Usually we draw a pretty sharp dividing line between us and animals. Between man, the thinking ape (even that ape part still hurts in many parts of the world, for example much of the US), and all the other animals. The ‘non-thinking’ apes and birds and cockroaches and so forth. We point to our language, to our faculties for reason, our art and aesthetics, our complex cultures, our tool use, our social nature. I mentioned reason. We are particularly proud of that, which is why we also call ourselves sapiens - the thinking, the sapient. We are man the thinking. Women might feel offended, but back in the 18th century when Linnaeus chose to classify us as homo, it was pretty much a given that women didn’t think much.
Nowadays we know better. Those wise enlightenment men were wrong. Pretty much nobody* thinks very much, and humans as a totality think just about as much as a virus. A virus?
Yes, quite like a virus. The human species developed quite a few interesting innovations, put them together and took them to new hights. Other animals also reason, also use tools, also have cultures. But none quite as much as us. What this has amounted to is a substantial breakthrough for humanity. We have gotten rid of all our predators. To a much greater extent than any other large mammal we have become environment indendent. We have adapted to pretty much the whole world, and found ourselves masters and top predators of our ecosystems.

And how did we react to our almost demigodly stature among all the plants and animals of nature? We have spread forth, multiplied, fecundified, froliced, fucked, shucked and hucked our way till we ooze across the world, so numberless many that it would have been unthinkable a mere millennium ago
In short, we have reacted just like a virus that suddenly finds a chink in a body’s immune system and begins to multiply. For all our vaunted intelligence, as a group we have acted just like a mindless packet of RNA stealing material and energy from other systems and organisms to copy itself. Only we’re packtes of DNA, not RNA. When a virus multiplies too far and too much the death of its host usually follows, and consequently the death of the virus stuck in the host. A virus has to spread to other bodies to keep going. If a virus is too lethal and kills its hosts too quickly, it tends to get stuck and not spread very far. Not infect many new warm bodies. And die out. By analogy, we are a happy go lucky tribe, horde, mass of monkeys who just keep eating and breeding.
And what happens when we fill up our body? Our little planet Earth? Well, unfortunately there are no nice, warm, new Earths to spread to in our vicinity. The colonization of space, one of my favourite sci fi topics, is apparently still a long, long way away. It looks like what happens when we run out of room and resources is a not very nice situation where, ahem, the virus starts to die off along with the body.
Now, a virus can keep spreading in a host even while that host is dying or already dead. If we just take a look at the death toll in extinctions we’ve already caused, it becomes obvious that our planet’s ecosystem is already teetering. The good news is that life on Earth will almost certainly survive. The bad news is that we might well not.
We’re not quite like a virus in that we have tools. Weapons. Nice, big, nuclear ones among other things … and sometimes I feel like we’re living in the balmiest time of them all, that nice, warm time before the big storm. Of course, there are other solutions. We could, for example, start organizing ourselves rationally, limiting birth rates, limiting consumption, introducing excessive taxes on luxury goods and so forth … but to be honest, I’m skeptical we’re going to get our act together in time. I think we’ll survive, but we’re going to need a big, nice, painful jolt to get our act together.
I just hope I end up on the winning side …
*of those few who think, I’m willing to wager that more women actually think and reason than men, but even those few enlightened ’sapients’ aren’t all reason and no rhyme.