Are humans really smarter than animals? Or are they just animals themselves?

We claim to not be animals--and we consider animal-like behavior to be crude, and beneath us.

But aren't we just natural creatures ourselves?

Perhaps that is our problem--having disassociated ourselves with nature. The indigenous did not fall into this same trap--they preferred to identify with nature.


On the one hand we claim it is "natural" to want to procreate, compete, eat, survive, etc. On the other hand, we say that these animalistic behaviors are beneath us.

We claim to be more intelligent than nature.

How do we know that we are intelligent to a higher degree?

Who is to say what quality of intelligence, or degree of intelligence is latent in animals? They could (and do) have sensibilities that we do not. Just because we claim they cannot grasp abstract, or metaphor does not mean that our way of "thinking" is necessarily superior.

We set a standard based on our own limitations of understanding. It is a self-fulfilling legacy with only one reference point by which to measure--logic, and analysis--something we grasp well. How convenient that is has become the standard for "intelligence."

But what if there is a superior form of intelligence that exists outside of logic and analysis, metaphor and abstract? We wouldn't know or accept it, since we are so busy being much "smarter" than the creatures that have survived longer than us--creatures whose existence we depend upon, that actually feed us, and cure us--like plants, and sea life for instance.

It is a sure sign of arrogance and willful ignorance to identify ourselves as superior to nature, when we completely depend on plants, and animals to sustain our very lives and existence.

Are you human, or animal? Or---are you human and animal? What part of being an animal would you rather not accept?