Rewarding Aggressive Generalists

Whether it’s just your one

Species encouraging

The trend in all the rest,

Or something in the air

Encouraging humans

In the first place—maybe

Fluctuating ages

Of ice and wet the past

Few million years or so—

The fact is, it’s an age

Now prone to rewarding

More and more aggressive

Generalists. And yet,

How do human linchpins

Of all this aggression

And obliterating

Success among species

Who are generalists

Achieve your own success?

By specializing!

This was pioneering—

Whole organisms as

Stem cells of one species,

Each birthed pluripotent

And driven to seek out

A locally open

Niche in which to settle,

Your opportunistic

Take on the eusocial

And multicellular

Innovations begun

In earlier eras.

But mind’s free-form monster,

Making up its organs

As it goes, recruiting

Other species to join,

What is it? It attacks

Itself from time to time

And explodes as it grows,

Covering the planet

Like duckweed on a pond—

Combustible duckweed,

Autopareidolic.

Other generalists

Rush in to set fresh seeds.