Since the beginning of time, man has been doing all the work in determining where a particular lifeform belongs in a set of defined groups. I'm not a really big person to talk to when it comes to biology, but I remember Childcraft mentioning that living thing has its own place in the so-called 'Animal Kingdom'. A creature can be called a mammal, a bird, a mollusk, a fish (I forgot the actual term), or (fuck it) something else. I am led to believe that animals were divided as such based on their actual means and methods when it comes to survival.
So when a new animal is discovered, you can say that it can be assigned to one of these abovementioned groups based on its functions and abilities.
Don't deny it, a salesman probably passed by your house one time or the other selling World Book Enclyclopedias. That would be a good investment to consider for my kids, by the way.
Anyway, you probably notice that it took these people who bothered to group them a good deal of time to come up with the actual criteria to determine where a chicken belongs. As an introduction to yet another evolving thought, I choose to group living things according to their privileges, particularly the blessing of thought. You either have it or you don't. A majority of living beings that think can read. If you can read this, you can say that you think. And I can bet that if you read this at the time of its posting (November 2006), you are most definitely a human being.
"No I'm not!"
Fuck you.
Or, I'd like to meet you. Is your name, by any chance, Lassie? Or maybe Mr. Ed? (cue neigh)
Sorry. Okay. My point is, it is ultimately the gift of thought, the gift of reasoning that defines us as human beings. It's what takes us one step higher than animals. So there shouldn't be any reason why we have racism in the world. But let's not go there... at least not for now. Thinking brought us a lot of things. Personally, I'd like to think that thinking gave us the wheel, fire, and Aston Martins. We can think of so much, that we even thought of ways for things to think; In fact, I'm using one of these 'thinking things' to document this right now.
Thought is a good thing. Could there be a way for thinking to be bad?
(To be continued)