The Intelligent Animal

HUMAN

Dictionary Definition: A human being, esp. a person as distinguished from an animal or (in science fiction) an alien.

Religious Definition: God's most elaborate creation.

Matrix Definition: A virus.

So, what are we? Are we animals? Are we the most superior species? I believe that only one of the previous definitions are correct. Humans, are indeed very much like viruses, as it was stated in the movie The Matrix, by an Agent. He said, "Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus." Humans, arrogant little beings which dominate the world and effectively destroy it, is what we are.

What differentiates us from animals is our arrogance and our vulnerability. We don't have tails to restore our balance, we can't run as fast as a cheetah, we don't have sharp claws like a lion to protect ourselves. Without our technological widgets -and by technological widgets I don't only mean things which run on electricity, but any of our inventions from the wheel to the F16 planes- we would be completely vulnerable. Our only tool is our brains and that is what we use in order to survive. We build houses, barracks, tanks, guns, nuclear power stations, spaceships, all with one single and main resource: our brain, therefore our intelligence.

Humans, who have made it a habit to compete in everything, have found a way to measure who is smart and who is not; by an I.Q. test. But what can be said about the reliability of these I.Q. tests? Is intelligence made up of only solving math problems and completing patterns and finding the missing piece? I don't think so. As far as I'm concerned, people may be "intelligent" in different areas; some may be intelligent in music, like Bach, some may be intelligent in math, like Pythagoras, while some may be intelligent in the visual arts, like Monet. I believe that you can't measure intelligence, not in a way that it is a 100 % reliable and true. So, my suggestion is to forget about who is smarter and who can divide a polynomial equation faster and just to go on with our lives.

Humans are complicated machines. They feel emotions, they feel sadness, they feel pity, they feel (or at least some do) empathy, yet at the same time they keep on killing each other over matters of surreal things, over the belief of beings we don't know that exist. As smart as we may seem, I can assure you, we're also that much stupid. Lions kill each other to get the prey or the food, we kill each other to prove that a certain way of thought is true and all others are false.

Humans have created and invented all they have invented to be able to make up for their vulnerability. We invented electricity because before its invention, at night, we could be left at dark by a gust of wind with a tiger spying on us, who can see much, much better than us in the dark. Then came bulbs and electricty, then came night vision goggles; and this invention process will go on, until nothing natural is left on earth.  Humans, the "intelligent" animals, will continue to destroy their habitat and each other until the end of time; now, where's the intelligence in that?