This 1959 Cadillac was in the parking lot of my local Best Buy store. I was 8 years old when these 2.5 ton, nearly 19 feet long vehicles rolled off Detroit’s assembly line and occasionally spilled onto the streets in Germany, where I lived. They were a shocking contrast to the tiny VWs, Goggomobils and Isettas that filled the streets.
The early automobile started out as a basic gadget to get folks from “here” to “there.” It seemed straightforward to Henry Ford, who in 1909 famously said of his Model T, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”
How did we get from “there,” when Ford uttered those words in 1909, to “here,” the 1959 Cadillac, 50 years later? Early, nimble and efficient vehicles had morphed into bloated gargantuan rocket ships resting on their sides, floating toward the horizon, spewing mega-doses of chemical toxins.
This comparison belongs to the world of Reverse Evolution. Instead of evolution’s survival of the fittest axiom, Reverse Evolution yields to the flourishing of the un-fittest – succumbing to the allure of gratuitous pleasure, dysfunctional ambition and wasted resources.
Of course, 1959 was a long time ago. We have now passed nearly 60 more years since then. Certainly we have learned our lessons well. Society has evolved – no more big-finned Caddys. No more squandering of resources on real or virtual pleasures.
Maybe we’re not quite all the way there yet. Bug-eyed fins are replaced by today’s version of ostentatious gadgetry, the microchip, powering a digital generations of self-serving, hedonistic electronic games, gizmos and apps. On the iPhone alone, at least 65 percent of the 2 billion downloaded apps are games. Add to that the smorgasbord of fatuous gaming choices on the PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Wii, and the combined capacity for gaming self-indulgence melts the brain.
Another 50 years will further morph the culture of extravagance. By then, today’s electronic playthings will be quaint museum relics. We don’t yet know what the next iteration of the Cadillac fins will be. But we can be quite confident that, whatever they are, they will have the capacity to fully absorb the avalanche of wasted resources and mental energies we will throw their way.