Hey, [smile politely] fuck you.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s just the way the mind of a 600 year old, investment banking, t-shirt wearing, centaur works, but aren’t friends supposed to support one another? See, I’ve got a friend – a guy I thought was my friend – who’s been letting loose with the anti-horse legs propaganda when I’m around. The irony, apart from the fact that I’m constantly reassuring/bolstering his self-esteem, is that this guy’s a fucking satyr!

Look, I believe that all legged animals, be they bipeds, quadrupeds, or even millipedes, are brothers and sisters and thus should be looking out for one another. I don’t care if your feet have toes, are cloven, or consist of a series of villi-like tendrils; we’re all using them to propel ourselves across the same earth. That’s why it hurts when he tries to equate his shorter legs and corollary his shorter leg span, with those of mortal humans. See, it’s not just that he’s trying to deny his own difference by self-identifying with the smooth legged; it’s that he’s placed them on this pedestal which, de facto, places me in a subordinate position. Look, some of my best friends are smooth legged bipeds! I’ve got nothing against them, I don’t even begrudge their ability to climb trees, get into busses, and swing artistically around shiny brass poles. I love those things. I’m just saying there’s more to life than that.

Life is more than literature, than mathematics, than politics, it’s even more than the sum of those things. An individual, be it a centaur, a satyr, or a human, is far more than the collection of it’s parts, it’s the organization and harmony of its parts as they work in tandem with one another and the external world. A post-mortem reveals very little about a human being while offering a great deal of information in the way of how and of what a human being’s body operates and is composed of. Is your life restricted to your body’s mechanics?

See, there are great human beings, but humanity is what makes them great. Humanity is the spirit of exchange and interconnectedness. See, no individual would get anywhere in life if left to their own devices. From day one, an infant is cared for, not just by the human beings that are present but by all those that came before it. Humans are products of the sharing done by their ancestors; technology, behavioural tendencies, pedagogy, the knowledge accumulated up to a point is passed forward in the hopes that future generations will be able to expand them. Humans are where they are because they supported one another in the present and took pains to ensure that future generations would be supported.

What makes humanity great isn’t an advance in any single field. Humanity’s complication of life via the proliferation of all sorts of skill sets and/or epistemological frameworks, conjoined with the desire to pass them on for the benefit of future generations while, simultaneously, hoping that these gifts will be improved upon, is what makes humanity great. I guess, what it comes down to, is that humanity’s greatness is its dependence on social coherence, its desire to experience and explain the phenomenon of living in as rich a way as possible, and the practices it’s developed to ensure that its members stay connected. Humanity is more than belonging to the species homo-sapien, it’s about plugging in to life via an extended epistemological network (this includes the more qualitative aspects of life, ie. Emotions and all that jazz).

So I may not be able to tap dance – the saddest irony for all of those wearing horse shoes – but I am able to communicate with other sentient beings, I laugh, I empathize, I occasionally – like when someone dies or something – get a bit misty eyed. I am a sentient being with the same psychological complexity granted to the homo-sapiens, so don’t tread on me, man!

In sum,

you're not as fucking cool as you think you are. you're an evolving product of your place in an every expanding existential economy. You're a constellation of machinic connections subject to life's caprice. so fuck off with what you think you know, and start treating people with the respect and dignity they deserve.

shit head.