A survey

Why are humans dubbed as the superior race of Earth?

Why do humans rule above the living beings on Earth? Why do humans feed on some edible parts of some edible plants and on some edible parts of some edible animals? Originally meant to walk on land or crawl on the mud from hunger, why did humanity decide to swim underwater, sail the waters, and fly over the terra and mare? Originally meant to strive within the planet, why did humanity decide to start conquering space? Originally meant for coexistence and procreation, why are humans killing and bashing each other? Are humans trying to be God or something greater than God himself?

Wait, are humans really that superior?


What have we done to our home planet during the last few centuries? What have we done to our fellow humans, regardless of the skin color differences? What have we done to the endangered wildlife? What have we done to mother nature? What have we done to the poor, the hunger-stricken children? What have we done to the ancestral burial sites of the indigenous people? What have we done to the remaining trees in the cities?

Have we really protected what's important to us? Have we really chosen the right things? Have we been the heroes to children who look up to us as 'models' of the righteous adult? Have we been kind to the less fortunate? Have we been extending our aid to the needy without any ulterior motive?

The world is not just pure black and white. It has a lot of gray areas, too. What's worse is that the gray areas aren't exactly 50% black and 50% white. They come in gradients. There are absolutes masked by the massive presence of the uncertainties.

The same goes with humans. History has named some people as saints who went to Heaven and others as evildoers who probably suffer endless flames in Hell. Again, the credibility of those claims is close to zero. Nobody knows where they really went in their afterlife. Maybe the 'saints' were truly corrupted. Maybe the 'evildoers' were doing those things in the name of justice and were truly kind. Just... maybe.

And maybe, the true saints and true evildoers were the ones who died nameless. Then again, nobody knows.

But ironically, what is more certain is the gray area of humans. Almost all of humans are living their lives in mixtures of wrong and right choices, of bad and good experiences, of evil and godly thoughts and deeds.

I've blabbered too much. Now, back to the first question: Why are humans dubbed as the superior race of Earth?

Humans are the only living creatures which have what we call "will". It's the power of the mind that other living things, as scientists claim, don't have. Well of course, animals move according to their best interests--according to their survival instincts. But they don't have the "will" or ability of the mind to ponder the best way to sleep, eat, or run. They always have it in their programs as the best choices before they even have the knowledge that they possibly have choices to begin with.

With the will, humans are simultaneously capable and incapable of a lot of things. That's because with will, humans have to choose. Capability comes with timely decisiveness, while incapability comes with indecisiveness. Being unable to choose impales a person from functioning like an animal which instinctively knows the way out of the situation. Consequently, being indecisive at times separates us from the other animals--because humans belong to Kingdom Animalia.

But the problems faced by humans are more complex than the deprivation of animals from their basic needs. The will that humans have helps him be aware of his situation. Because of the will, he has to choose if he should face and solve the problem or just brush it off. Choosing not to deal with it is a choice, too. If it's a good or a bad choice, it's up to the individual himself. But with the multiple occurrences of some problems, these become common and well-known. Thus, humankind has this kind of wireless convention of classifying the underlying choices as good and bad. Eventually, we have a way of knowing which choices are bad and which are good.

Records of events have also taught humans to only make the right choices. Do not bully. Do not kill. Do not steal. Do not cheat (in exams, quizzes, and in love). Do not lie. Because of the events in the past, humans have even come up with rules to bind people and make humans behave appropriately. Even the Bible has the list of the commandments.

But, humans are not bound to the lessons that history is making us learn from because humans have the will. Just because rules and laws exist, humans are free to either follow or break them. Despite learning the negative consequences of bad choices, humans have the will, and maybe guts, to go with them until they get a taste of the consequences for themselves. Humans best learn from experience.

Which experience do we best learn from? From our own personal experience? or from the experience of others? I think this question doesn't have an absolute answer. It's neither A nor B. The gray area rules again. Again, it's up to the will of the individual which area of the gradient works best for him.