Once inebriated in a drinking spree, I came to argue with drinking buddies about what makes us superior to other living and non-living things on the planet. We philosophized about our intellectual superiority, the advancement of mankind in space and technology, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the superiority of art in various forms over other discipline, our inability to distinguish (oftentimes) between our divine and mundane passions, the drama in the quest for knowledge and power and the archeological probe how species evolved from inanimate thing to single and complex organism.
We could not agree on anything behind as we shared our knowledge on natural science where animals behave superior to any human advancement, on their particular behavior or instinct. The ability of shark to smell blood miles away, the sophisticated way dolphin communicate, how a homing pigeons and strayed dogs or cats always find their way home, the precision and social interaction of bees and ants, baffled us. Or they might just perhaps superior in one particular domain of intelligence. The more we were confused, to think that of all animals, we are the most unlikely to (we cannot really unless adopted by apes) survive when left alone at birth. Finally, we have no defense against natural disasters as we continue to discover ways to adapt, unlike other animals and plants which could easily adapt after a wildfire, earthquake or deluge.
However, we still rationalized that what makes us superior to all is our potential to become. A new scientific finding reveals that most of us have not even used 10% of our brain in a lifetime. We could argue that we used more than 10% of our brain but not on worthwhile things, just like spending most of our time on the Internet playing games and forwarding nonsense emails to friends or spending so much time with our family as our ultimate duty as we lend deaf ears to more pressing issues plaguing our society today. We are caught in the web of trying to find a balance of attention in every aspect of our lives throughout our existence. Ah, here again our mind wanders and we recourse to rationalization.
While pondering over the tumbled beer bottles on the table, pausing for some thoughts, one talked of how we need more beer, as the mood dictated not to avoid it as a deppresant. Then one suspected that since we find pleasure in drinking, the answer is maybe on our fingers wrapped on what kept us so intellectually-disposed that night, –er, dawn!
Uereka!
It seems that every aspect of life plus all the ideas in the world are released on our finger tips (corny). We used it often than our heads. We cannot seem to pray the rosary without our fingers toying on the rosary beads often checking out how many more left to finish. We are driving sometime without thinking and, we used it clinging dearly on our object of affection. But animals have fingers too. Perhaps, one of the fingers is the answer to our psychotic inquiry. It is our thumb. (By the way, is the thumb classified as member of the fingers, their older brother or father or is it a different part of the body? ) The thumb, the posable thumb, aside from what separate us from other primates and animals, endows us with tactile reflexes. Thumb has more uses now than before. Many argue that it is better to lose all our fingers than our thumb because it performs more than any of our fingers or all of our fingers combined. We depend on the spacebar to create a space between the words to make a coherent sentence. We develop corn on our thumb due to our addiction to texting and kids usually had it on theirs trying to draw out circles to be able to write legibly in print or cursive writing in the future. While some of us in between lectures find a nook to be alone or while in the CR or sleeping snugly beside our loved one still suck our thumb. Imagine eating with our hands without a thumb, what sort of mess we can make of ourselves. We can express a lot with a gesture with our thumb to affirm or condemn. We can vote even with just our thumb.
Does it really follow to be called human and superior to other beings because of the flexibility of our thumb? We all agreed at the end when we saw the sun was beginning to peek on the horizon. We still have to tidy ourselves up because our recollection had to start at exactly 8:00 in the morning. Well, two and a half hour is still enough to find the greatest use of our thumb.
