Further, even the common cliché that we are the most intelligent species alive is open to contestation. After all, who is to make this judgment? The fact stands that we humans are calling ourselves intelligent, and that definitely does not seem reliable, does it? When you walk on the street on a rainy day and see a tiny worm crawling, do you think the worm realises that you are intelligent? Does that little being know that something more ‘superior’ than itself has just passed by? Of course not. Obviously. The worm might regard itself as smart, superior and simply dominant over other inferior species. The truth is that the same thing is applicable to us as well. We have developed a certain set paradigm of measuring intelligence with ourselves at the top. It’s our understanding of what it means to be intelligent that we enforce on other creatures.

And that makes us more or less like the worm. We seem to be living on the lines of Narcissus: loving our own visage, admiring our own reflection. Preoccupied with ourselves and disdainful of other creatures. And the result is quite evident. All we need to do is look around ourselves to realise that after all, we aren’t as smart as we think.  

Look at how most of us are currently living. Is it sustainable? Can people live as they are doing today, forever? Are there enough resources here on earth to keep us going this way for a very long time? Chances are, no. This means that humans are bound to be extinct one day, and there are so many ways we could meet the end.

Technology—particularly communication and electronics—can bring humans together and make life easy, or become a reason for our downfall. Could robots eventually surpass human capabilities and potentially eradicate us from earth or turn us into helpless slaves? If you think about it, we actually are pretty close to reaching the point where artificial intelligence overtakes us. We rely on technology to do so many things simply because the output is better and it is designed to substitute human potential. In the near future, it may just take an advanced robot to destroy us all or at least make us completely redundant by enslaving us. Some say this is too ‘science fictiony,’ but if you look at the rate of the growth of technology, we may eventually reach that stage.

As we become more submissive to technology and allow newer devices to replace human beings, we inevitably encourage our own downfall.    

War is another potent reason that can lead us to our extermination. As a matter of fact, it always has been. But gone are the days of bows, arrows and blades. In a world where war has been redefined into an earth-shattering (literally) cataclysmic event by nuclear bombs and hi-tech weaponry, annihilation seems imminent. It’s just a matter of time before a couple of trigger-happy, belligerent leaders decide to go berserk.

And obviously, we have devised many more ways of dying out.

Climate change is a very scary thing. And even though many disagree that humans have caused it, it is undeniable that both the temperature and carbon dioxide levels are increasing way too rapidly. And what we see  all around us is pollution, vanishing animal species and depleting forests, rising seas and receding ice.

So much for ‘human’ intelligence. We can’t even clean the mess that we made ourselves. And if we continue with our foolhardiness, extinction is inevitable. While wars and uncontrolled AI have the potential of annihilating the human race swiftly, climate change, on the other hand, is a more passive killer. It manifests over time through series of events like flood, tsunami, wildfire, desertification and increasing toxicity. In other words, earth is slowly becoming uninhabitable. And going by what’s happening all around us, with thousands of people falling victim to environmental disasters (mostly man-made) every year, one can safely assume that the downfall has commenced.

Let’s hope that we can put aside our egos and selfish motives, and try to create a better place not just for ourselves, but for all the species that inhabit the planet. And please let’s give up the hubris that we are the smartest creatures around.

Lamichhane is a student at the British International School, Moscow