The mind is turned on!

I look down at a familiar white dog that comes out on the lawn and settles down amongst us as if it's one of us, and although I smile at how cute the act looked, I can't help but loathe its utter lack of intelligence. I'm definitely a superior being, I think. And I look so much more handsome, and have far less hair on the chest... and then the mutt looks up to me, and its eyes reflect purity, kindness and intelligence - it's one of God's creatures; it seems to have a soul. I wonder, what really makes us so different?

Bah! But of course, man is far superior. We're thinkers, we're builders, we're warriors, we're philosophers, we're murderers. We appreciate beauty, we create beauty, we destroy it. I've never seen a bird stop and stare at the sunset, just like I've never seen a dumb monkey electing a dumber one for President. As a society, we're cultured and complex, and we are rational beings. And of course, we possess the most powerful tool ever created: language! We are above nature. We aren't bound by it, we're beyond it.

My mind dwells on language and culture. Certain species of monkeys have a set of sounds specifying signals, such as that of food or danger. Parrots and parakeets imitate voices, a songbird can actually piece together bits of songs heard from other birds to make its own composition. Apes (the most famous being Koko) have been taught how to use hand signals to communicate with man. Language, right? Wrong! Even Apes only seem to reach the Multiword Phrase Level, speaking sentences like 'Koko hug', a feat accomplished rather easily by humans before the age of 3, without years of research, training and pampering. The full recursive infiniteness of human language (add 'Google says that' before any declarative sentence to make a new one, for example), a lexical repertoire of over 30,000 words, and the vast array of abstract thoughts detached from time and space that can be expressed... now that's raw power. That's unparalleled, that's human.

On a high, and rather proud of myself, I move to culture and beauty. We appreciate the beauty of the world around us and we create things purely for aesthetic pleasure. No other being does this, or indeed needs to! Doesn't that put us above nature? Why would nature give us tools we don't need for our survival? Appreciation of art and beauty, kindness, altruism, magnanimity... these are biologically without function or even illogical. Perhaps they aren't... many researchers, notably G.F Miller, say very interestingly that almost every trait we consider uniquely human has risen out of the process of sexual selection. With traits like pure physical strength no longer a parameter for fitness, humans have to rely on other measures of fitness. The appreciation and creation of beauty and art reflect a developed and superior mind, altruism and kindness are an obvious indicator of success, and it is but obvious that courtship in humans employs wit and humour, a definite measure of intelligence. One even dares to say that the entire world of art, of beauty and of charity is here just to help us find mates! Many elements of human sexuality also seem to be deeper than they are. Facial beauty is a direct consequence of symmetry, a measure of genetic health. The large breasts and buttocks of the human female exhibit fitness and energy resources to take care of the soon-to-come young, and hence are naturally attractive to men. Perhaps the expressive power of language, as it is now, is also a result of sexual selection!

Perhaps the character John Keating (Robin Williams) was right when he said in 'Dead Poets Society' that language was made not to communicate, but to woo women! We seem to think we are above nature, that what we define as human is not needed for survival and hence not dictated by it. We use this to detach ourselves and to elevate ourselves. But we seem to be very much under the control of nature... we're just too intelligent to realize it!

And as science fails to give me some solace, I look back at the dog. It gives me a blank stare, but its soul gives me a smile. I won this battle, it says. The war is far from over, I reply. And I finish the remaning lime juice and move on.