Thor Invents Education

In the early days, education was limited. Primitive man had learned a few rules such as never pat a mammoth baby and stay out of a thunderstorm. Some still chose to ignore these teachings. Life span was short back then.

 

Thor decided it was time to upgrade the educational system. Instead of just grunting and pointing, he made a few symbols written on stone with charcoal to indicate basic nouns. Today this is known as a shopping list. Since it was hard to carry a hunting-gathering list around on large rocks he tried writing on big leaves. These could be folded and put in pockets, but pockets were not yet invented so they simply had to be carried. Sometimes the charcoal would be worn a bit by rain and the unlucky man might bring home the wrong item. Worst still he often lost the list or never looked at it. This problem unfortunately is genetically fixed in all men throughout time.

 

Soon everyone was writing. Besides simple nouns, Thor invented symbols for verbs. It was he who first invented the inverted middle finger which is still universally used. He even invented the exclamation point. As with many inventions, it was accidental. A centipede crawled up on a stone one day and when Thor swatted it, it made a long, dark vertical line. Everyone assumed this symbol was a mark of urgency. Even today, some world leaders still use this sign several times after a sentence to get attention.

 

Education met with instant success. It was not long before people were going beyond the hunter-gatherer list. Writing was now used for building instructions; unfortunately these were often confusing, resulting in missing or unused parts. This is still a problem today. Writing also led to the first advertisements- for select comfort beds of course. Greeting rocks also were exchanged for special occasions such as birthdays. Since there were no records, some had a suspiciously large number of birthdays along with free deserts at the Thor and More. I’m-sorry-your-spouse-was-eaten-by-a saber-tooth-tiger cards also were a big hit.

 

However, there was a dark side to writing. Before writing, people didn’t understand most of what prompted all that grunting and pointing. The meaning of communication was unclear so most primitives simply ignored others. But writing soon led to gossip, criticism, bad play reviews, and general disorder. People now directly and clearly expressed their opinions about many things, which led to the invention of war. Of course, it was not a good idea to know exactly what the other person was thinking, but once writing became widespread it was too late. One such war began with a letter from a neighboring village to Thor which stated- “Give me all your bowling rocks or we will stuff your mother in a termite hill”. This led to the first world war though that was pretty small since the known world was very small.

 

War became an unintended consequence of education and a staple of the growing economy. The catapult, flaming spears and spies planted in the enemy camp all were the forerunners of artillery, flame throwers and the CIA. The military –industrial complex was now in full gear thanks to Thor and the invention of education.