bhaskar saikia

Human beings often claim themselves to be the most intelligent creatures on Earth. Some, driven by ego, go a step further, assuming we are the only intelligent life form in the entire universe—without truly comprehending how vast or limitless the universe really is. With this presumed intelligence comes a dangerous arrogance, one that places us above all other life forms—animals, plants, even the unseen world of bacteria and viruses.

Yes, it’s true we are superior to other life forms in many ways. We’ve invented tools—the wheel, the steam engine, spacecraft, microchips, AI and countless other marvels. Some even say we “invented fire,” though fire existed long before us as a natural state of matter—plasma. All we really did was learn how to transform solids, liquids, and gases into plasma.

We created languages and mastered speech, built economies with currency systems, and even devised our own doomsday instruments. Our sense of intelligence rests on these achievements. But does being superior automatically mean being intelligent?

History offers cautionary tales. Nazi Germany, for example, was technologically superior in 1939, pioneering assault rifles, jet aircraft, submarines, precision weapons, and even experimental time machines, “Die Glocke.” By those measures, they were intelligent innovators. Yet the Holocaust, a crime against humanity, shows the fatal flaw: intelligence devoid of empathy is dangerous.

So, are we truly better than the animals we often look down upon? Truthfully, we behave like hypocrites. We preach peace and equality, but our governments allocate huge budgets to weapons and war. Why? Because, like animals, we love to fight.

We know about world hunger and food insecurity, yet we waste staggering amounts of food every year—sometimes more than the entire defense spending. We understand these crises, yet we do little to solve them. Someone once said: “If my neighbor loses his job, that’s news. If I lose mine, that’s tragedy.” Such selective empathy is common among humans.

And despite our vast technological power, we still struggle to answer fundamental questions:
– How did life originate?
– What is consciousness?
– What existed before the universe?
– What is time itself?

Science has offered theories—a primordial soup struck by lightning, DNA sequences hinting at an intelligent design—but nothing conclusive. Even the concept of God, which comforts many, leads to more questions: Who created God? Where did God come from?

Perhaps we are just an evolutionary aberration, neither truly animals nor something greater, because our actions often defy logic and compassion. We say one thing and do another. Maybe we don’t even know what it means to be human—yet we still feel superior.