Pippi the cat

You can read me directly at www.indi.ca.

We have a cat, or should I say, the cat has us. During the rainy season a kitten took shelter under the security guard’s chair and my daughter took it into the house. I spend a lot of time with this creature and it gives zero shits about anything I’m thinking about. Indeed, I am the one cleaning its shit. What’s going on?

Humans claim supremacy over other animals, but no other animal validates this claim. What do you call a king that crowns himself? That’s just an ordinary Burger King customer. How lame. There’s obviously no objective truth to human supremacy, just ask anyone objective, like a crow or thalagoya. They’ll just flick their tongue or shit on you, as such a stupid question deserves. Humans consider the concept of white supremacy offensive, but supremacy over all living beings is somehow normal. It’s not. It’s deranged.

By what criteria are we lords of the critters? Our power to scare and kill? By that token, viruses reign supreme. By our terrible power to literally ‘change’ the climate? What about the plant and bacterial gods that made the climate? They’re more awesome still. Is it because we can make stuff, bend nature to our will? All the stuff we make will disappear in a few million years, a shake of a T-Rex’s tail. So what’s left, to justify our airs? Sheer numbers? Our livestock outnumber us. Cars use up most of our land. We’re ruled by corporations (artificial persons). What are we even talking about? The only supremacy we can truly claim is supreme arrogance.

Given a small survey of the animals in my house, the only things they find impressive about human civilization are A) tissue paper and B) the ability to scratch itches. Scratches and sniffles, that’s all we’ve conquered that’s of general interest. The cat and dog don’t watch the TV, the Internet is just something to warm their bellies, and electricity is extraneous. What interests them is the constant amount of food in the house, but countless street dogs and cats seem to get by. Indeed, our dog’s greatest ambition is to chase the garbage truck and the cat is constantly scheming to sneak out. In no way do these creatures treat me as their superior. They’re constantly showing me their anuses.

I’m increasingly convinced that all the science, all the poetry, all the art, it’s no better or worse than the mating dance of any other creature. It may be worse because — while we’re interested in their displays— they’re not interested in us. Our vaunted intelligence is a parlor trick, a frill, a colorful feather, a red bottom.

We claim that human intelligence is the ‘height’ of evolution, but this is dumb. Evolution is adaptation to the environment, and what has ‘intelligence’ done besides destroy the environment in a few hundred generations? As far as evolutionary traits go, intelligence is objectively the worst. It fucks up the environment and kills the host. It’s like a brain virus predator.

People keep saying intelligence will solve our problems, but it literally creates them! The problem is that our concept of the world doesn’t match the world, and making even more complex concepts won’t help. In meditation you have to clear your mind of words completely to understand anything. The first rule of holes is stop digging.

Human supremacy is the fundamental hole we’re in. It’s impossible to think our way out because human supremacy is the foundation of almost human thought. Humans are made in gods’ image, and given the power to name (and tame) the animals. Humans are endowed with reason, which gives our names meaning, and lets us manipulate nature and even atoms. Humans have responsibility, including the responsibility to ‘save’ the planet. But save the planet from what? This is like the ax saving the forest. We’re from the forest but we ain’t for the forest. That much is plain.

Any bright idea we have is going to be some form of shovel, until we get out of the philosophical hole we’re in. The hole we have dug to separate ourselves from all other animals on Earth. We have to go back to what we were, and as children that respect our elders, not as men. We have to bow before the sun gods and the nature gods and respect our kin. That’s cute, but it’s too late for that, isn’t it?

Whatever brain virus infected humans with grain in rows and databases is exploding out of our brains and it has an evolutionary destiny of its own. These artificial lifeforms — genus capital, species corporations — have already colonized the world and are already killing their ancestral lifeforms, as evolution often does. And we take no notice of them at all! We’re the cats in that situation.

We’re completely dependent on artificial lifeforms like corporations and states to feed us, clean up after us, and keep us in our cages. And we pay even less attention to them than our pets do to us! We’re oblivious. We’re all just bugs in someone else’s rug. I suspect it's rugs and bugs all the way up, and all the way down.

We think we’re a higher species, but even our pets don’t acknowledge us as such. Meanwhile artificial life is higher than us, and we don’t acknowledge them either! Perhaps everyone’s arrogant and everyone’s ignorant. That nature of having one perception is that you don’t have others.

I think about this as the cat interrupts my writing to writhe in front of my keyboard. Stop bothering me dude! What do you want? But maybe it’s trying to tell me something. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe that’s the point, to STFU and just do some social grooming. Maybe we’re all just here, and the best we can do is scratch our itches and go crazy on the tissue box.