Survival- The contrast in nature.

Survival. What does that mean to us humans? It probably means two meals a day, clothes to fit the climatic conditions of our surroundings, and shelter to fight off extreme temperatures if any. But it's not the same for everyone. Thanks to the contrast in nature, someone's daily life is someone's dream life.

Imagine you are a deer. A baby deer living in the wild. Ever since you were born there's only one thing for you to do in this world. Survive. From the very moment you are born you are on the radar for a wild animal such as a hyena, tiger or a lion. And to be honest that is terrifying if you really think about it. You have no clue what's going on around you and yet you need to adapt immediately to everything around you or you die. And your existence has no meaning because in nature it takes, quite literally, no time for us to go back to the dust. No matter how big the animal might be or whatever they have achieved in life. All it takes is one tide or one encounter with the wrong animal. We're very lucky in my opinion that we have such a mind to evaluate and think in different situations that would help us survive.

If we were ever in a near death experience it would probably be traumatizing for life for us. But as we imagined before, a deer. It's probably a daily thing for them. And there's no reward, that's just, necessary. Or else it's just skin and bones. We all are skin and bones but there's been this unsaid belief that us humans are more important than other beings on this planet such as animals, deer for example. Mainly because we can achieve more significant things. A deer won't, say, construct a building. A human is capable of doing that and that builds a belief that we are more important in this world. All thanks to our intelligence.

But all of that does not matter when faced with the relevant situation. Deer or human. When faced with a storm, you're just a being with some amount of life present inside you facing something that is much more powerful than you. At that point, at that second. It all comes down to one thing. Survival.

If we were to exchange lives with a deer. Again, survival would be the only thing necessary. For a deer to survive, with its frequent motion, on highways with hundreds of cars passing. Near impossible. And for us to face a lion when put in a forest, sure you have a mind more powerful than all of the lions in the world but look that creature in the eye. Do you think the laws of physics are gonna get you out of this one?

Maybe that is why we have developed a world that keeps us away from dangers. And that could be a factor that has kept us away from progress. Imagine every place where humans ever set foot were as confined as a chemistry laboratory and as stable as a benzene ring. That gives us a lot of room to do things as we please. That cuts out the survival factor. Because then we can focus on better things. Then comes in the progress factor. If we had such conditions since the stone ages, the human civilizations would've colonised space probably when we were busy building Rome. But unfortunately for us that wasn't the case. We spend much of our lives stablising ourselves. Surviving in the world and then after we have been chewed up and spit out do we get some room for ambition. Then ambitious people work on their ambitions to achieve brilliant things. This little window. this is all we get. This is where the progress happens. So if we have an overlook of history since the stone ages, probably 95% of our time, that's almost 2.5 million years. Spent surviving. Merely preventing yourself from death.

As weird as it sounds, all of us spend our lives surviving. So did we really evolve to be smarter beings, or did we evolve, only to live the same, surviving everyday and counting our days in a different manner?