There is a lot more to this earth than us and our brains....

"The fact that jelly fish has survived 650 million years despite not having brains gives hope to many people."

I got this mail first thing in the morning from a very esteemed colleague. I am sure the idea was to point out in a politically correct way that there are assholes in this world and all around us and that they have survived and that hope floats for them. Nice little chuckle. But a few minutes later I was thinking of how we humans are, that we measure everything in accordance to us. It is all about us. I mean all other beings on earth are of no good and are dumb the way they are purely because we are top of the food chain now. We believe that what we do and what we are is the right thing and what we have become after the long journey of development from simians and I dunno from where all, is the ultimate development of anything that moves naturally. Or anything that can be called natural.

There is a tree in our backyard in my hometown. My dad used to mention that it was older than most people he knows. It has been there for a very long time. Nobody even knows the exact time-frame. I mean we do not have biologists measuring that in our backyard. But it has survived many a problematic situation and it has survived well, 'coz it still jingles in the wind, drops those fruits and shines bright green in the spring. Isn't she smart and happy and somewhere in its core it knows what is to be done to survive. I dunno how but it does. I mean it may not have a brain, a central nervous system and that extraordinary bullshit that is propagated called intelligence among us. It has its own way and guess what it survived and keeps shedding, and surviving.

The jelly fish example is absolutely stupid. In fact, we should be thinking that may be it is us who need this thing called a brain to survive, mebbe organisms do not. I was watching a program on Animal Planet about how bacteria takes pains to survive and how smart it is at reaching that place which allows it to survive and thrive. It was a brilliant insight on how things work or how nature has a mechanism to get things in order. This particular bacteria can only survive inside of a cat, so what it does is that it searches for the rat and anything that the rat eats. It gets the rat to do that and then mold the rats brain to loose its one primal control which is to stay away from cats. The rat would make sure that it attracts the cat and then easily fall prey to it. All this because of the bacteria functioning inside of it. The bacteria reaches inside the cats body and all is hunky dory for it after that.

Now in human terminology it would go, bacteria has brains. Hahahaha...

Jelly fish has survived 650 million years because it knows how to survive. It has the necessary skills to survive. Nature has endowed it with those skills. And it is way better than us. Even for a motivational speaker who wants to go sarcastic at times this example does not augur well because survival with or without a brain is the most important skill. All the intellectual capacities and brains in the world does not allow a lot of us to manage our relationships, time, energy, inefficiencies, professional life, simple tasks etc etc etc.... But if we manage to survive and work our way through life with the varied perceptions of success each one of us has and at least achieved some of it partially, I reckon it has never been because of the brains. I reckon it is because of our ability to react to situations in accordance to the needs of the occasion. That has brain coming in between, but mostly that has experience, understanding of things as we grew up, the enormity of situations that we have faced continuously and it has nothing to do with the part of the brain that allowed us to read, write, learn and become masters of the universe through creating things which are mostly destroying our primary way of life.

Anyway, the primary attempt from my end was to state that all beings in their state whichever way they are; are brilliantly smart. They do what they do. They eat shit, they eat raw plants, they eat plastic created by us and sometimes they fail to live and sometimes they succeed to live. But to say that they are dumb that they cannot differentiate between what we can differentiate or have to come differentiate is not a thought worthy of someone with brains.

Amen...