The complainers speak in all caps sometimes. 

“AMERICA IS FALLING APART,” they often say. “THINGS ARE WORSE NOW THAN EVER BEFORE.” 

But just because something was typed in capital letters doesn’t make it true. 

Actually, things are not worse than ever before. Less than 100 years ago, in 1933, nearly 30 percent of Americans were unemployed. Over 2 million children abandoned schoolhouses for factory jobs. About 150,000 families were starving, eating weeds and roadside scraps to combat malnutrition. 

Whereas today, the unemployment rate is 4 percent. Meanwhile, we’re more educated than ever—federal law mandates free K-12 education for all youth. Also, over 86 percent of households are food secure. 

“WHATEVER!” the angry people type while compressing the Shift key. “THIS IS STILL THE WORST PERIOD IN HISTORY.” 

Is it? Let’s talk Earth history for a moment. Millions of years ago temperatures were approaching 150 degrees, which is almost as hot as a Porta-John at a bluegrass festival. Earth creatures retreated to polar regions, en masse. They starved, of course. 

Mass extinction was the norm. Acid rain burned plants, killed trees, and destroyed animal eyesight. A super-volcano spewed enough

lava to cover North America in a layer of lava half a mile deep. Meantime, here comes an asteroid. Whereas today, you have Starbucks. 

“OKAY, MAYBE THE WORLD ISN’T LITERALLY FALLING APART. BUT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS DESTROYING OUR WAY OF LIFE.” 

This is exactly what they said about machines during the Industrial Revolution, but we survived.

“WHAT’RE YOU TALKING ABOUT? MACHINES HAVE RUINED US! THEY MAKE LIFE SOOO COMPLICATED.” 

Complicated? 

“YES!”

But machines make your life easier. 

“NUH-UH!”

Yes-huh.

“NUH-UH!”

Okay. 

Do me a favor. Go to your pantry. Select an…

Jim was stuck. In the middle of the rural two-lane highway. Right there on the pavement. Not far from the solid yellow line. Tucked tightly in his shell. Scared to death. 

Vehicles sped past little Jim, on both sides, shooting by with the deafening roars of F-16s. 

All he could see were their tires from this angle. Big black wheels, flying past so quickly they looked like grayish blurs. Thick synthetic rubber treads, gripping the highway floor, making loud rubberized noises on the pavement, only inches from his tiny head. 

Jim knew what these machines were, of course. Everyone knows. And, more importantly, he knew what they could do to a small creature like himself. He’d seen the aftermath before. 

Squirrels. Possums. Raccoons. Even dogs. Fast and agile creatures, each one of them. But they were no match for the machines with tires. The unfortunate animals were struck. Their limp bodies often lay on the highway shoulder. Unattended. Forgotten. Picked clean by the turkey buzzards. 

“What shall I do?” Jim was

thinking to himself. “If these speedy machines can kill quick-moving creatures like dogs and cats and chipmunks, they can surely kill slow things like me.”

He had only been crossing the highway on his way to the pond. The pond where he was born. This was what his species did, each year. They returned to the old homeplace. 

Year after year, all of Jim’s kind came from distant parts of the forest, following their internal compasses. They reunited at the old pond where they had hatched. They came here to nest. To mate. To lay eggs. They’d been doing this for hundreds, if not thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. Ever since the earth cooled. 

Human scientists would call this behavior “site fidelity.” Scientists would marvel at this…