Who's Superior - Them or Us? - Part 2

So the question posed in the previous entry was, given the similarities between an ant society and a human one, is one better than the other?

Let's think about that one: ants rarely seem to screw anything up. They continue to multiply and expand seemingly to no end. They appear to be pretty efficient creatures: anyone who has had to put up with an ant invasion in their kitchen knows how energetic they are. One discovers a morsel of food left behind and soon there's a trail of ants going to and fro, taking bits of the food back to the nest. Meanwhile back at the nest, some ants are guarding it, some are enlarging it by burrowing into the earth to make new tunnels, some are caring for immature ants, some are guarding the queen ant, and some are out foraging for food. And as I mentioned yesterday, some seem to be idle but apparently no one objects. And this goes on, day after day, week after week, for years and years. They get the job done.

Now us humans seem to be expanding, also. Someone spots a bargain at Costco and soon there's a whole swarm bearing down on it, a trail of people taking them back to their nests. We build and build, we defend our territories, and basically, we do the same things ants do. But our human society is often mired in things that take us backwards, not forwards: like politics. Like crime. People whose actions are not in the best interest of society. Those kinds of things don't exist within an ant colony. Some of them do exist between colonies, such as ants who invade other ant nests and steal food and other ants, turning them into slaves. Or ants of different colonies who go to war with each other. But within the same colony, it seems like ants do whatever needs to be done to ensure its survial. Sort of like, from each ant according to its ability and to each ant according to its need. And it works. Even those ants who seem lazy and do nothing - perhaps they aren't able to do anything. How do we know - we don't speak ant language. But they still need to eat, and other ants feed them as well as ensure that these "lazy" ants have shelter. All this is seemingly automatic, by instinct.

Why can't we function as smoothly as an ant colony? Here's something to ponder: what would happen if all of a sudden, ants had the ability to think, and became conscious of their existence? How would this awareness affect them? And at the same time, these same ants gained the ability to experience emotions and feelings. What would happen? That's it for today, time to stop here.