• Richard Dawkins

I think for the first time I have seen myself as a primate, and in turn, seen others. I was carrying some food upstairs, and due to the objects I was holding, had to walk differently to keep everything balanced. I found myself walking in that odd side to side gait that chimpanzees use when upright.

I've known and agreed with our ancestry but for some reason that act solidified it, I felt like a primate, an animal. I know that I am one but as I moved each leg and felt the anticipation of satiating my hunger I was a beast. We're slightly more advanced than our genetic neighbors, yet we see our intelligence as leaps and bounds above the rest of DNA's progeny. Our slight advantage has reaped exponential rewards, this combined with our conscious perspective, has baited us into a solipsistic view.

I often marvel at the progress our species has made. The Wright Brothers flew in 1905 and just 64 years later man walked on the moon. Let's assume that each of my ancestors lived to be 60 (quite generous), I am only 5 generations removed from Isaac Newton. A mere 33 generations away from Caesar, and just 75 from the completion of Khufu's Great Pyramid. In evolutionary terms these steps are very, very tiny.

We are not far from a time when our species held the same abilities or communication levels of living chimpanzees. Highly non-verbal (and we still primarily are) and struggling with basic stone tools or devices. Written language is a new invention for humans. Everything is new. A visitor who came to our planet 20,000 years ago would barely be able to tell us apart from the other primates in terms of intelligence (i'm making a broad statement here, obviously we had a greater capacity or potential at that point). And going back 20,000 years would only extend to around 330 generations given a 60 year span. If you stood in a line with all of these people you could see the end of the line.

Without doubt a day will come when our future progeny wonder what sort of mental capacity the humans of today had. We will be their brute cavemen living in wooden rectangles, farming for food, and staring at pictures all day.

If we are ever to understand our selves in any appreciable manner we must learn to step outside of our perspective, to lose any idea that we are special, whether as an individual or species. We are the output of a complex code. We are the most effective environmental manipulator that DNA has produced. Perhaps we could look at ourselves as a threshold on a gradient. The moment where the shade looks more white than black, yet still only a step away from the convoluted gray.

We must confront the distractions of superiority head on, lest the trivial become the wading pool of the curious cognates. Doubt is essential, and we must doubt ourselves before it can become a strength. On that day I doubted the idea of my being, and despite the questions it produces, I found a clearer view of myself and how our species interacts. Not to get into a religious discussion, but the day I saw the Bible as a history of belief, written by men searching for answers, is the day religion made sense. Applying that simple idea to so many contradictions or questions I encountered resulted in new ideas and perspectives. In the same vein, so long as we keep these superficial ideas and concepts about the state of our being we'll forever wallow in self love and cultural reinforcement. Whatever you are you must see it before you can be it.

I'll end this ridiculous rant with another favorite quote of mine which I feel applies well.

"Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never traveled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect."

--Bertrand Russell, from The Problems of Philosophy