Monday, November 10, 2008

TRANSFIGURATION 3

In recent weeks I've got myself into some fun and passionate debates regarding human versus animal intelligence - and naturally, taking the side that chimps and birds (for example) are more intelligent than us lot. Having now built up some incontrovertible arguments in defence of said thesis, both philosophical and physiological, of which even a student of the great Socrates would be proud, I think it's only fair to share with you from whence some of my best source material is derived. Still waiting for National Geographic to make More Stupid Than An Amoeba, but give them time, we're getting there.

4 comments:

kerstin said...

Christ talk about lazy blogging. Every post coming soon?

Shonx said...

Found the National Geographic piece fascinating. My old flatmate's collie managed to figure out that if she removed the door handle from her owner's room that she would be able to come and go as she pleased - didn't realise until we were all moving out and found the door knob hidden under the lining of her dog basket. Pretty canny pooch that one.

Odile Lee said...

"The video included scenes of a human failing the test, seldom recalling more than one or two numbers, if any."

ADHD- which involves greatly reduced forebrain activity, retains this. My fav game as a child, and now as a adult- Im known as "the person who can find anything" at work ( large dept store. Photo memory, It seems.Scarily, works even if massively sleep lagged, AND no idea what item looks like or where it could be. Found myself going into storerooms, and seeing hand just reach out ( to me what seemed random) and grasp the item in question.

" No fellow chimp was seen to take advantage of his disability."

I find those intelligent enough to embrace the beast within ( subconscious or what have you, I don't know, all different ways of "undoing yourself used I ascertain )- in humans, to be the same towards myself, and others more burdened with real, terrible disability.
Perhaps there is hope, there. Somewhere.

Odile Lee said...

" “It is the desire to act like others, an identification with certain others,”...

This also, a hallmark of those Ive found to be truly, different individuals in their ability to transgress borders not usually allowed to self by majority.

The ability to neither mock, nor act as suffering the worst of fools but a understanding that here is another being, somehow deficient in some way seeking to understand, communicate, or learn.