What if the idea of “life” and “intelligent life” is all relative?

We, as humans, consider ourselves intelligent life. Other mammals, reptiles, fish, birds, etc. are all considered life. Rocks, metals, gases, etc. are not considered life, they are considered to be non-living things. Towns, cities, and Earth itself is not considered life but are composed of many lives to create larger communities.

But we as humans are made of cells, just as a population is made of humans. If you were a cell, the human body would be more like a city. Just as we do not consider cities as living organisms the human would not be too. Likewise, if you were a population, humans would be more like cells, only considered to be a part of yourself.

And if you become a simpler single-celled organism, you would consider yourself an intelligent organism, and multi-cellular organism would be like giant cities. But what would be “non-intelligent” life?

You are what we humans consider as the least intelligent life there is, so perhaps what we consider non-living objects could be considered as “non-intelligent life” in the perspective of a single celled organism. A “half-living” thing like a virus would be, to something like a bacterium, a bit like how humans consider some animals to me “semi-intelligent”: arguably has consciousness and can feel emotions and form social connections, but unable to do things like critical thinking and problem solving.

Perhaps everything can be considered “life” and we are all but naive little bald monkeys that are part of a greater organism that we call Earth.