A moment to pause and rest my oversized,
overpriced head.
I'm gazing at the edges of our geometric nests
against a backdrop of atmosphere, and squinting to blur it all clear.
Realizing that there's no distinction,
I see the red queen winking at me and laughing,
because I thought I was ahead, but the world is a treadmill.
At the core of our minds we risk all to leave a piece of us behind.
(chorus)
We're still standing so we're still winning,
but every parasite that kills its host, kills itself.
(break)
(chorus ×2)
(outro)
overpriced head.
I'm gazing at the edges of our geometric nests
against a backdrop of atmosphere, and squinting to blur it all clear.
Realizing that there's no distinction,
I see the red queen winking at me and laughing,
because I thought I was ahead, but the world is a treadmill.
We're still standing so we're still winning,
but every parasite that kills its host, kills itself.
Add your song meanings, interpretations, facts, memories & more to the community.
The Red Queen hypothesis concerns evolution. Basically, on the surface this song is about the evolutionary arms race which all species face. If one species evolves and gains an advantage over its competing species, then the other species will counteract this by evolving too (or if they are not capable, face dying out - Darwin's theory of natural selection). If the species co-evolve, then effectively nothing has changed because no one has the upper-hand. So we are constantly running just to stand still, which is where the "treadmill" metaphor comes in.
In a nutshell:
"For an evolutionary system, continuing development is needed just in order to maintain its fitness relative to the systems it is co-evolving with."
Referring to the chorus, if a parasite kills its host (parasitoids), then, given time, the parasite will have nothing to feed off once its hosts are extinct. This will in turn lead to the parasite becoming extinct, unless of course it evolves to thrive on a new host species. Thus each "parasite that kills its host, kills itself".
Sorry if some of my facts aren't right, I read up about this hypothesis after hearing the song, but you should get the general gist.
Humans are like parasites, but we haven't evolved far enough, or learned how to live in symbiosis with our host planet, and if we kill our planet, we kill ourselves.