This morning my husband and I were sitting on the front porch, drinking our first dose of coffee and trying to wake up. To the right of our front porch is a terraced field of coastal Bermuda that is home to a mama ewe and her triplet lambs, a young ram, and a donkey named Ethel. Watching the happenings in the field usually makes for great entertainment, especially when my husband is providing the narration.Today he was commenting on the fact that Ethel had her head down eating the entire time we were outside watching. He surmised this was because of two things—trying to get her grazing all done before the day gets too hot, and the desire to get finished and lay down out of the wind that was already blowing. This led to a discussion about how the advent of nice buildings with electricity and air conditioning have allowed humans to ignore such factors as heat and wind when planning their day.The next topic was whether humans are born with as much instinctual knowledge as animals, but lose it to being “educated” as we grow up, or are we born with less instinctual knowledge because we have intellectual abilities and opposable thumbs? In other words, did God balance the equation differently for humans because of our brains and thumbs? This is my husband’s theory.I mentioned that there are people in the first-world countries who postulate that humans are becoming a more “highly-evolved” species because we can now work strictly with our brains and maybe our hands and because we can kill our enemies by sending out a drone being operated from thousands of miles away rather than running up to them and whacking them with a stick (and risking our own whacking in the process). I suppose the ultimate evolution of humans is when we, like science-fiction aliens, can make everything happen by simply thinking. But I have some problems with this scenario. First, the people who think we are becoming so highly evolved—have they never traveled anywhere or have they never watched the news? Just how do these people get themselves so insulated that they fail to realize the majority of the world’s population is too busy dealing with achieving the basics of survival to waste time “evolving?” How smart are these highly evolved people if they cannot look around them and see the realities of life for everyone else?The second problem I have is this “highly-evolved human” is presented as a positive, as a goal toward which we should strive. I am thinking that some poor, less-evolved human has to dig in the ground and plant seeds for this highly evolved guy to have food, or has to put in the plumbing and machinery so this guy can think himself up a drink of water. So what happens when a big earthquake or tornado hits? Highly Evolved Guy is going to be up a good, old-fashioned creek while Less Evolved Guy is going to put on his work clothes and get things up and running again.I am all for smarts, for intellect, for thinking lofty thoughts. But I am also all for competence. Anyone who can combine a highly-developed intellect with a high level of practical know-how is the true highly-evolved person in my world. Take what instinctual knowledge we have, develop that, and at the same time develop our intellect, and then we will then be highly evolved. springcreekartsguild@gmail.com.