Instead Of

Every so often I end up on the Discovery or History channel watching something about Stonehenge, lines that run forever in the desert, or most often the pyramids of Egypt and the scientists are so overly fascinated that these huge undertakings were completed. I’m not as impressed. I’m not arguing these things took a long time and a lot of work to do. Where I do view them differently is when I put myself into the shoes of say, an Egyptian working on building the pyramids. First off, I’m probably a slave and have to build it and there are thousands of people just like me. That makes building it relatively easy from a group standpoint – I don’t care how heavy the rock is. But lets forget about that important point - what else would I be doing all day – all my life? I don’t have the Internet, television, the radio, a phone, telegraph or any technology to distract me during the day. We aren’t “civilized” so there are no corporations to take 40 hours of my week either. More timely, I’m also not fortunate enough to be a scribe so I can’t read or write. That really limits my options. I could make clay pots… fun. Maybe sew? Nah, that’s for girls. Farm? Nah. I got it! I’m going to work on the pyramids. Those things are cool! And that’s how it happened. These things didn’t get built because they were amazing, they got built because there really wasn’t anything else doing at the time. Or at least that’s my highly cynical opinion.