The New Century Dictionary printed in 1931 comes in two volumes for a total of more than 4,000 pages but, never-the-less, does not have the word "homo-sapien" listed anywhere in either volume. It does, however, have the word "Homo" meaning man and "sapiens" meaning the quality of being Sapient; wisdom; often used ironically.
Archaeologists have theorized these up-right, two-legged creatures ran around gathering fruit and nuts and living off the land. We presume the air was clean and the water so pure it could be consumed without injecting chlorine. There were no stop lights or traffic jams and no need for a 40-hour week, taxes, wars, robberies, sex crimes or terrorism. We do not know the life expectancy way back then, nor can we imagine the impact of disease and the bitter cold of winter, but we do know that a psychiatrist was not necessary in those days; nor hand grenades, machine guns, mustard gas or atomic bombs.
Considering this upright homo-sapien is supposed to possess some degree of wisdom, it might seem, after 250 thousand years, we would be blessed with more than fancy cars and flush toilets; instead, we are stuck with bad air, acid rain, crowded streets, stubborn, uncompromising politicians, and a never ending wars in foreign lands.
Currently, the political "homo-sapiens" have focused on unemployment as if the President might sweep his magic wand across the horizon and suddenly everyone would have a job and live happily ever after. Meanwhile, this nation has more than one hundred thousand American soldiers in foreign lands fighting and dying. One might ask how our nation benefits from this sacrifice of human life? Some say it's for the benefit of subjugated peoples, that somehow or other those persons who manage to survive the horror of war would then experience "freedom" and a democratic style of government - assuming these tribal nations could cooperate with one another long enough to make democracy work.
When the great Roman Empire went to war the defeated nation paid a tribute in the form of gold or treasure and, of course, slaves. So what do we get out of all this? Instead of free oil and the wealth of nations, we are often criticized and despised for being in these foreign lands and are left to mourn our dead, heal our wounded, and suffer as a national legacy, a massive debt our great grandchildren will be unable to pay.
So what is the answer here? Well - instead of spending $-billions daily on wars with no visible benefits, we could bring our boys home and spend those billions of dollars in our own country fixing our deteriorating highways, cleaning up our environment and creating a national bullet train as an alternative to the aviation fiasco.
And - oh yes, as a by-product of all this, we just might create thousands of jobs in our own country.