Beautiful Humans

if human society is in the least bit interesting to you then even a cursory study of ants and other social insects should be quite revelational. how can we not be amazed by societies that have communication methods faster and more accurate than our own, extraordinary divisions of labor, and so many more inexplicable complexities. it seems that our difference is that we each have strong individual free will, and ironically most of us choose to trade it to be exactly as how they perceive ants to be, "mindless". yet for millions of years they have been doing things we are incapable of yet aspire to do. our notion of dinosaurs as the only other beings comparable to us is perhaps comforting since these bumbling giant lizards let us feel as though we are so advanced from the 'reptilian brain' ourselves. and to see an ant colony as the individual reveals the fascinating idea of individual ants being more akin to neurons in a great cerebral cortex that is the hive mind. and here we are looking to space for intelligent life yet we trample on creatures with abilities far beyond our own in some ways, yet parallel in so many others. amazing how we revel in being "top of the food chain", while systematically destroying the chain itself. but our beauty as humans always shines through, and perhaps not in any one persons lifetime, but as a race, we will learn to be one with nature again. Read the works of E.O. Wilson, a passionate myrmecologist (myr- =ant) and humanist, and see that an appreciation for ants and an insight into their infinitely varied lives can only give us a better perspective into our own. open your eyes, and your mind can never be closed.