The Rise and Fall of the Black Circle
Everyone wants only things that have a black circle on them, because what's more elegant and advanced than a circle, and just plain black at that, and on a background of white snow. Simplicity is genius. Why didn't they think of this before? And the intellectuals of the Stone Age say: The shtreimel revolution will change everything we thought about the head, and anyone who doesn't invest in a shtreimel will be left behind, in the snow, alone, with the intellectuals from the previous Stone Age
By: Black Swan
I dreamed that I was living in the Ice Age, and everyone was circling around me, envying my black shtreimel [Translator's note: traditional fur hat worn by some Hasidic Jewish men], which seemed to them like an iPhone from the future. What design, what finish! And I realize that I could be the Steve Jobs of the Stone Age, and establish the Apple of the shtreimel - a new accessory that will complete the human head with what it truly lacks, and take us to a new era technologically and intellectually, where the hat makes the man. And I call it the hat revolution. And my trademark is a black circle, and everyone wants only things that have a black circle on them, because what's more elegant and advanced than a circle, and just plain black at that, and on a background of white snow. Simplicity is genius. Why didn't they think of this before?
And the intellectuals of the Stone Age say:
The shtreimel revolution will change everything we thought about the head, in the coming years we will undergo revolution after revolution that will fundamentally change our perception of humanity, and anyone who doesn't invest in a shtreimel will be left behind, in the snow, alone, with the intellectuals from the previous Stone Age (I don't understand enough to distinguish between the stones), trapped in fossilized pre-hat concepts. It's not just another clothing accessory, but a new way of thinking, hat thinking, which we don't yet know what it is but it will become clearer with the further advancement of the shtreimel, which will roll faster and faster, until something happens, probably.
And a critical intellectual scratches his forehead:
On the contrary! This is a dialectical turn of returning to monkey fur. Progress is actually going backward, what, did my father wear a shtreimel? Did it hinder his critical thinking? After all, he was one of the brave critics of cooking with fire.
And they take clubs and start hitting each other on the head. Because there's nothing like an intellectual club - they say it sharpens thinking.
But the group that really puts sticks in the wheels of my rolling shtreimel revolution are the moral reactionaries. At first, I only hear about them from the protests against the extinction of mammoths, and the shouts that something must be done, because the mammoths are becoming extinct, and if we don't stop eating then the mammoths will become extinct and we'll have nothing to eat, because the extinction of the mammoth is the end of the human species, and how can one not see with open eyes that we are bringing about our own end. Future generations will not forgive us (although there won't be future generations). And another group opposes the disastrous consequences of using artificial tools, don't you see that all these flint stones are dulling our nails, who can tear skin today? Our fangs and those of our children are atrophying and the children can no longer manage without these flint stones all the time, all the time they're in their hands and they're busy sharpening them, and they can no longer survive without them, we've become addicted to stones. Stones! What great-grandfather monkey knew how to do, bite properly, the grandson can't even crack a nut without a stone. Not to mention a skull.
But then they discover that people no longer care about all these things, and everyone is talking about the new shtreimel, and who has a newer shtreimel with more tails, and they, as always, have been left behind (but wasn't that the goal?), so they quickly run towards the shtreimel and start attacking it. The shtreimel is just the beginning. Start a society with hats, and a society with hats will quickly turn into a society with classes. And the shtreimel people will enslave the people without shtreimels, like you, or those whose hands are too short to obtain a shtreimel and that's because they didn't have a shtreimel in the first place that allowed them to be on top, and all this the black circle does so that shtreimel consciousness will take over the world. And wait, wait, you'll see what the shtreimel will do to your head, slowly natural hair will become less important for evolution, and will start to fall out, and more and more people will be left bald, and then they will no longer be able to do without the shtreimel, and the shtreimel will perpetuate itself and it will no longer be possible to imagine a head without a shtreimel. And who will profit from all this? Right, the black circle.
And they're already catching me in a big pot to cook me for the tribe's bonfire, but then, luckily, just at the time when I'm imprisoned and they're fattening me up with mammoths for the last supper of the end of the shtreimel era (eulogies everywhere), just then the first crack in the ice was discovered. And immediately after that more cracks started, and everyone is saying: don't you feel it's getting warmer? Isn't it better to take off some of these mammoth furs, the shtreimel is making my head sweat, and very quickly everyone abandons and forgets the shtreimel, and the tattered shtreimels are rolling everywhere, and instead everyone starts dealing with the truly burning issue that is getting worse day by day and doesn't stop, and is going to put an end to human culture, exterminate us all and bring about the end of the Ice Age and a global holocaust: global warming.
