Gen. Museveni forgot sex and the human face 

Op-Ed: This is an improvement to General Kaguta Museveni’s theory of human uniqueness.

Though the content varies, the fact still remains that humans are unique, but also that other creatures are unique and special according to their own species goals.

In nature, every being has a role that helps to keep the ecosystem in balance, but each is vital as is. A pigeon may therefore never be blamed correctly by a human for having a smaller brain, as a human cannot fly. Besides, the role of the pigeon in nature is to fly, not humans. The role of humans is therefore what we need to assess here.

According to General Museveni, a human must be different from other creatures due to only three facts:

1. Bipedalism
2. Flexible, flexible hands
3. A brain that can make a choice (cognitive abilities).

However, when we assess the animal kingdom, we observe that all three of the above can be traced to other creatures too. The fact that they are meant to attain different goals would make the word unique doubtable.

First and foremost, crows and relatives (corvettes) are capable of memorizing human faces and names and have been observed to make decisions more intelligently than a human being. A crow will drop stone pellets into a container with water to raise the height so as to drink, while a human would most likely touch or destroy the bottle during the process. That is the brain.

About alleged special hands and fingers, most apes can use their fingers the way we do to crack nuts, throw stones, cane other animals, etc. It’s just that the brain is not meant to use the fingers to build skyscrapers, jet engines, etc., as all an ape needs is the hands to create food and to secure the body in the forest.

Much as science forces man to be a jungle being, it’s evident that humans would prefer to only visit the jungle to get food. Naturally, there is an urge among humans to leave the Bush and not the other way around. That’s why even the most rural home has a compound cleared of vegetation and animals and birds that are unneeded.

When we take a look at “walking on two legs”, those who enjoy NATGEO WILD like me have seen a monkey wading through the water with two ‘legs,’modeling’ even. Most apes related to man, like bonobos, macaques, gorillas, etc., can walk on two legs but simply choose not to, just like a hen, duck, or Guinea fowl can fly, but only due to need. It saves energy to use four legs, not two, as the other two are irrelevant to flight and escape from danger, which lurks among all kinds.

At this juncture, it begins to appear that what causes human uniqueness is not what man is made of but rather what he aspires for: his needs, desires,  and wants. Man wants different things in nature from other creatures, and even if he had hooves on his hands, he would attain them.

A child of a man likes climbing trees and can swim naturally without training like a dog, but she can also drink milk after weaning. As the baby grows, it forgets how to swim and must learn again.

Uniqueness of a Kind is therefore not about phenotypes (looks) or morphological biological beings. What a human Brian does, all other creatures can, and even better. The eye is part of the brain, but an eagle sees better and further than a human a hundred times.

The three biological and phenotypic traits mentioned by his Excellency can therefore be expanded even further and even deeper.

Humans can DECIDE to Mate (have sex) or NOT. Not other animals. This is very vital in shaping human societies and their end goals, which are standard and cut across.

5. A human is the only creature with different faces from all living things. Yet this does not make him unique in any way. It only highlights that each human is supposed to have the need or reason to be more diverse as regards the results of their actions than any other being. All goats look like the previous goat you saw, albeit in color and size.

So do all monkeys and gorillas. Yet in biology, these animals are more ancient, successful, and advanced as regards evolution than man, who is simply a few thousand years old on earth in his likeness according to scientific fossil records and findings. 300,000 years is negligible in the evolutionary calendar, as this world makes man a junior to all beings alive.

Your face is not for beauty, as your beauty is only to fulfill a desire for wants not related to your face, e.g., the ability to be accepted in a very strange land of different humans, as human goals include the expansion of traits past Jupiter. The end is what makes humans human, and curiosity, research, and exploration are only human.

Now, what makes a human’s end goal, and what shapes their ultimate and thinking behaviors over time?

The answer is that we don’t know. It’s the same as asking what makes a bird want to fly in the sky every morning and not a woman and her (not her) husband, as all species are just one animal cascading its genes in many copies.

The author is Asiimwe Makombo Jago-Minyang. Excerpt: #JagoMinyang’s Musevenology #AfricanPhilosophy

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