A friend of mine, whose identity will remain anonymous because she’s internetphobic and firmly believes some harm would come to her if any of her information including her all too common first name is displayed on a website, protested I didn’t make any sense in my last blog entry. I countered with, what? only the last entry didn’t make sense? She dismissed me by saying most don’t make any sense and gave me a few examples, which I’m not going to list all but one of the reasons why the last one didn’t make sense so you know what she’s talking about. I wrote,

So there, I scratch off playing professional poker from the list of things I might be able to do if I become jobless. Because I don’t know how to play poker.

She pointed out that by starting the first sentence with “So there,” I implied that the reason for the scratch off was my realization that I’m not smart enough, seeing that all these poker player are geniuses. But then I added another sentence, which by the way is not a complete sentence at all and should have been appended at the end of the first sentence, that gave a totally different reason of me not knowing how to play poker. My answer? What do you mean? Do I usually make sense? OUTSIDE my blog? Did you notice my previous sentence was not complete, by the way? You mean my blog is supposed to make sense? You actually expect it to make sense? OK, then, Ms. anal anonymous, I win.

So just to annoy my friend – Hi, my anonymous friend! – here is another nonsensical blog.

I happened upon an interesting article, The 10 smartest animals, on MSNBC. I found it interesting not because it included species like cephalopods or crows or squirrels that I have never considered “smart”, but because of the indication that in some of the tests conducted to test their intelligence, the animals did better than the human test subjects. For instance, chimpanzees did better at number memory test (don’t know what a number memory test is, but sounds legitimately cool enough) and dolphins were more creative than humans. Also, it pointed out animals are self aware, make tools and use them, and understand different concepts relating to different visuals (pictures, for instance). In other words, these animals exhibited signs of possessing the abilities which are pretty much the things that we human beings have used to separated human beings as something special, the things unique to human beings that made us the species that matter the most, the one and only species whose interests and welfare valuable enough to be protected at the expense of other species if needed.

Naturally, I felt an enormous satisfaction reading this article because it supports my deviant, not to mention unpopular, position that human beings are most definitely NOT anything special. Sure, collectively, we possess higher intelligence according to the definition of the word “intelligence” understood among human beings (Maybe the definition of intelligence among, say, elephants is different, who knows?) But does the life of a person who wasn’t smart enough to get into any college count less than the one who graduated with honors with multiple degrees from IVY league schools? Even so, why, that crow who could make a tool out of a wire to reach for something he wanted is much smarter than A LOT of people I know.

We protect our interest because the arms always bend inwards. We do it at the expense of other species because we are selfish and greedy. Because we are arrogant. Because we are incredibly conceited (I know, it’s redundant. The same as arrogant, but I want to annoy certain somebody I know). Because we are inconsiderate. Because we think we can do better than nature. Because we think we can be God. And because we WANT to be God.

Should I or should I not hop down from my soapbox? Cause it’s kinda nice up here. By the way, my anonymous friend, did you like the previous paragraph, the incomplete sentences galore or what?