Humans probe space for intelligent life. That’s ridiculous. Let’s first search Earth. Where is human intelligence? With each school shooting, each bomb, we come up empty.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., lamented: “We have learned to fly the air like birds, and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.â€
While we ratchet up violence, nature’s wisdom outshines human folly.
Trees don’t start wars. Animals don’t destroy their own habitats. They don't engineer their own extinction.
What does “intelligence†mean? How do we measure competency? In the natural world, it equals cooperative survival. Everything from towering forests to coral reefs display this know-how. Nature needs no ceasefire to co-exist.
Western society creates hierarchies, placing humans on top, animals and plants beneath. Wrong order. Humans uniquely reflect and innovate, yet squander these abilities and undermine our own species.
Animals and plants demonstrate mutualism. Trees share nutrients via roots. When attacked by insects, trees release warning chemicals to neighbor trees. They look out for each other.
And animals ace tests we are not smart enough to even perceive.
Octopuses teach adaptability and problem-solving. They Houdini through openings the size of eyeballs, camouflage to disappear.
Crows are master strategists. They bend wires into hooks to catch insects.
Elephants teach a master class in emotional intelligence. They comfort other elephants by rubbing them with their trunks. They remember routes to water sources across decades. They cover their dead with sticks or dirt. Grieve. Remember burial locations.
Some birds navigate more than 10,000 miles by sun, stars and visual landmarks. That’s nuts. Speaking of which: Squirrels bury hundreds of nuts and remember most locations.
Nature teaches longevity. On a cross-country road trip, I stumbled upon a park in the California mountains with bristlecone pines twisting their gnarled, sun-bleached branches skyward. They live more than 5,000 years.
And get this: Mushrooms are smarter than any CEO. They recycle and regenerate. They decompose dead matter and return nutrients to soil. Their actions keep forests alive. Their mycelium (roots) can extend for miles.
Fungi survived and adapted over a billion years. Homo sapiens? We’ve been around roughly 300,000 years. Less than 1% of fungi’s life.
Even slime mold is brilliant. Put slime in a maze with food at the end. Instead of spreading everywhere, slime charts a highly efficient path towards the food. In another experiment, scientists placed slime mold on a map with food sources in the locations of major cities (like Tokyo). Remarkably, it created pathways similar to the actual rail system (which optimizes efficiency).
If you don’t get the point, animals and plants are outright smarter than us. Admit it. We’ve split the atom and designed the World Wide Web, yet we can’t decipher life’s web.
Our way to measure intelligence is perverse: the speed of drone warfare and nuclear brinkmanship. We win the prize for most delusional. For racing fastest toward self-inflicted extinction.
So, now what? To survive, turn toward nature. Remember that qualities we perceive as “weak†or “soft†(like empathy and sharing), are strengths. After all, sharing toys is the first social lesson we teach children.
Observe flora and fauna, to remember we are all inextricably intertwined, and that future success and resiliency depend on “we,†not “me.†Community over individual.
