It is endlessly confusing to me that my species appears so certain of its own intelligence that we have, over millennia of cruel struggle and staggering hardship, failed to develop much, if any, of it. Contrary to popular opinion, our engineering prowess is no evidence of it, and neither are our books. In fact, in the West, we are so confused by these two capacities that we think we ˚are˚ machines and books.
