An earthworm doesn’t know anything. It can’t see or hear or communicate or think. And yet it can procreate, it knows to eat, and it has a pretty good idea of how to escape. Interesting to think that the only reason it tries to burrow when it is touched unexpectedly, is because over all these years the only ones that lived did that. So somehow, this random assembly of coagulated protein has been trained into certain behaviors simply because the ones that did not behave exactly that way were eliminated from the breeding population. That said, a guppy could never understand what a monkey understands. Guppies don’t have understanding. They comprehend some things better than a worm, but they don’t understand anything and yet they can reproduce and eat and they know to try to escape and hide from threats. Only because the root chemistry of their coagulated proteins has been bent to the will of the world and the ones that did not engage the reflexive response to run and hide were removed from the population. The monkey understands things, but he can’t comprehend things. Meaning, he understands cause and effect. But he cannot comprehend an intangible “concept”. He would have no way of comprehending the world outside his jungle. Outside the jungle he would be able to procreate, and eat, and he would fight or flight. In other words defend himself, or run and hide, but he would not comprehend what was going on. And yet humanity somehow thinks they are going to break our existence and heaven, and the universe down into terms that we might understand with our level of comprehension and our five senses. How mystical does existence have to be to the guppy for it not to understand anything? How elaborate is the world that an ape can’t comprehend it? What do we think we are going to be able to divine as we probe the meaning of life and how everything works? Truth is, we are about as likely to figure it all out, or even comprehend the terms in which you would discuss it, as a guppy in a gas station.
