Humans Fall Short

I have been thinking too much today.... so....just an observation or two as a result. Humans are fascinating creatures. Our ability to think abstractly makes us both better and worse than other animals that roam the earth. We are better because the intellect we have allows us to create new things, to interpret our environment better and to pick and choose our behaviors. the rest of the animal may be largely driven by instinct but humans are not. And that is the worst part of us well. Other animals can't do that. In fact they struggle each day to stay alive, to achieve everything possible in their lives in order to do that.

Human beings are the only creatures who knowingly choose to be less than they can be, to underachieve in life, to even select to die earlier than they could. Other animals don't do that. instead, the struggle every moment of every day to survive, to live as long as possible. That's why dog and other creatures don't smoke cigarettes or soak their brains in alcohol or bad foods and engage in unhealthy or dangerous lifestyles like humans do.

We don't see fat deer or trees that just stop growing because they decide not to grow any more. We do see more humans than not who are underachieving even wallowing contentedly through life as unfulfilled beings. Only humans commit suicide. Animals never quit trying to maximize their lives. I wonder if our "wasting our lives" is a way of coping with life itself. Maybe the pressures and stresses of trying to constantly compete with each other makes us less willing to try to be the best we can be, a natural defense mechanism for us, Perhaps we dumb down in life because it is our way of surrendering to the competitive games that stress us so.

So we eventually chose to be less than we can be. We stop learning and instead engage in idiotic behaviors like watching stupid reality TV shows or chattering about "nothing" on cell phones all day. We stop working, stop developing, stop contributing to society because we want to do so. Animals can do that. Our more highly developed brains give us the option to destroy our own potentials even our own lives.

The few humans that don't do so are seen as freaks, as people who push themselves too much, and the norm for us is instead is underachieving. It's the torture we inflict on ourselves that seems inescapable and our great curse in life. Yep, humans have the greatest of all struggle in life, the struggle with themselves.