Scientists recently pulled up a astonishing discovery from deep in an Indian Ocean trench west of Australia. It was of Biblical proportions! Like in the Book of Geneses. From the time life began on the planet, they found evidence of a single cell life-form—a microbe-like material. They claimed it has survived in its current, unchanged state for billions of years. That makes it one of the earliest examples of life on our planet. If you believe in DNA genetics or Darwin’s evolution, these microbes could be your earliest relatives: Your founding fathers.

Scientifically speaking, that’s a really big deal. It’s a window into the period way back before the Cambrian explosion of life-forms, 542 million years ago. But should this really be a big deal? You should be embarrassed by these progenitors. Say what you like about this biological news, but I look down on these microbes. They’re an insult to all of us fellow life-forms now on earth.

You and I live in the post-Darwin era. We were taught the laws of natural selection and survival of the fittest. Indolence, and even long vacations, are looked down upon. What the hell have these bugs been doing all these millions of years? Nothing! They’ve been sitting on their one-cell butts, letting others do their evolution thing. It’s as though they’re expecting the rest of us to advance the planet.

Can’t you just hear a conversation between two of these guys…

Microbe One: “Hey, man, you wanna do something today?”

Microbe Two: “No. I don’t even want to think about that.”

Microbe One: “Hey, dude, good call.”

If you ask me, it’s wishy-washy to repeat the same languorous lifestyle generation after unchanging generation. I mean, come on! A billion years with no advancement to show for it? Everyone else has been evolving. Why should these bugs get any respect? If they wanted esteem, they should have spent their time getting fit and making something of themselves. Doing nothing but metabolizing and reproducing millennia after millennia might have worked in the old days, but it doesn’t cut it anymore.

Oh sure, bleeding-heart egalitarians can make arguments for the endurance and patience of these microbes, but I don’t buy it. If you ask me, they should be shaping up. In the gym we muscle builders intone, “Use it or lose it.” Among my automobile racing fraternity, we say, “A happy tire is a screaming tire,” as it accelerates and corners to the limit of its performance ability.

We are fond of not just high performance but of the very fittest performance. How else are we going to get “selected”? You want to evolve, or are you going to just sit there? Progress, progress, progress! That’s what I believe. Get out there and compete! Chilling out at the bottom of an ocean trench for a billion years? That’s an obscenity that offends my work ethic. Who needs indolence like that?

So what can be done to make these little buggers get with the program? For starters, get them to realize the error of their inert ways. How about some remedial microbial intervention before they waste even one more millennia? Put them on a program. In the next ten thousand years, become seaweed. Another ten thousand after that, sea slugs.

Without goals, those little microbes deserve nothing but our condescending disdain. It’s time for them to start making something of themselves—and clearly, they’re not going to do that without motivation.

I conclude, we must give them a kick in the posterior—if they even have one.