Once upon a time there was a monkey.
It was a hungry monkey. And hey, it was all alone on this little island. And there was so much delicious fruit to eat, on so many trees! Enough for dozens of monkeys, surely.
And so the monkey ate all the fruit in one week and starved to death.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the monkey, shrivelling up in the sun. “What could have been done differently? Nothing. Urrh. Ah. My kidneys.”
Once upon a time there was an expert.
One of several experts, mind you. A whole band of them. They’d found out that if you took a stone you could hit a flint to chip a flake to fashion a tool to cut a branch to sharpen a point to embed in a pit to really make a mammoth’s day go very poorly indeed to get a nice lunch and also some mammoth byproducts like ivory and bone and fur and so on. A lot of the mammoth would end up smelling bad and rotting but oh well.
And so the experts hunted all the mammoth at full speed at all times as hard as they could and all the mammoths died, which made an awful lot of them hungry, cold, and devoid of shiny objects.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the experts, counting their fingers to see which digits had fallen off last night when the wind came extra-frosty. “What could have been done differently? Nothing at all. Oh dang, that’s seven.”
Once upon a time there was a tiller of the soil, salt of the earth, practical level-headed sort of person.
There were a LOT of them. Takes bodies to keep a farm running. A lot of bodies growing a lot of crops to feed a lot more bodies to grow a lot more crops to feed a huge amount of bodies to grow a huge amount of crops to feed an insane amount of you get the idea I think, don’t you.
Problem was, you ran out of room for those crops. So there was nothing to do but dredge out wetlands, chop forests, and denude hillsides. Cram those crops wherever they fit, and if they didn’t, fit them anyways. If it was too hot? Irrigate. Still too hot? Irrigate more. A little too hot oh well irrigate it.
And so the tillers of the soil, the salt of the earth, the practical and level-headed sort of people suffered from foul water, rain-stripped soils, and seasonal flooding that washed away many of their livelihoods and also their livelilives. Famine and so one were pretty common, and their towns fell apart.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the tillers of the soil, the salt of the earth, the practical and level-headed sort of people. “What could have been done differently? Absolutely nothing at all. Dang, the fields are a saltpan again. Better eat rats.”
Once upon a time there was a great and mighty ruler.
Alas, one of many. And the problem with being one of many great and mighty rulers is that none of your fellows is ever quite willing to admit the obvious truth of your being the greatest and mightiest. This gets especially galling when one of them has a nice bit of land, or a lovely port, or are friends with someone you don’t like or think you like more than they do.
So for simple reasons such as these, it’s expedient to commit some kind of diplomacy or war or whatever. Eventually the greatest and mightiest of rulers achieved the finest truth – a domain larger than any had seen before.
And so it split apart from the inside within their lifetime, held together by spit, self-interest and varnish as it had been.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the great and mighty ruler from their deathbed, a bit muffled by fourteen sharp blades and a pillow held firmly over the face. “What could have been done differently? I can see absolutely nothing at all. Hey, I think I gave that dagger to you on your birthday. Can’t you write more often?”
Once upon a time there was a wise and far-thinking entrepreneur.
It turns out that there was a source of heat and power greater still than that imagined by the age-old means of flammable rocks: flammable liquids. Drag them up, burn them up, blow your mind. Soon everywhere that was anywhere had dozens of rigs lining the landscapes, sucking for their quick fix. At some point it was brought to the attention of several of the wisest and farthest-thinking entrepreneurs that flammable liquids might be curdling the entire planet’s atmosphere very quickly, and this was astutely deemed impolite to broadcast. After all, what was life worth living for, if not for flammable liquids?
And so the whole world burned on together, some furiously, some hesitantly, only to run into a somewhat nasty shock a little less than a hundred years later.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the wise and far-thinking entrepreneurs, as they considered their stock options, checked their golden parachutes, and bought land in New Zealand. “What could have been done differently? I can’t imagine, I just can’t imagine, it’s impossible to imagine anything being changed but nothing at all.”
Once upon a time there was a New Zealand.
New Zealand does not contain monkeys. It has some nice and very patient birds.
New Zealand’s patient too. It can wait. It doesn’t have any other choice, but that’s okay, it’s at peace with that.
Because it knows that when it comes down to it, nothing really ever gets done differently.