Vying for a Darwin Award

Darwin Awards commemorate certain people in a morbidly humorous fashion. According to the rules, winners of a Darwin Award must eliminate themselves from the gene pool—either by killing themselves or by rendering themselves sterile—as a result of exercising their own exceptionally poor judgment. Check out www.darwinawards.com. There, dozens of winners appear along with their stories of award-winning, gene pool–cleansing heroics. 

From the website, here’s a definition of the award: “The Darwin Awards honor those who tip chlorine into our gene pool by accidentally removing their own DNA from it during the spectacular climax of a 'great idea' gone veddy, veddy wrong.”

Currently, Darwin Awards don’t offer gradation to distinguish levels of poor judgment. To recognize those whose efforts were outstanding or extraordinary, it seems the awards could be conferred with Honors or Distinctions. For example, a Darwin Award with Honors might be reserved for those who received, yet ignored, clear and specific advice or information portending the potential for award-winning results.

A Darwin Award with Distinction might be bestowed upon those who not only ignored good advice or information but actually laughed at it before their award-winning events, perhaps laughing up to the very moment they became award eligible.

The ultimate Darwin Award—the Darwin Global Award—might be appropriate for an entire species that eliminates itself from the world by its own misguided accord. 

Since only humans are eligible for Darwin Awards, this coveted once-in-human-history achievement could only be awarded pre-humorously. If humans are to confer the award, that is. If so, maybe the committee should start organizing. We could become award eligible at any time. 

One might think sane, informed, freely choosing people would aspire otherwise. Maybe leaders who brought us to this point deserve special recognition too: Darwin Global Leadership Certificates. Until now, we’ve managed to avoid nuclear self-annihilation despite decades of restraining our potential. But with experts predicting depletion of the world’s oil supply in 50 years or so, when might the end-of-oil war start? 

Does history inform us that running out of oil will be a peaceful event? 

Should nuclear arsenals be exhausted to end this war or any war, Darwin Global would be ours only after the ensuing nuclear winter finishes off whoever might have escaped a ground zero experience. 

Bear in mind that to win the Darwin Global, we wouldn’t necessarily need to kill ourselves outright. We could self-eliminate by rendering ourselves sterile. Some research studies currently warn that the human male sperm count is dwindling at an alarming pace. Some experts say it's a matter of decades.

Although environmental toxicity is one suggested cause of the declining sperm count, it can’t yet be definitively determined. And of course, some deny the decline is quite so dire. 

Whether it’s declining or not—regardless of cause—our environmentally toxic activities seem likely to continue until we win our well-deserved award. Soon available to those hoping to collect them all may be yet another Darwin Award, one we could pick up along the way to earning the Darwin Global Award. We might call it the We Out-Clevered Ourselves Darwin Award. 

This award would be for those so intent upon avoiding the natural work that they were born to master that they cleverly invented all kinds of systems and machines to do their work for them, only to eventually be enslaved by their creations. Still, living in the world nevertheless, even if sustained by artificial means, humanity wouldn’t technically be eligible for the Darwin Global Award. 

At that point, humanity might look forward to, and perhaps even desperately wish for, a final peaceful rest with Darwin Global Award accolades. Accepted with Honors, probably, since it seems unlikely anyone alive then would find themselves eligible for an award with Distinction.