Thoughts On: Existence - Part 4 (Revised)

So far I have talked about humans as part of the animal kingdom, and the many commonalities between humans and other animals.

If we accept that humans are part of the animal kingdom; If we agree that we are not physically different in ways that would cause us to consider ourselves higher beings; Then, the next step is to examine how we differ from other animals.

I'm assuming that we all agree on this one:

Humans are the most intelligent members of the animal kingdom.

Intelligence comes at a price. With intelligence, comes curiosity. With curiosity, comes anxiety (when we encounter things that we can not understand):

Other animals instinctually take precautions to avoid death. Oreo and Snowball still think that I intend to eat them. They scurry for cover as soon as I approach, even though I've given them countless slices of apple.

But, I don't think that they spend a whole lot of time worrying about the actual event of their death, and what is to follow.

Humans are conscious of our own mortality.

Humans spend a great deal of their time seeking the answers to seemingly unanswerable quesitons:

- What is the meaning of life?

- Is there life after death?

- Is there a higher being (God)?

Humans seek answers to existencial questions.

We conduct research, we experiment, and we explore to further our knowledge. We know a great deal about the scientific basis of existence, the building blocks of life, reproduction, cloning, etc.

Humans have science.

We have used huge telescopes to see far away planets and stars.

Here are a couple of stunning facts from our own solar system:

Our sun is about 1,000,000 times the size of earth.

Mars, our neighbor in the solar system, is over 99 million miles away from earth.

Our solar system is just one, of many within our galaxy. There are countless galaxies in the universe.

Humans have some basic comprehension of the incomprehensible vastness of the universe.

I bit off a great big chunk in this chapter!

Here's the executive summary:

Humans often forget that we are animals. Reminder: We are simply highly intelligent apes!

Our intellect comes at a price though. We become aware of our own mortality at an early age. From that point forward, much of our life is spent worrying about death, wondering about what will happen to us after we die, and doing what we can to postpone our death as long as possible.

When we're not worrying ourselves to death, many of us are learning. We are either learning skills, life's lessons, or learning about our world, or our universe.

Our superior intellect can often give a false sense of superiority.

However, the more that we learn, the more we realize how insignificant we are. We learn that our planet is just a tiny speck of dust within our gallaxy, and that our gallaxy is one of countless galaxies in the universe!