7/23/2019 An Age Old Delusion

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An Age old Delusion

AASHA MEHREEN AMIN

Despite the centuries-old delusion that humans rank top on the list of living beings because of apparently superior

brains, the fact is that the reason they have advanced so much is because they are good at copying things - fromnature. The idea of flying we know, came from birds who don't even think about it when they accomplish this amazingfeat. Planes, helicopters, drones have all been shaped after birds, dragonflies and other insects ust as many of ourfavourite cars, the beetle being an obvious e!ample.

"ow scientists are saying that even our ability to speak or use a language has originated from the birds and the bees.Darwin, many years ago, had already theorised that humans borrowed a lot from the songs of birds and possibly sangfirst before they spoke #which may e!plain our natural instinct for bathroom singing$. %ecently scientists are sayingthat Darwin was on the right track and have further discovered that over the last & to ( thousand years humanshave combined the sounds of birds and animals to come up with languages to communicate and send information.)ure, we may not have complicated mating calls but we do tend to lower our voices to sultry levels and spruce up toattract possible mates.

There is no *uestion, therefore, that we love to copy which is why wehave words like 'plagiarism', 'cheating', 'patent' and 'copyright' in ourvocabulary.

The point of all this is that it is time we realise that we are not sooriginal after all and a bit of humility is in order. +ees though tiny, incomparison to people, have the ability to organise themselves, dividetheir armies according to certain functions of the community, bedemocratic in their selection process and even willingly give up theirlives for the greater good, in their case, the *ueen. ll this maysound familiar to many a human and it's because those littlecreatures that can intimidate with their buzz and sting, have taughtus these things ust by doing what they were designed to do bynature.

Patterns, designs, colour everything that is tangible have all beencopied from nature, from the symmetrical batik prints of butterfliesto the perfect colour combination in e!otic flowers and birds. This is

why you will never find anything anomalous in nature everything isperfectly colour-coordinated, there is ust no scope for the tackinesswe see in film sets and living rooms of the rich and gaudy.

hy then is it that humans, in spite of getting so much out of nature,try to pretend that they know better/

e love greenery but go out of our way to cut as many trees as possible to clear the way for gigantic, ugly billboardsto add to our concrete ungles. e like the sound of birds chirping but we drive them away with our constant love fornoise from garrulous voices through ubi*uitous microphones, blaring horns, grating construction work and screechingarguments. e like the idea of a peaceful, clean, fresh environment, but do everything possible to make thatimpossible.

0f it is being contrary, self-destructive, contradictory and delusional, then yes we are indeed different from all otherliving beings. e are uni*ue in our ability to hate, kill, steal and deceive, not for survival, but ust because we can. egrab from others not because we need to, because we ust want to. 1nlike other animals our appetites are insatiable2we will kill unnecessarily ust to know what something tastes like.

3ost of us are not cannibalistic and hence consider ourselves 'civilised' but it does not take much to get us to tortureand kill other human beings because they are not the right colour, or of the right race, religion, political party4

e are also incomparable in the way we pull each other down, deliberately undermining and sabotaging our fellowspecies ust to make ourselves look better.

1ndoubtedly, all these traits are remarkably distinctive from any other animal, bird, insect or plant.

Thank goodness they are not our copycats.

7/23/2019 An Age Old Delusion

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