On meat... Animal meat, human meat, black, white, red or yellow meat...

Please do drop this stupid, self-indulgent thought of having bypassed your "animalistic" instincts, before you even start reading this. We, along with you, are all pieces of meat either you want it, or not... Intelligent meat, of course, yet meat nevertheless... After all, true passion comes along with "animalistic" behaviour. As a matter of fact passion unleashes, whereas intelligence filters things out... I'm not making a stand for animalistic behaviour here, I'm just trying to say that we humans are not less animals than any animal. All humans are prone to animalistic behaviour because we are animals. Intelligence does separate us from all other animals, but merely by simply being just one of our tools for survival. Every animal from a certain species DOES something NO OTHER animal could ever do. That's why it's a different species. And every animal, along with us humans, behave the way they do in order to achieve maturity for procreation. In that sense, and yet in all other sense, humans do NOT differ from any other species more than cats differ from any other species.

Well... I was saying that passion unleashes, whereas intelligence filters things out... This fact does not make any of the two superior, only more suitable under different circumstances. So here is my question to you... When will we escape from this notion of "superiority/supremacy"? It's a cage, it keeps us standing still to a certain point in our evolutionary timeline. A point that does not bear any significance whatsoever -and I'd dare go as far as to say it even lacks the property of realistic existence- outside our own spheres of perception and logic. Of course, this seems to be part of our humanity too and as such it can only lead us toward our evolution. But it certainly hinders our personal progress. Why is it so difficult for us to accept that humans' "higher intelligence" is no less and no more a tool than cats' "higher agility"? It's not superior as a tool to that of any other being, it just gives us the opportunity to reach maturity, and thus reproduce, by utilizing different means. We are somehow deluded by the fact that we see the world through our eyes and thus inevitably put humankind in the center of it. But to every other animal we are not the center, we are only part of its environment, a pretty hostile one, if I may. Intelligence will have been proven a biologically successful tool when humankind will have reached a history (not necessarily a "recorded" one) of say... 160.000.000 years... That's about how long dinosaurs walked the earth... And it will have been proven THE MOST successful tool if it allowed our species to live more than any other species on earth. So it's really far from total success...

Also, about "discipline" and "self-restraint" humans have and "other animals" lack... First of all it's an old, fat lie... Many animals have shown behaviour resembling our self-control and they did so in the labs, as they do so in their natural habitat. Discipline is something common in the "animal kingdom"... But let's check it through another point of view... Discipline is a human value. It has no meaning outside the spectrum of human behaviour. Sometimes it does not have meaning even inside this spectrum. It isn't some kind of universal standard, it's just a human value. So, as it is in this sense "created" by mankind, or rather appeared along with it, it can be bypassed at will. Still, the "bypasser" is no less human than any other human, at least biologically speaking...

Oh...! Did I forget to mention that because I don't seek any identity, neither inherent nor acquired, the only one thing I use to base my opinion on is science? Yes, and for that matter biology mostly. So, If we do not follow the same principles, I'll be glad to hear or read your opinion, but we both know that this conversation is doomed...

Anyway, now that I offered a solution to the problem of meaninglessly differentiating the mankind from the rest of the animal kingdom, taking also into consideration that there is meaningful and useful differentiation -it's just normally people don't prefer this perspective- let me suggest something about meaninglessly differentiating humans from humans... We all know those famous notions that blacks are stupid, whereas whites are clever... Now, most people base this belief on the fragile foundations of some ghost IQ test results... Surveys... Studies...

Well... IQ? Mensa??? Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales and other similar standardized IQ tests? Oh, come on...! Binet was neither a biologist nor a neurologist. He was a psychologist. A studier of human behavioural patterns. So was the German Wilhelm Stern who coined the term "IQ". They lived in the early 20th century...! Early! 1900+...! I mean, ok, the modern tests are of course revised versions, but using a base as outdated as this... Well... It's a bit risky, to say the least. You just cannot be too biased by the results... Even Binet himself warned that such test scores should not be interpreted literally, because intelligence is plastic and that there was a margin of error inherent to the test. And please take into account the fact that this was stated back then, right from the very beginning... Of course it is evident that man never learned from his past, a past that he remembers only as he sees fit...

The fact is that science is not yet able to measure human intelligence. All that can be said is that one of the most important factor towards a man's success in such an IQ test is the time and money invested in him, not his inherent intelligence... After all, inherent intelligence is not considered to greatly deviate from one person to another. On the contrary, the opportunity, or if you prefer the privilege, of good, high-class education really DOES greatly deviate... Consider how uneven is the investment in education between Africa and USA... Then consider how uneven is the investment in education among africans, african americans and white americans inside USA... Now calculate... Finally, apply your results to your selected population set... What do you see? IQ has to do with the ability to make deductions, in the sense that you use your accumulated knowledge. If you have not accumulated anything of what is considered useful knowledge in our urban societies, that doesn't mean you're stupid... That just means that you didn't have proper education... Hence the correlation of low IQ scores and the lower classes...

But after all... May I see even ONE legitimate study having those results everyone is talking about? Because as far as I am concerned, It's that kind of studies you always hear of but you never actually get to lay hands on... I doubt they even exist...

That's all for today... Godmorgon and sleep tight...!