Time for America to Call it In and Build a Big Pile of Rocks

David Iscoe is a contributing columnist for Funny Or Die News. “David Has Been Thinking” is a recurring column in which David shares what he’s been thinking.

The United States is a pretty good nation, as far as nations go. We’ve got food and culture from all over the world, we’re the birthplace of rock and roll and baseball, we’ve got a history of innovation and revolution, and we’ve still got some political freedom and a bit of money.

But this won’t last forever. It’s time cash it in and build a giant pile of rocks.

I know that rocks may seem like a step back to many of you. “What about iPhones?” you might ask, “will we ever get up to an iPhone 9? An iPhone 10?” But an iPhone barely lasts a day without a charge, let alone 1000 years. Rocks, on the other hand, require no maintenance and will never become obsolete. In fact, the oldest rocks in the world are still as admired as the newest rocks; more so, even. Rocks are the steadiest investment we can have. Civilizations come and civilizations go, but when they leave behind big piles of rocks, that’s something everyone has to respect.

It’s time to be honest with ourselves; we may be on the verge of collapse. The writing’s on the wall: the Earth is getting hotter, our population is getting harder to feed sustainably, our economy is unstable, organizational inertia and globalization mean that one crisis anywhere could destroy us all, violence is getting out of hand in the Middle East and at home, global plague may be spreading, our air and water are getting poisoned, we’re succumbing to chronic obesity, our political system is coming to a standstill, and the world is increasingly controlled by a small group of rich people.

All of these are terrible and scary problems for humans, but they are no threat to a sufficiently large pile of rocks. Rocks can withstand very high temperatures, they require no food, they cost no money to keep up, they are immune to disease and poison, and they have no interest in politics. A rock cannot become obese; it will stay the same size. Rocks are also very hard to blow up, even for the most committed group of terrorists. They are very hard and very heavy; our military bunkers are made of concrete, and concrete is not as strong as rocks. I truly believe that if we make the rock pile big enough, nobody will ever get around to knocking it down.

But the main reason to invest our time and energy in rocks is that nothing else is worthwhile. Children? They last about 80 years, 100 tops. They require lots of food and water; really, if they run out of food for just a few weeks, they die. And that’s not even thinking about disease, climate, and other children killing them off. Plus, no matter how long they last, they may become ungrateful, forget where they came from, and stop telling people how great America was. Frankly, the best use of our children is to carry rocks. Once the rocks are in place, we won’t have to do anything else for the children, and our jobs will be finished.

It’s worth noting that everything we do or care about is useless. We try to build loving relationships, but feelings fade and the people we love die. We try to stay healthy, but our bodies decay; our cells literally give up even trying to renew themselves. We try to live a life full of deep experiences, but our memories fade, our brain stops connecting with itself, all our values and principles recede into the fog and we become babbling animals and soon after that, dead ones.

We try to accumulate money, but money is an abstraction, imaginary credit. People in the future won’t think we were rich just because a number was once on a bank computer. “If they were so rich,” they’ll say, “why couldn’t they afford to stack up more rocks?”

We’re still the most powerful economy in the world. I think it’s time to create a memorial to our society, and see the full scale of the pile of rocks we can build if we truly put all our resources into it. We’ll end up impressing ourselves, as well as generations of people in the future. Or, if people die out, it will impress the aliens, or impress whatever species evolves to be smart enough to recognize a great manmade pile of rocks when they see it.

As of today, it’s time to do away with government waste, corporate greed, and social idleness, and turn all our attention to said rock pile. If we are truly a great people we can get this done.

Mostly we will need people to move rocks. But we will also need architects to design the rock structure, and engineers to implement the design. We will need farmers to grow the food for the rock-movers to eat, and maintenance folks to keep the rock-moving machines running. We will need artists to decorate the rocks and make them look nice, and journalists to tell people about the rocks so we get attention for them. And of course, we will need a powerful army to guard us while we’re building the rock thing, so that nobody ruins it or distracts us.

Indeed, the old saying is true: it takes a village to build something out of rocks.

I love this country; I love it too much to see it go down in flames without being represented by a bunch of rocks. And I know I am asking everyone to work hard, but during the construction of the rock thingy, a select committee of brewers, musicians, dancers, distillers, chefs, zookeepers, winemakers, decorators, pyrotechnicians, marijuana farmers, balloon artists, opium farmers, comedians, coca farmers, clowns, meth cooks, and sex workers of all specialties and genders will be hard at work creating the biggest party in human history to celebrate the construction of the big pile of rocks.

And then America can go happily to hell, knowing that at least we built something that will last. Say what you want about this country, but I firmly believe we had a good run, and I just hope we will have the rocks to prove it.

Check out David’s next column, “The Need to Urinate In Bathrooms is Evidence of the Tyranny of Civilization.”