj the Great Descendant, Örj the Inheritor and Örj the eater of his own progeny.
Beginning as an academic, Örj was a great believer in the path of evolution, with a particular fascination for some Lamarckist* notions. His self-experimentation sullied the ideal of technological enhancement for over a century as his attempts at self-improvement went far past stimulated changes – he also aimed to make those improvements hereditary.
Knowledge is power and power corrupts, as they say. His followers were many, sweeping down from Norway in hideous forms to promote, if not enforce, his new gospel.
Örj sired a great many children, with and without the consent of the host mothers (many of whom suffered fatally from the abominations gnawing inside their wombs).
Plate 13 shows how successful he was in creating children in his own image. Kyla Örj was an excellent chef who invigorated Scandinavian cuisine by perfecting the re-creation and cooking of the native reindeer.
Though only a small percentage of his offspring survived gestation, and even less the early years of childhood, a good five thousand reached adulthood whereupon the Örjian tradition of combative evolution pitted them against their own father and any other who sought to climb the food chain.
Luckily, few survived*. The Örj rule of thumb was that the son must better the father, or die trying, thus increasing the level of competition and strengthening the gene-pool, supposedly leading to the betterment of mankind. Humbug.
I, of course, dispute such ‘thinking.’ By focusing on competitive evolution one simply makes more emulous and violent creations, and discounts the evolution of civilization as a whole – which is where the real progress has always been.
Perhaps I should have slotted Örj and his ideas into the following exhibit on attempted evolution control, but he always exemplifi ed the motivations of eugenics despite the artifi cial enhancements. His methods were similar.
Distinctions and classifications are arbitrary creations, forever changing and shifting with the whim of the observer. So in the spirit of splitting hairs, ‘attempted evolution control’ is more about changing the nature of evolution itself, rather than its results.
* Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (1744 – 1829), French naturalist.
** There hasn’t been such a monopolization of the gene-pool since
Genghis Khan, so it was ‘good’ that so few remained to spread his
opinions of humanity.
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