Is man the highest most evolved life-form on earth, as we’ve all been taught to believe… or is he perhaps something else?
At my high school graduation, our class valedictorian delivered a speech entitled “Man above Men”, that would forever live in infamy. In it he proclaimed with no modest pride how he intended to become an uber rich, powerful successful Man above Men, even if it meant pulling himself up the shoulder of other men, squashing them beneath as he climbed. I am barely paraphrasing here what this 17 year old student actually said. It was a speech torn from the pages of an Ayn Rand novel. A speech to make any true Objectivist or Social Darwinist proud. A speech that stayed with me but that I never truly, fully appreciated until I read Mark Twain’s 1904 essay “Damned Human Race”.
In the book Ishmael, a 700 pound gorilla challenges an ordinary man to re-evaluate the history of mankind and the idea that man is the most superior and evolved form of life on earth. An idea that Darwin and every major religion validates, a belief Ishmael says every human being on earth is taught falsely to believe. Ishmael urges his human friend to wake up from mankind’s mass sense of entitlement before it destroys planet earth.
Mark Twain’s essay “Damned Human Race”. frames a similar idea in a much more satirical and scathing way. And clocking in at only 4 pages, there’s no reason not to stop, read it now, then let it change your life.
You can read the article here: “Damned Human Race”. Then let’s discuss how to use the one great thing we’ve got to r-evolve our species back to the higher plain.
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