The festive yuletide. The time of love, understanding and celebration of silence. It is time to ponder those very basic questions that define all existence. Especially: dinosaurs. What is it with dinosaurs? We know we love them, we know you love them and all the people who don't are not worth mentioning (that includes you creationist propagators) or irrelevant to this article that is, in the end, all about dinosaurs. Those legendary beasts that roamed the untamed wilderness of the first tender teenage of planet Earth continue to enthrall kids and grownups alike. The Jurassic Park hype is long gone, but dinosaurs live on (metaphorically speaking, that is). What is it about them that especially fascinates even us who did not end up as palaentologists and are not seven anymore?
We offer two unnecessarily complex explanations. Let's start with what's wrong with the 21st century. What else could you even start with?
Since we are relatively free from totalitaristic regimes, oppressing religion and the wishes of our ancestors, we are able to make our own choices. We get to choose our friends, our occupations, our political views and our energy-saving lightbulbs to see which microwave meal we're enjoying for dinner. There's not much to boss us around, which leads to a situation where we feel anguish for all this freedom. We might be a little too old for our mothers (sorry, mom) to tell us what to do – even if we wanted her to. Is this freedom a little too much?
It seems that when no-one is there to control us and our actions, we need to get our hands dirty ourselves. We control what Facebook tells about us to the world, our degree of ethicism in the grocery store and our closely defined sub-culture personality, whether it be emo-kid with too many feelings or yuppie humanist from hell.
Oh yeah. Dinosaurs. They have everything to do with the matter, we're getting there, whiner! The thing is, dinosaurs are something beyond control. Our popular culture supports this idea (what, didn't you watch Jurassic Park with your socio-political-philosophy glasses on when you were six?): if you'd bring a bunch of allosaurs to Metsätalo's lobby, we'd lose 90% of humanist potential in Finland. There's just nothing we could do, NOTHING AT ALL! (Ominous laughter throughout BTSB offices!)
Dinosaurs offer us a tiny glance at a world where we would not need to be responsible for our choices or lives – simply for the reason that we'd be occupied with the fear of being eaten and the stark fact of being eaten at each particular moment. So, in the end, are dinosaurs the counter force of post-modern control angst?
Or could the reason be far more romantic? We all know, don't we, that T-rexes could grow to be 5 metres tall. And we can't even begin to imagine a ferocious killer monster that big! Well ok, sperm whales, but you couldn't ride a sperm whale into battle, could you now? A dinosaur, however... How awesome is that!
In fantasy literature, nothing turns acne-ridden boys and girls on like magical dragons. Not us, though, where'd you get that idea..? For many grownups, however, dragons are something that has been left behind. It just doesn't do, going around believing in winged-reptilian monsters of myth and chatting about them during Tupperware parties. We are too old to really believe in magical creatures, but still, we WANT to believe in them.
Dinosaurs to the rescue! We are allowed to believe in them, because we know, for sure, that dinosaurs did exist. We know how they lived, what they ate and even something of how they mated. But still, they're somehow beyond our imagination, too big to exist, too brutally beautiful. This guarantees us the same escapism that dragons did when we were kids.
We might seem a little strange if we start raving about the difference between the torosaurus and triceratops. But seriously raving about the superiority of gold dragons over red ones... Worse.
Dinosaurs are a symbol of our childish belief in the impossible, but in acceptible adult terms. It's cool and it's science (even if someone might argue that Ross is the lamest Friend)!
Angst-repellent or escapist dream? Or can it all be summed up in four simple words: dinosaurs, made of awesome.
By Kaisa Leino and Esko Suoranta
[tags]Christmas, dinosaurs[/tags]