Sharon's Eighth Reaction

Today’s discussion was particularly fascinating to me because upon the initial read-through and annotations, I hadn’t connected the analysis of the two paragraphs with such intricate topics like evolution and religion. The debate on the extent to which both clash interested me greatly; I had never critically thought about the idea that religion is, in essence, a necessary byproduct of evolution. As mentioned in class, we’ve evolved so much to the point that we now fear ourselves. Religion thus no longer has the same unifying effect it once did, a fact evidenced by the numerous religion-based conflicts nowadays. Instead, the paradigm has shifted to a society leaning towards logic; I feel that the narrator’s paragraph on aging past 40 years attempts to convey this concept by referring to his reasoned idea that older men do not contribute to society at all and are only ‘worthless’.