Great Big Brains Of One Million Years example essay topic

Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos was written one million years ahead of the year 1986 AD. In this book, Vonnegut argues that the ultimate effect of humanity's sociological problems with technology is that man's intelligence will be the downfall and destruction of the human race. The essential point made by Vonnegut in this work is that the 'great big brains' of humanity drives people to go further into technology and create new weapons that will lead to the demolition of man kind; Vonnegut disagreed against virtually every technological development (made by "big brains"). It was the humans' "big brains" that always gave them foolish or reckless ideas that almost always had negative results.

Though it may tell the rest of your body to do the things that make you eat, breathe and sleep, it will occasionally tell you to something that might endanger or kill you. For example, Mary Hepburn's big brain was telling her she had nothing to live for, and gave her the urge to grab the plastic wrap from her red gown to suffocate herself and commit suicide (page 26). Kurt Vonnegut journeyed into the minds of each of the characters, the readers are be able to know what the character was thinking, which played a good part in the story; particularly because the author made mention to how the great big brains of one million years ago (1986 A.D.) gave people all of these thoughts and ideas that people "today" can't do with their smaller brains. The characters begins with a ghost of a decapitated shipbuilder, that narrates the humorous, sarcastic and sometimes critical decline of the human race, as seen through the eyes and minds of the survivors of a doomed cruise to the Galapagos Islands. Vonnegut's cast of unlikely Adams and Eves setting out on an evolutionary journey includes Mary Hepburn, an American biology teacher and recent widow; Zen ji Hiroguchi, a Japanese computer genius (who doesn't make it to the ship, although his language-translating and quotation-spouting computer does); his wife, His ako, carrying radiated genes from the atomic bombs; James Wait, who has made a fortune marrying elderly women; and Captain Adolph von Kleist, the Captain of the Bahia de Darwin; also included were six orphaned girls of the K anka-bono tribe, who became the founding mothers of the fisher folk after a bacteria determined all other women infertile. This small group of survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the pro creators of a courageous, heroic, fresh, and totally different human race.

I agree with Kurt Vonnegut's argument that all mankind have these "Big Brains" because the focus of society today is to have the latest technology to gain "more power". Our "big brains" are no longer in survival mode as it was with our ancestors. Today, our "big brains" follow what the media and government deems necessary, be it in commercials, movies, radio, and music that constantly surrounds us, leaving no room for our own decisions. Our 'big brains" can influence us consciously, unconsciously, and subconsciously in various decision-making processes whether it is good or bad, rational or irrational. We are too consumed by unnecessary materialistic objects that we ignore the more simple and necessary things in life. In conclusion, soon in the near future technologies will takeover mankind, allowing our brains to do less thinking, less choice making, and less decision making, thus resulting in the shrinkage of our "big brains.".