Survival of the Dimmest

When I was a child, power outages were exciting, mysterious and a bit frightening when severe weather was involved. They became an opportunity for family bonding, initiating the ever popular scavenger hunt for candles and matches. When the powers that be tarried a little longer than usual, evenings without electricity suggested the remote possibility of setting up camp in the living room. That is until the lights flickered and everyone scattered to their proper beds.

As an adult, I now consider power outages to not only be annoying but quite possibly the one thing that could reduce humanity to primordial soup faster than you can say electrolytic capacitor. I observed the seeds of devolution at work this week as the electric utility tapped out like a bitch. My coworkers and I collectively sighed and stared blankly at our lifeless computer monitors. Our simian-like demeanor suggested that Kubrick’s 2001 had happened in reverse. It wasn’t the first time it happened, and it certainly won’t be the last. But it always makes me laugh how it’s never convenient when an outage does occur. I’ve never overheard, “Well I’m sure glad I just saved that Word document” or “I was going to thaw out those steaks anyway!”

As the minutes pressed on, I realized that this wasn’t like Monopoly, where everyone avoids purchasing Water Works and Electric Company. No, when the utilities really go out, life comes to a screeching halt. There’s only so much manual work to be done in cubicle world. I could see it in the eyes of a few that this inconvenience robbed them not so much of their productivity as it did the ability to maintain an appearance of work. After 5 more minutes of desk organization, I joined my colleagues at the windows to see if some witless dolt had careened into a telephone pole. Further discussion gave way to newer mysteries, such as how the phones continued to ring despite the absence of volts, watts and amps.

The growing crisis prompted some unique social hurdles as well. Reticent office hermits struggled to make small talk to ease their agitation. So, umm… how’s your mom? She had that thing with her… uh, stomach, was it?... Didn’t she have some sort of invasive surgery to… No? Oh, she’s been dead for 5 years… My mistake… You and Susan thought about having kids yet? I mean, it’s been… Oh really? 12 and 8?... You don’t say. They grow up so fast. Well, time fli… oh look, the power’s back. Good catching up with you Stan, er… Steve. And the ant colony buzzed back to life. I’m pretty sure that a few minutes longer would have yielded a bonfire of folders and various buffalo drawings on the walls.

An afternoon in an office without power played out like a bad apocalyptic movie. But there was no gladiatorial combat in a Thunderdome, nor were we brainstorming how Earth could dodge a Texas-sized meteor. The office wouldn’t have become more interesting had it flooded to the rafters and Kevin Costner sailed right by, showing us his gills. No, our end of the world thriller would be titled “Our Stuff Doesn’t Work Anymore,” and it would feature riveting dialogue such as “Your components work yet?... Nah, mine neither… Guess we’ll just wait some more.”

I’ve never been more convinced that mankind has a veneer, a sheer suggestion, of intelligence as a species. I’m pretty sure that our entire social equilibrium hangs on the ingenuity of history’s handful of geniuses. And it’s this membrane of decency that encapsulates the less than cerebral masses, myself included. By a show of hands, who all knows how to fix a cell phone when it goes rogue? I didn’t think so. My fear though is that were some global event to strip us of our technological advances, our demise would be far more shameful. The populace would concern themselves with how to mill pepper and grind coffee, much less forging a weapon to kill their dinner. Which is why when the power grid fails next time, my first priority (in between taking phone calls) is to construct an instrument of death from rubber bands, tape and paper clips.