Cerebral Subduers of Industrial Quantities

Galapagos is the vehicle by which Kurt Vonnegut relates evolution to the activities of modern day activities of the developed world. Spread over a million years, Kurt Vonnegut charts how a small band upon the ‘nature cruise of the century’ to the Galapagos become the standard bearers for the human race as their ship, the Bahia de Darwin, becomes a badly-stocked Noah’s Ark. As a financial crisis, world hunger, war and then, disease end human civilization elsewhere, the ship lands upon Santa Rosalia and survivors adapt to their new surroundings.

The master of time, Vonnegut, describes the events of greed, selfishness, misfortune and misjudgment which bring these particular humans together. Our big brains are blamed for the chaos and by the end of the novel, humans have become animal-like as their range of functions have become streamlined to perform only fundamental acts of survival.

The theme of the book is undoubtedly the use of our big brains and the perspective of Vonnegut is priceless. I’ve been influenced greatly by this book over the past few weeks. Assessment of actions, weighting of the importance of events, accepting decisions and discarding small potatoes seems to alleviate stress. A lot of work has gone into this article on Galapagos by a fellow writer. After our big brains have made room for the knowledge of how to survive, there is plenty of space left over, Vonnegut says, and that is where mischief and misdeeds are. Of course, reducing the human life and anatomy to rudimentary tasks and tools is undesirable, as I said before, life is function and art. The goal is to ensure neither are crimes.