Animals vs. People

Just to let ya'll know: if it ever came down to mankind versus the animals, I'm sidin' with the animals. Ya'll done pissed me off too many times. I don't like people no mo...

Seriously though (as if I wasn't being serious right then...), I LOVE animals. The debate goes on as to whether or not man is an animal or greater than an animal. Frankly, it doesn't make a difference to me: the fact is, whether we're animal or not, animals have a one-up on us in several areas.

See, we think we're hot stuff because we've got thumbs and technology and intelligence. But ya'll better be careful talkin' about intelligence, because intelligence is relative. Is it more intelligent to have much and be wasteful, or to have little and make the most of it?

Well, that's a good place to start. Animals are more frugal than people. Think about it... when's the last time you've seen an animal go out of its way to kill something else when it was already eating a kill? When's the last time a carcass in the wild got to decay into dust without vultures getting to it first?

But people... people waste stuff all the time. We could be starving on the street, but call ourselves being picky about what we will and won't eat. We'll go out and buy up the mall just because we can, and let the stuff we buy sit around and collect dust. We'll be stingy with the excess we have, even if we know we'll never use it, just because it "belongs" to us. In the wild, whatever doesn't get used gets left behind for another animal to finish off.

Animals don't debate about things. And that's funny, because the same people who contend that man is an animal are usually heavily involved with debates. For example, ideas of gender roles are hotly contested.

And don't get me wrong, even I think we could use more egalitarianism in society. But animals don't gotz noooo problems with gender roles. They say men deliberately set up society to treat women as the infamous "Other", the weaker vessel, etc. Well, since some people consider man to be an animal like any other animal, did other animals conspire to set up their gender roles like that too?

Most species of animals in the wild, by some random coincidence, have their own gender roles as well. You've never seen a pride of lions without a male head, yet the male lion barely does anything! On the other side, male seahorses carry their young in pouches, and you never hear them complain, "This is woman's work!". Some animals don't raise their young at all, and their kids turn out fine.

BUT whatever animals do, it's uniform: what one member of the species does, every member of the species does. Which is probably why it works so well. Man is the only animal that debates about it; and whether or not it's right or wrong, having to debate is a deficiency on man's part. Point: animals.

Animals are genuine. The greatest deceit animals have is changing their skin color or sumthin in order to capture prey. Animals don't lie to each other or plot and scheme to get ahead. And when an animal shows affection, it's not even really affection: it's either feeding time or mating time or feel-good time.

Man... is a shifty-a$$ creature. You can't trust man, period. Man doesn't just deceive the eyes with fashion and makeup; man deceives the mind with laughter and tears. Man strokes egos to get rewards. Man offers up falsehoods to see the downfall of another man; man is the only animal who jeopardizes the existence of the entire species for his individual benefit.

Animals deal in the "real" real world. All they know is what they perceive with their five senses. If they can't see, taste, hear, smell, or touch it, it doesn't matter to them. The highest form of cognition an animal might have is being alerted to candidates for food whose bright colors indicate poisonousness.

Man, however, has a more developed form of this sixth sense: symbolic interactionism. That simply means, man creates meaning for things that, of themselves, have no meaning. So man can draw a picture and offend his whole species because of some symbolic meaning he attaches to it. Man can't walk around naked because the body means something. Man can't make certain 4-letter word noises with his mouth because it means something. And granted, I buy into symbolic interaction because I believe in something higher that orchestrated it, it's still one more thing that complicates that lives of man.

Animals live in balance. Animals don't work for anything: their life IS their work. They don't purchase food, they chase it down and kill it. And when they're done eating, they don't make chores for themselves in the meantime; they chill. And the chilling stops only when it's time to eat again.

Man... man sucks in this department. Man doesn't even work for a living; he works for a pay check. He doesn't work the land around his house and grow food, he goes to a factory to make another man rich, then takes less than his effort's worth in a pay check, goes to the store, and buys what he can afford. And then, man gets overworked; man can't seem to find time for his family, when animals take their families with them on the hunt. Man spends his life exhausted, dissatisfied, and oppressed. He lives part-time and works part time. Animals just... live. And their life is their work.

Animals suffer from few genetic defects. Know why? Natural selection; if you're defective, you don't survive. For survival purposes, animals constantly grow stronger, faster, more efficient at what they do. They constantly adjust to new situations, such as when man impedes with his "progress". It's no wonder animals build immunity to so many diseases and fight off so many allergens...

Man... any disease under the sun, we've got it. Let's take obesity. Imagine obesity in the wild... You can't; obesity in the wild is a formula for not being drafted in the natural selection lottery. Blindness? Another no-go in the wild. Deformity? Not likely for the same reason. Allergies? Won't cut it in the wild. And not only does man get more diseases, but man also has the most limited capacity for fighting off diseases. Why? Because man makes medicines and his body becomes dependent on his own creation. Point: animals.

Oh, but here's the most important reason animals have mankind beat: animals know when it's OVER, when it's time to PACK UP, when they're BEATEN. Animals fight all the time; but when an animal is beaten, it KNOWS when it is beaten, and it humbly submits to the winner by bowing or retreating to the Alpha. This keeps the body count to a minimum and the humiliation even lower.

Man... man is downright retarded in this area. It happens all the time: two men get in a swordfight, and one man gets his swordhand cut CLEAN OFF. The fight is OVER. ...But this idiot charges anyway, for pride's sake. And THAT's how he gets killed. Let's go back to the debating issue: most debates don't really last as long as they actually do. There's the end of the debate, and then there's the proud loser's last stand. He or she persists trying to convince the unconvinceable. And what stops this proud person from arguing? Humiliation. By not recognizing when the battle is over, more people get their prides obliterated than an "intelligent" species can afford to admit. Animals never have that problem; even ANIMALS know that pride precedes destruction. Point: animals.

We may have technology, but man loses to animals because man gets beat in the basics. Advanced-adshmanced... They say if a nuclear weapon detonates, the roaches will be the only survivors. I deduce it's because they'll be the ones lowest to the earth and man will be the only idiots standing. (that and the fact that they're immune to radiation, but you get the point...)