Beat a Dead Ant

Did you know that, by total mass, there are more ants on planet Earth than humans? Believe it!!!!! And did you know that  the impact of ants on the planet is significantly less than that of humans despite their greater number? Of course you did. Ants, while being very industrious and successful as far as animals go, are still very much Ants. They are simple creature and need, compared to humans, much less in the way of resources. A decent amount of ants can live off a blade of grass......can even one human do that? NO! Do we have toxins that are biodegradable? No. That would be awesome. But we don't. So then, why would the writers of Cradle to Cradle advocate a position where we return to a system that we become more like the Ants? It may indeed be more green and sustainable but it doesn't lend itself to the realm of possibility. We are a much more complex animal and thus require a much more complex lifestyle. not that we shouldn't try to change the way we live to become more green, but I am saying that reverting to "A Bug's Life" way of living isn't the best solution.

An analogy serves the purpose to view a situation through a new lens, to provide another perspective on a situation to potentially make it clearer. Comparing humans and ants does not suggest that we are on equal planes, but that we - as evolved humans - may be so smart we are dumb.  Even though, by total mass, ants outweigh humans, it only takes one moderately intelligent human to outsmart all of those ants.  However, if we humans are so infinitely more intelligent, then how can we not model the ants' lifestyle while maintaining our advances in society? Yes, we are more complex, we have more desires, we have lust, we have relationships, hate, critical thinking, and more that complicate our daily lives far past that of an ant, but with those complexities come our ability to form societies, governments, huge buildings, discover our origins, even the ability to find out that ants do outweigh us in regards to biomass, but yet, we still fail in our attempt to mimic the ants' ecological footprint. Therefore, I now pose the question, are we smarter than ants?