Do We Only Think We're Thinking?

It occurred to me the other day that sheep were very smart in acquiring shepherds.  Doing so allowed them to outsource all their problems.  They no longer had to fear being eaten by wolves or worry about finding food and water.  A shepherd would handle all that and shave that hot wool off every summer to boot.

My point is most of what we do is little more than evolutionary programming.  Sure, we think we're cutting the grass because we like the look of a neat lawn.  We think we're actually doing some harm to the grass by not allowing it to grow tall and keeping it from going to seed.  But, grass is very clever.  Grass has tricked us into doing what it needs to survive, namely by making sure trees can't grow up and take all the sunlight.  How did grass do it?  By taking advantage of what we humans think looks nice.

A bee may think; "Alright, I'm going to fly into that flower, get some nectar and take it back to my hive."  But, that flower has spent a very long time evolving itself to be attractive to bees.  Discovering just the right shape, color and flavor that bees like to tick it into carrying pollen to the next flower.  And it did it without having a brain!

In fact, flowers have survived on this planet longer than just about anything else and done pretty well for themselves.  They don't need brains.  They don't need critical thinking.  All they needed was time.

Understanding this is humbling.  We humans aren't the masters of the Earth.  We're the slaves of the plants and animals we proudly call domesticated.