Final-Fan said: Well the thing is, the metric is intelligence. We are on a whole other platform in comparison to any other animal. In fact Kasz is saying that the difference in intelligence between us and other animals is comparable to the difference in intelligence between other animals and plants. Now that is IMO a pretty arguable claim, but I agree with the general idea he is trying to get across. |
It's hard not to take it with a grain of salt when someone says that they themselves (or the group they're part of) is better/more special/more valauble than other individuals (or groups).
Your comparison between animals and plants is quite ridiculous. Plants and animals are totally different lifeforms, and they evolved simoltaneously, animals did not evolve from plants. When you compare the two, you cannot judge plants based on the the criteria that would make an animal "superior". Why would plants even require "intelligence"? Plants and animals are on "completely different levels", however in their particular case you can't use a vertical hierarchy. Plants and animals are categories (in other words they're possitioned vertically next to eachother), each with it's own "hierarchies".
And why wouldn't natural radar be more "special"? The problem with this kinds of comparisons (as made evident in your plants vs. animals example), is that they're highly subjective, because the person making the comparison is itself subjected to it. And no one would ever admit to not being superior (and sometimes may not even be able to comprehend such a thing). Humans by default consider themselves to be special and superior, thus they consider their characteristics to be superior. They will thus use those characteristcs as criteria when judging whether something is or isn't "superior". Thus "human" becomes the standard to which everything is compared. Even aliens would have to mee this standard in order to be considered "superior" creatures (but even then humans would probably find some fault in them, because ultimately, they're not human which is the biggest "sin" a lifeform can commit in the face of a human). Just look sci fi movies. Aliens that are considered "superior" creatures are (almost) always humanoid. Same with fantasy movies. Humans cannot envision something "superior" that is not similar to themselves (and even if these creatures are presented as being more intelligent, humans are presented as being superior due to their "emotional intelligence", which end up being more important - see Star Trek).
Regarding what you said about cultures, are cultures really on similar levels? Every single culture that has ever exited has considered itself to be the most advanced culture that has ever been. Cultures thake their own characteristcs (which they deem to be the sings of a "superior" culture), and establish them as criteria for comparison. For example culture X can consider itself more advanced than culture than culture Y, because it performs a certain ritual which it labels as being something a "civilized" person would do, despite the fact that culture Y does not have such a standard (for example the differences in bathing rituals in the West vs. Japan). Now, there are spaces where cultures have interacted with eachother, borrowed from eachother (such as Europe or Asia), meaning that these cultures have similar standards. But what about isolated cultures? These cultures (that Europeans labeled as "primitive") were unique, they developed totally different ways to view the world. You cannot really compare such a culture with Western culture (for example), despite what many tend to do (Europeans would consider native African cultures to be "primitive" because they didn't wear clothes, or wore very little, but since when is wearing clothes an universal sign of being "civilized"?). This is the inability to imagone the "other".
Back to what Kasz said. What bothered me most wasn't the "special" part, but the "valuable" part (him giving being more "special" as a justification). Are humans really more "valauble" than other creatures? Obviously a human would say "yes", but that's just a subjective opinion (and an undertsandable one at that). Humans automatically consider themselves to be more "valauble" than other lifeforms, and "human" is the standard to determine the value of another living being (the closer a creature is to the "human" standard, the more valauble it is). Ultimately, the most objectively "valuable" living beings on Earth are plants, because without them there would be no life on Earth (us humans would disappear also). Humans are at the very top of the food chain, which objectively makes us the least valuable and most useless of Earth's inhabitants.
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