We say it almost with pride.
Homo sapiens. The thinking human. The wise human.
As though the name of our species were already a prize.
Everything else merely lives.
We think.
We can remember what is gone. Compare what is happening now with what happened before. Imagine things that have never existed.
And, perhaps strangest of all, we can see what has not happened yet.
Not literally.
We can foresee.
A human being can sit in a warm house and think about a winter that has not yet arrived.
Look at a child and imagine the life that child may have twenty years from now.
Notice a small crack in a wall and understand that one day the wall may fall.
See the first signs of trouble long before trouble itself arrives.
Surely that is one of the great gifts of intelligence.
But the gift has a peculiar reverse side.
The creature capable of imagining tomorrow's pain can begin to suffer it today.
Nothing has happened yet.
But the fear has.
Nothing has been lost yet.
But a human being already knows that it can be.
An animal runs from danger when danger is present.
A human being can come home, close the door, and spend the entire night thinking about a danger that is no longer there.
Or one that does not yet exist at all.
Reason gave us the future.
And with the future came the ability to suffer the future in advance.
We do not know everything.
Perhaps knowing everything would be unbearable.
But we know enough.
Enough to understand where certain roads lead.
Enough to recognize a disaster while it is still only beginning.
Enough to see trouble before it reaches the door.
And not always enough to stop it.
Perhaps this is one of the heaviest burdens of intelligence:
to know enough to foresee, but not always enough to prevent.
Then it becomes difficult to call reason simply a gift.
Because reason takes away one very comfortable refuge:
“I didn't know.”
While you do not know, innocence is easy.
Once you understand, something changes.
What has been seen cannot easily be unseen.
Once cause and consequence have joined in your mind, it is difficult to separate them again.
Today leads somewhere.
An action continues to exist long after the person who performed it has stopped thinking about it.
And this is where an unpleasant thought appears:
To think is a punishment.
Not because thinking is bad.
But because thought deprives us of the innocence of not knowing.
And even that is not the whole story.
At some point, humans took another step.
We stopped merely adapting ourselves to the world and increasingly began adapting the world to ourselves.
Cold?
Fire. Clothing.
No shelter?
Build a house.
A river in the way?
Build a bridge.
Not enough food?
Cultivate the land.
Too far?
The wheel.
Then the car.
The airplane.
The ship.
The city.
The dam.
The factory.
Human beings became capable of reshaping enormous parts of the world around them.
And once again, this looked like a gift.
We are stronger.
We can do more.
We are in control.
We are the masters.
But perhaps Homo sapiens misunderstood something again.
Because the ability to change the world is not the same as the right to do whatever we please with it.
Especially when we are capable of understanding the consequences in advance.
A forest cannot knock on our door and ask:
“What will you leave for those who come after you?”
A river cannot file a complaint.
An ocean cannot demand an explanation.
An animal cannot address a parliament.
And those who have not yet been born cannot object to decisions being made today on their behalf.
But we can imagine their absence.
We can understand what may happen next.
And suddenly the position of the “most intelligent” creature begins to look very different.
Think of an ordinary home.
There are younger ones in it.
They may not understand everything.
And there is someone who is expected to think a little further ahead.
Not because he is better.
Not because everything in the house belongs to him.
But because he is the one who will be asked what happened.
If a child fails to understand the consequences, that is one thing.
If the adult understood them and acted anyway, that is another.
And here comes a thought humanity may not particularly like.
Perhaps we were never made kings of the Earth.
Perhaps we were never appointed its owners.
Perhaps nobody handed us a document saying:
“All of this is yours. Do whatever you like.”
Perhaps something much less comfortable happened.
You were not made the master of the house.
You were made its father.
And you failed to notice.
A father in the oldest and simplest sense.
Not the owner.
Not the ruler.
The one who must look around at the end of the day and ask whether everyone in the house is all right.
The one who has to think not only about tonight's meal, but about tomorrow.
The one who cannot consume everything simply because he reached the table first.
The one responsible for those who are younger, weaker, or simply unable to defend themselves against his decisions.
Seen this way, the history of Homo sapiens begins to look rather strange.
We were entrusted with a home.
We mistook it for property.
We were given the ability to understand.
We mistook it for permission.
We were given the ability to foresee.
And too often we used it mainly to become better at taking.
The most uncomfortable part is that there appears to be no other father coming.
No one to arrive one day and say:
“All right. You have done enough. I'll take it from here.”
No one to restore an extinct species.
No one to rebuild a destroyed system exactly as it was.
No one to cancel consequences simply because we are tired of thinking about them.
Humanity appears to be alone in possessing, on this scale, the ability to ask:
“What happens next?”
Perhaps that means humanity is also the one that must answer the question.
And suddenly Homo sapiens sounds different.
Not like a medal.
Not like a title.
Not even like a compliment.
More like an assignment.
You can think.
You can foresee.
You know enough to understand consequences.
Which means it becomes increasingly difficult to say:
“I didn't know.”
Perhaps all this time we heard Homo sapiens as:
“You are wiser than the rest. Therefore you may rule.”
When the meaning may have been almost the opposite:
“You can see farther than the rest. Therefore you are responsible.”
And perhaps the greatest gift humanity ever received was, at the same time, its heaviest burden.
To think is a punishment.