Human is the master of all organisms in the world, right? Are you sure?

Human is the master of all organisms in the world, right? Are you sure?

I remember when I was younger, I was taught (or brainwashed, depends on how you see it) that human beings are the master beasts of the world who rule over every other being. We are the cleverest, we can think (people assume that animals have no cognitive ability) and we create civilization. That does not sound humble at all. Are we really that great? It’s time for a reality check.

If we are so great, let us do an experiment to prove it. We randomly pick a guy and throw him into a jungle, desert or winter land, for one week, without any modern tool, except for a Leatherman multi-tool. Whether this random dude will survive the first night or not, depends whether he can make an emergency shelter, or else he might suffer from hyperthermia or poison bites. People mistakenly think the food and fire are the first priorities, well….

He has to find a clean water source to avoid dehydration. Drinking filthy water risks severe poisoning. He has to make fire and look for food, which includes insects and worms if there is no other alternative. What is the chance for this guy’s survival? Most likely he will just die, considering “smart” humans might not know even the basic survival skills. This means tiny insects and birds living in the natural habitat, can survive much better than this random guy as they have been there for a long time without much problem in surviving. Are we really as superior as we claim to be? Hardly.

Well, we are not over with this yet, not for now. To kill human beings, we do not even need to throw them into jungle or desert. We simply close down the markets and reduce crop production. Wow, people die even in their own home ground? Let’s have a look at history.

Lenin, the person who brought communism to real life in Russia, engineered an artificial famine by forcing the peasants to sell their crops to him at near zero profit. Since the profit (incentive) was so small, it was not worth to produce crop. Hence, crop production fell drastically and millions of people died from starvation and civil war. The civil war was a result of decreased crop production. Similar large scale death happened in China under Chairman Mao, where 2 million Chinese died of starvation under the infamous The Great Leap Forward policy. (If you want to know the statistic, Mao has caused up to 77 million deaths).

One example of natural famine is the Irish Potato famine, where millions of people died of starvation and illness. One third of the Irish population got wiped out (some people emigrated), just because, the agricultural food source is missing. With that ONE factor alone, many people died, without having to go through jungle survival challenge. Sigh. This is embarrassing for humanity. We should be alive considering we also have meat and other food alternatives.

Human beings are stubborn, and most of the time, refuse to adapt to new environment or situation. An average person can live for one month without food. Eating only once a day, which I have tried personally, will not affect a person’s health very much, unless the person is a child, who needs a lot of nutrient to grow up and develop his body. But would YOU give up one or two meals per day? Most likely you will protest on street demanding more food supply, when the food is scarce, rather than changing your own eating habit. Such stubbornness might cause many people’s death. Anyways, there are extreme situations where even the fittest person die, but what I want to point out is that, we are not really ready to face unexpected extreme scenarios (this reminds me of the book “The Black Swan”) and survive through it. If you are still not convinced, think of many millions of people, who are addicted to car driving, facing the oil price crisis today. Why can’t they just take a tram?

Finally, I would conclude that, the moral of the story is…. be humble. Do not think that we are the superior species in this world. We will learn the lesson in a very hard way. A huge earth quake, a tsunami or a famine might put us to where we should be. We are not that great. It’s just that our ego and superior complex makes us hallucinate in such a way.