Is being the smartest really a gift?

Nowadays, we, humans are always trying to find answers to every wonder our senses perceive. Our rates of breakthroughs in technologies and knowledge are rising drastically compared to the old times. The world wars have ended, creating a world where two different communities have no intention to colonize each other. A united race consisting of billions being together to boost our minds in our knowledge. An era of peace between areas and nations.

We haven't seen other species getting close to this state of mind, but is it really that good having all this knowledge?

In my opinion, when knowledge comes to us, so does self-awareness. Self-awareness in here is the type where you ask questions about your existence and use in life. This side effect might come mildly to most people, but for some, it strikes their thoughts and emotions altogether. "What are we here for?", "Why am I me?". Questions like these whispers in the darkest alleys of their minds as they linger around the streets of thought. But, like how a small spark from 2 rocks can create a huge wildfire, these whispers can change their minds to a living nightmare, leaving people in fatigues to their normal lives and maybe, suicide.

A fact that almost everybody ignores is that the brain named itself. That fact can be funny but also scary. Our brains work in a very interesting and complicated manner. Our part of the cerebral cortex, which is for cognition, is disproportionally large compared to other animals. The total human brain mass consists of 80% of it! That then explains why we have much higher cognition than any other creature.

Now, let's get straight to the main point regarding the question in the title, "Is being the smartest really a gift?”. Let’s list down the points I got.

First, it’s about our self-consciousness. The fact that we can look at ourselves and say “What are we?” or “Why are we here?” is something pretty awesome for an organism to do. Although we can’t really now that we are the only one as we don’t know the language of other creatures. Let’s just hope those scientists can create good enough brainwave detectors for that. Ok, back to the point. Most people would say “Yeah we can improve ourselves anytime we want”, but for some people, we wonder what are we improving for and why are we doing this? It’s getting depressing by the fact that we won’t have answers to the meaning of life yet(or maybe never). A similar thing to this is another reason why people want to suicide. They think that they have no purpose in life and are a burden to others. But in this case, these people are saying that we have no purpose to whatever we are doing in this universe because in the end, even though we saved trillions of animals and plants, created new technology, and maybe conquered the universe, we will have nothing else to save. For someone to feel full of purpose, they need that feeling every day.

Some of you might get offended by the first point, but I have an agnostic personality and if we have no proof of what we call the ‘Afterlife’ or ‘Life after death’(this oxymoron bamboozles me every day), we really have no reason to depend on it 100% like it’s either that or the death of the universe. But I’m not saying that the afterlife doesn’t exist. I’m open to anything out there. That’s the whole meaning of agnostic. I’m just saying, for something that can potentially be made up by man, we really kinda give too much attention to it. I can assure you that no one reading this has seen someone who has risen from the dead to tell you there is heaven and hell or god is real. So… for those who want me to… no. I’m not including the afterlife as something I would strive upon as my purpose in life.

For my second point, it is about our need to find answers to everything we sense that is out of our knowledge. We always want to find answers to every question that comes to our thought. Starting from small things like “What will I have for dinner?” to stuff like “Is there a multiverse out there or are we alone?”. There are the questions we can answer, there are ones that we can only answer in the distant future, and there is some that we might not find answers to at all. To me, this is a great variable of our race. It’s what makes us unique. Our act of tribalism is what brings us up here because if we hadn’t created weapons and defences for ourselves from predators, we will be like all the other animals, thinking of how to survive. We thrive because we deserved it. I say deserve-d because I think we are not how we are before with nature(which I will talk about in another essay).

As my final point, it is about us destroying and using nature around us to thrive. I’ll explain in more detail in another file but in summary, we deserved to thrive. But I don’t think we deserve it anymore. Nature made us go on top of the food chain out of our pure will and intelligence. But in the end, we end up destroying the nature around us to keep going. But there is one thing that we can do about this. As we have destroyed nature, we also have the ability to fix it or make it better. Ok, this point makes up my summary.

SO, for my summary and final thoughts about this topic, contradicting the unbalanced ratio between the good things I said to the bad things(which is more to the bad stuff ), I think I am neutral about this. No. Actually, it depends on us. There are 2 obvious paths for the future. There is the good one, which is fixing our own planet while finding other habitable planets for us to spread to, or the bad one, which is we leave this useless ball and make the same fate for the next one we land on. In more understandable words, we either become a race that rules and explores parts of the universe peacefully or become a resource-wasting, habitat-destroying race of pests that gives nothing back to nature.

But of course, this is all the opinions of a teen who has been in quarantine for almost 6 months and is getting killed by the essence of boredom, so if there is anything wrong or exaggerated, you’ll know why. I’d love to hear all your thoughts about this and I like people who really contribute to a topic like this either because it tells me they have an open mind and is ready to redeem yourself into the mysterious world around us. So don’t feel shy to email me anytime! Go on! Tell me everything you think about this! Ohh and by the way, I’ll probably insert quotes from random people that emails if their words are touching or are wise beyond my words. So see y’all, readers!