Only humans have to look for jobs.

In this current financial crisis, when lay-offs and outright firings are at a high we haven't seen for many years, when so many people in our country are out of a job and looking for another one, with --it seems -- almost everyone else competing with us for the most menial of jobs, from dishing up burgers at a drive-thru to scrubbing toilets at a motel, it's time to ask ourselves how we got into this mess in the first place.

But that's a subject for the economists or the financial "experts" who somehow didn't see this coming and didn't warn us.

Right now, lots of us are just looking for jobs. Jobs we would never have considered taking a few years ago but that we're now competing for. Ouch!

Let's step back a few rungs down the evolutionary ladder. Nobody but us humans has to look for a job. Why? Because, before we appeared on the scene, every species had its order: look for food. All day long. Feed yourself and feed your family. That was the rule.

We Americans don't have to look for food because it's in our neighborhood grocery store. But the way we got the means to buy that food was via a job that paid us a certain amount to do a certain amount of work. But then that job we had disappeared, along with our paycheck, and our family still had to be fed.

What now?

Animals don't have to deal with that because they're looking for food pretty much all the time.

Whether you're a worm nosing around blindly underground or a coyote or a hawk looking for an un-suspecting prairie dog, you're always on the make for something to eat. And if you're that prairie dog, you're also looking for something to eat -- while watching for coyotes and hawks. And if you're that worm in the ground, I'm not sure what you're looking to eat, but I know you hate those spring rains that leave you sprawled on the pavement, drowning in your underground chamber, making your way to the surface, to the light, only to be sprawled on someone's driveway or walk, waiting to be eaten by crows.

Nature is a harsh teacher. This eats that, which eats that. Endless. Always nasty. Brutal.

But back to humans. Only we have to move beyond that eating chain and do real work that doesn't come naturally to us but that we have to do to be able to go to the grocery store and buy all that food that we used to kill and eat ourselves, or grow, that sustained us. In the pioneer days, we were part of that natural order. The very first of us who settled this nation did just what the animals do: we killed to eat. (And tried not to get eaten by something else.)

But now we don't. We can buy our foods -- even our meats -- killed and packaged by someone else, so that we can pick and choose among our cuts, not knowing what part of the animal we're buying. But we've lost something in the process because we aren't important in the great scheme of things. We don't grow or produce anything. We have "jobs", which only exist as long as the company or institution we work for deems them worthwhile. We could, and can, lose them in the blink of an eye. Sorry, you're fired. Clean out your desk.

And then what?

Animals don't lose jobs. They come into the world knowing what they need to do: find enough food to sustain yourself and your family, if you have one. Breed. That's about it.

It's only us humans who too often find ourselves with no function to perform in the world and with no way of sustaining ourselves and our families. We've sort of over-evolutionized ourselves.
We have big brains that are adapted to our new world, but we've lost the old instincts for survival so that when no one needs our brains, we're out of a job and are like animals released again into the wilderness, or the jungle, totally un-prepared to deal with all those old dangers.

Only humans have to look for jobs. Only humans have to make out resumes. The animals of the world are programmed to look after themselves, to provide for their families, to kill or be killed, to know what to eat and what not to eat. How to look after, and rear, their young.

We humans have been spoiled. Too many pre-packaged foods, too much reliance on paychecks and micro-waves. Too little on growing our own and conserving. Too much on conveniences, too little on relying on our own minds. Why so much TV? Why not more reading? Why so many movies on DVD? Why not more conversation, walks, talking to each other? Things that don't cost anything but that stimulate our minds even more than the media can give us?

I'm thinking that the more we get back to being like the animals, spending our time moving around and looking for something good to eat, and the less we spend keeping in constant contact with each other -- via cel phones, etc. -- the better off we may be. Of course that's "retro" thinking, but consider this: What if your electricity went off tonight and stayed off for a week?
Or more?

It's actually happened in the Northeast, in Vermont and New Hampshire and New York. Other parts of the country as well. It could happen to you. To any of us.

I'm talking about all electricity: that which powers your house but also your home phone and even your cel phone. Suppose you were out of contact with everyone for a week.

Could you stand it?

And then your boss tells you, because of the power-shutdown, that you shouldn't come into work the next day. Or any day in the near future, while they try to get it fixed. But how would he tell you? You have no contact with him/her or anyone else. Maybe no one answers the phone at your place of employment. For a whole week. Or more.

Suddenly you're back to being a pioneer. No electricity. No power for the lights or for the fridge or the microwave.

When the sun goes down, you're in the dark. Did you buy candles? Does anyone remember where they are?

And what if this went on for weeks? Everything in the freezer would be spoiled. You would cook what you could, and then what?

Suppose such a black-out went on for months?

You would dig around in the pantry and eat what you had in in cans -- no heat -- but then what?

You're out of food. And, because the electricity is still out, the grocery stores can't ring up your orders, so they have to shut down. The bank can't process your ATM orders for cash. You don't have any money. Your company has long since shut down. Your kids are hungry.

What now?

Well, you're back where the animals are and were from the earliest of times.

What do you/we do? Start eating each other?

We'll likely never reach this point, but it's always worth considering. Only humans have to look for jobs, but we might always all be better off thinking of how much worse it could be --and stop griping so much about how bad we have it. It can always be worse.

I mean, after all, would you rather be trying to run down and kill your supper tonight? When that work -- our job -- disappears, we're back to scavenging for food to feed our families.

Animals never find themselves in this kind of predicament. They don't have "jobs". They spend all their days (and maybe nights) looking for something to eat.

But how many of us want to resort to rummaging through dumpsters or, worse, tracking down and eating each other? There has to be a better way. Being a good liberal, I think government should provide a bottom, a shelter, a place below which you can't sink. A kind of survival cushion. But that's just me. Others have other opinions.

What's yours?