You're walkin' upright, got that opposable thumb and you can fly in jets and type on computers.

So you think you're pretty hot stuff, huh? Top of the animal chain and all that? So much more sophisticated?

Think again. You're not so big.

How can you assume that your piddly little thoughts are so much more important than the ones animals or other organisms have. How can you be so self-important to judge them from YOUR standard operating procedure?

Yeah, we're better at talking verbally. Ever see an animal try? They don't care about that shit.

And if you're thinking "Well, that's because their vocal cords..." -- Okay so they CAN'T talk the same way we do. Can we communicate the same way they do? Do we even know how they communicate?

No, we only interpret the communication we recognize in them. We try to ascribe hunger or looking for a mate to the little leg rubbing or jumping up and down or preening for insects they do. Because that's the only way we can understand it. How can we really know how they're communicating and what they can say to each other?

How do we know microbes don't communicate telepathically and that they not only understand the theory of relativity but that's how they function?

How do we know what animals and amoebas sense, perceive and pursue as THEIR highest prorities? How can we assume that our priorities are inherently better? Just because they do not communicate to US in a way that we can understand doesn't mean that they don't have fantastically richer lives than we do. Maybe a salamander experiences so much joy wriggling in the mud, a joy that we could never know. Maybe certain species of animals are SO much more in tune with each other, communicating in ways we don't recognize. It seems so possible that we are incredibly incapacitated in realms that other creatures excel.

I think we're the big dumb animals that think we know everything.

No fade-in to the slaughter of beef that goes on daily in America.

Yeah, we do have a hell of a lot of control over other animals and organisms because we make and use tools. But in many cases, do they care about this "control" -- as long as we don't hurt them?

At least the dolphins have us snafu-ed. I think they realize that we're capable of hurting and controlling them, so they "play" with us and do things we find intriguing. The dolphins have us figured out.

Do you agree or think I'm whacked?

On a smaller scale, this human egocentrism is the same attitudes exhibited in American ethnoculturalcentrism. I have so often heard the phrase "We live in the greatest country in the world," from the people I interviewed, that I even had my own shorthand for it in my reporting notebooks -- GCW. I heard this from greedy landowners at zoning appeals, from high school counselors, from grassroots effort organizers and certainly, politicians on Capitol Hill (and municipal council chambers too, of course).

Not that I disagree that the U.S. is a great place, but what about all the unexplored territory throughout the rest of the world where people live very happily? What about all the "civilized" areas that the people who made these pronouncements had never visited -- much less had a chance to really check them out, to find out if those places, too, are great places to live?

My (admittedly limited) travel through several other countries and some relatively undiscovered areas showed me that there are REALLY happy people in other areas. They may be poor, by our standards, but they are so content!