The Coelacanth

THE COELACANTH

Once a coelacanth assumed a leading role in the Culture Wars.
It undertook this charge out of a conviction that coelacanth society was losing its allegiance to timeless truths, and doing so at an alarming rate. One day was proving to be a “slippery slope” to another, it muttered to itself and to any other coelacanths willing to listen. Nothing was considered sacred and beyond challenge anymore, as traditional values and heritage steadily lost their authority. Things had been better in the Cretaceous Period, yessiree.
Those were the days! At its height, the Cretaceous had none of the fuzzy relativism the coelacanth detected all around it now. None of today’s questioning of everlasting certainties and incessant discussions from “multiple perspectives.” There hadn’t been much discussion of anything in the Cretaceous, nor had there been much sense in proposing there should be, since coelacanths had inhabited a world where patterns of thought and behavior had already been set in stone so far further back in the past it seemed they’d been that way forever.
What had gone wrong, then? How had the greatest geologic period of all time come to such a disturbing close? Things had been fine right up until the moment when, in the space of a few decades, all that was traditional and right started falling apart. Eons of self-assurance were undone as the coelacanth world inexplicably strayed from its core values, spun out of control, went straight to hell. It seemed every conviction and norm was called into doubt, and called into doubt precisely by those who had the least understanding of the eternal principles that had given substance and solidity to the coelacanth way of life!
No matter how weak the link might be between the end of the Cretaceous and the decline and fall of nearly everything in the space of a few short years, the coelacanth always managed to find one. If the connection wasn’t obvious, it would declare, you simply weren’t looking for it.
Matters were even worse the closer one got to the surface. The light played funny tricks on the brain up there. Nothing appeared as it should appear, and it was easy to lose track of all that had been obvious, simple, and beyond dispute for so long. What surely were dangerous illusions had already led many of the young and impressionable to begin seeing things differently. And worse yet, to believe that what they saw was real!
When life-defining verities handed down from the Cretaceous were at risk, to dither was to invite disaster. Time was running out to stiffen one’s fins and reverse this folly!
“Back to the depths!” the coelacanth bubbled frantically. “Back to the good ol’ depths of the past or we’re doomed!”