The Human Species and Humility

Humans are a rather arrogant lot, consider if you will see how we believe we are the most superior species on the planet, no matter that there are species that are far older than we and have carved out a rather nice niche for themselves. Someday when humans have evolved into something more adaptable or become extinct, I think we all inherently know that other species, more adapted, will remain in high numbers and ready to take on the next era on Planet Earth – the cockroach for instance.
When it comes to the human species, perhaps we need a little more humility. One think tank mind, Jim, explains it this way; “It is more than a little revealing that this entire topic discusses the importance (or not, right Lance?) of humility within the context of communication and interaction between humans. By far, the more important brand of humility, one that is in incredibly short supply, is our humility as a species. We can’t seem to get over ourselves. The Anthropocene is well on its way to being the shortest epoch in the history of the planet. If that isn’t humbling, I don’t know what is.”
Jim makes a good point. Often humans assume they are the ultimate species of the planet, only ones that can do, this, that or the other thing when in reality a large number of species are fully capable of such things; communication, empathy, self-reflection, you name it. Other species often can do things we can’t; infrared, navigation, echolocation, sonar, and such, lots of different types of organic sensors, and we are only learning of this in observation. Most of the significant innovations humans have come from biomimicry, copying nature.
Also, humans believe they can master their environment – geo-engineering, stopping Mother Nature, with sea walls, dams, etc. And then we see how powerful Mother Nature is compared to flesh and blood even with humans’ intellect. That is humbling, indeed.
All life is exciting, and all life matters, not just “Black Lives Matter” or “All Human Lives Matter,” but all beings and all living things matter. It is amazing how much humans copy other species and their evolutionary adaptations into our innovations and science, without those examples and millions of years of evolution to figure it out; we’d still be trying to fly, not have a supersonic flight, VTOL and planning human-crewed missions to Mars. Indeed, Jim is correct, and maybe we need to be thinking here, so please consider all this and have a little humility human.