If we're judging human achievements, we're not fit to judge. We should ask someone who doesn't have a dog in the fight, like a dog for example. I'm with a dog right now and she does not care about TV or Mozart (though she intrigued by Tarkovsky). All of the wonders of civilization are—on an interspecies level—no more or less important than the mating rituals of birds. They're certainly important to us, but so are the rituals to birds. We're all in our own little worlds, and few things transfer betwixt them. Except itches and scratches.

Lilly, the dog, just wants to dig bins and scratch itches. To her, the height of human technology is tissue paper, preferably used. She's not impressed by the endless supply of food, this bitch will eat garbage. As far as she's concerned I prevent her from eating more than I feed her. The cat is not so vulgar, but concurs on the philosophical points. None our most intimate relations (pets) are very impressed by human civilization at all. Everything we consider so interesting that aliens must be dying to meet us is actually completely uninteresting to our nearest neighbors. The fact that fingers can play Mozart is of far less interest than the fact that fingers can scratch butts. The fact that hands can calculate is of far less interest than the fact that hands are warm.

It seems absurd, but our pets are a jury of our peers, and that's their word. We're only really good for itches and what we consider garbage. This grand civilization that we consider the wonder of the universe, it's just a grandiose mating dance that temporarily boosted our reproduction. That's all it is, that's all it does, that's all it was. I love it too, but I'm human. We're hardly impartial. We are, in fact, part of a whole, and that whole is wholly unimpressed with us. I for one, accept the sovereignty of the Animal Kingdom, and the divinity of bacteria and virii, and take their disdain as a sign of wisdom.

These digital tools (fingers) that enabled civilization, their most useful use is still scratching itches, if you ask most of creation. The idiom for human commerce is still ‘you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.’ This must have been hot currency during early Homo culture. Social grooming is endemic among our closest ape relatives, and we're really not that different. The difference is, I think, that humans live in a hyper sterile environment where we don't get that itchy, and within a hyper senile culture where we think we're individuals. We don't groom each other since we left the garden, and most physical contact is relegated to sex and considered sinful. This is a distinction our Bonobo cousins don't make at all. We do, however, groom pets socially, and thus preserve that ancient digital connection in our homes.

Pets play the joker in the Human Kingdom, sleeping on laptops and eating homework. We laugh at our pets, but the role of the joker is actually to tell the King the truth. That he too is mortal, he too is human, he too farts. Our own pet jokers tell us the same thing, that we're not immortal, we're not inanimal, and we're not special.

When we talk about fingers we talk about tool use, or digital technology, and how awesome this is, but that's a subjective position. However—just speaking to the random sample of species in my house—we have no objective confirmation that we're such 'great' apes at all. Beyond the foot pedal bin—which has confounded and impressed everyone in the house—fingers have produced little of interspecies note. Laser pointers, maybe tennis balls. We are certainly capable of terrifying animals with our technology, but that's not the same thing as impressing them. Whenever people talk about how great and innovative and creative humans are, I think of myself, trying to create while my cat shows me his asshole. Nothing I do impresses this cat. It's just not that impressive.

Later in the day, I had this impressed on my when I was climbing a tree, trying to get a cat down. I both failed and made myself very itchy in the process. ‘This must be a state of nature,’ I thought. Today we live in these sterile environments with filthy dogs and sneaky cats as ornaments. They wander around the house, remind us of how we were when we were homeless. Our pets guys respect our strength, but strength is common in the Animal Kingdom. What these guys return for is our kindness, despite it being both rare and manipulative. We scratch their backs, so they—in their own thumbless ways—scratch ours. These creatures that we consider 'dumb' actually have a lot to say by their silence. Now you'll have to excuse me. One of the idiot philosophers (the dog) has broken a jar trying to steal all of the cat's food, and I have to go sort this out.