Poor Humanity: So Utterly Insignificant

With Nicolaus Copernicus and the advent of heliocentrism, humanity lost the comforting belief that the Earth occupied the center of the universe. We later came to realize that the Solar System is not even at the center of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, but resides in one of its outer regions. Our galaxy, in turn, is merely one among billions that make up the observable universe. Today, cosmologists even entertain the possibility that our universe may itself be only one among many distinct universes. To say, therefore, that humanity occupies a peripheral position is a colossal understatement.

Then came Charles Darwin, who showed that human beings are simply the outcome of an evolutionary process. We belong to the class of mammals and the order of primates, sharing a common ancestor with all other primates. In the twentieth century, geologists demonstrated that the entire span of human history amounts to less than the blink of an eye. Homo sapiens has existed for only about 300,000 years—whereas other primates have been around for roughly 60 million years—on a planet that is approximately 4.6 billion years old.

As if this were not enough, the field of animal behavior, or ethology, delivered yet another blow to human hubris by revealing that non-human animals possess remarkably sophisticated forms of communication and social interaction. In other words, they too are capable of thought. Consider, for example, whales and octopuses.

More recently, research into plant intelligence has suggested that plants, too, are capable of forms of cognition and problem-solving. Humans, it seems, no longer enjoy a monopoly on thinking.

And now artificial intelligence compels us to recognize that intelligence is not confined to biological organisms: it can also emerge in computational systems.

Poor humanity: remarkable solely for its violence, its cruelty, and its unwavering belief in its own superiority.