We Here Now series
Are We Humans Actually Not the Smartest Kids on the Block?
The myth of human superiority and the underrated intelligence of other animal and plant life
Human societies have long been cursed with the pernicious myth of white supremacy. But less frequently challenged is an equally unfounded collective delusion that humans are innately smarter than everyone else in the animal and plant kingdoms. How can we presume to know what goes on inside the multiple intelligences of other creatures? It’s time to abandon our unproven and unprovable assertion of “human supremacy” and instead embrace a more agnostic and egalitarian understanding of the innate intelligence of all living things.
Cleverness is one thing and intelligence another. There is no disputing our remarkable human capacity to make tools, modify our environments to suit our preferences, and build vast empires to enslave each other and bend life to the will of an arbitrary few. No other creature even dreams of such feats, and we can be glad for that. But this kind of cleverness is a narrow if impressive skill set. What we’ve done with our smarts is anything but intelligent. We’ve fashioned tools into weapons and our capacity for cleverness into domination and self-destruction. It’s as if nature endowed us with too much cleverness and not enough intelligence to figure out how to use it wisely.
Intelligence is a broader and deeper set of capabilities. It’s the ability to respond and adapt to life’s challenges with actions appropriate to surviving and thriving — and to do so by and large without destroying or dominating other species. By that measure, most all the animal and plant kingdom demonstrates that without shelter, agriculture, industry or organizational apparatus they manage as species if not as individuals to endure not just for a few centuries but for millions of years. That is, till we humans in our hubris have enslaved, eaten and exterminated them — and in the process endangered our own survival. How intelligent is that?
Embodied Intelligence
At the same time, our presumption of superiority seals us off from the very embodied intelligence that every other animal and plant demonstrates. If we were awake enough, we might even learn from their behavior. In recent years, ecological researchers have told stories of extraordinarily advanced intelligence among octopuses, elephants, whales, trees, plants,and insects, among a multitude of non-human beings. They’ve urged us to open to the native multiple intelligences of the animal and plant kingdom for the sake of our own survival as well as theirs. Not least of all, they’ve discovered that species cooperate with one another and other species in mutually beneficial ways that we still find highly problematic.
In the process of observing the innate intelligence of the animal and plant kingdoms, biologists have also discovered that the nature of animal intelligence is distributed — that is, it is not located solely in their heads (if they even have one) but throughout their bodies. Much of the functional intelligence of the octopus is located in each of its eight tentacles. To measure intelligence by brain size alone, as we humans routinely do, is to miss the complex capacities of all living things and the primary source of their adaptability. They don’t think their way to survival but intuitively respond to changing circumstances in the moment, without the delays and neuroses to which we humans in our habitual overthinking subject ourselves. We dismiss their behavior as instinctive but maybe it’s better understood as point-of-impact response, far more appropriate to their challenges than sending a report up some dysfunctional chain of command to headquarters and waiting for a tardy, inappropriate and overwrought reaction.
In recent years we humans have become ever more detached from both our bodies and simple common sense as we replace our innate sensory awareness with a fixated absorption in disembodied virtual reality. It never occurs to other life forms to make such heady projections. Living closer to the bone and membrane, they never think to try to control every dimension of their environment but instead adapt to its exigencies in each passing moment. Only our fellow primates are capable of developing neurotic reactions and with them a range of convoluted, self-destructive emotions like rage and revenge, anxiety and depression, domination and submission.
It’s not that the rest of the animal and plant kingdom is infallibly wise, but that they’re saved from human folly by possessing distributed intelligences better adapted to their capabilities and vulnerabilities. The greatest danger they face is us, and against that menace they appear to have few defenses other than the common sense to flee our recklessness and wrath.
Cultivating Humility About Our Presumed Superiority
But there’s also potentially good news in all this too. Climate change, species extinction (including our own) and other non-negotiable demands are teaching ever-rising numbers of humans to reject our persistent presumption of human superiority and replace it with humility, curiosity and openness to deep learning from the innate embodied intelligence of other living organisms. Key to this transformation is tuning into the distributed intelligence embodied in our senses. We model our reactions to our environment and other species largely on the template of centralized authority that misgoverns all too many polities and other human institutions. To the extent that we learn to place greater trust in our bodies’ distributed intelligence we may also learn to trust locally determined decisions and decentralized, networked modes of governance.
I recently experienced an extended, intimate encounter with a mountain lion (see my Medium essay, In The Presence of the Wild) and realized as never before how we much humans can learn from wild creatures. Pets can be a profound source of comfort and delight, but they’ve been so long among humans that they mirror many of our behaviors and personality traits. In their presence and modes of communication, wild animals and plants are more truly different from humans, more direct and uncomplicated. When one behaves towards wild animals with curiosity rather than fear or threat, they quickly sense the difference and in turn become curious about us. What transpires in that open space is potentially transformational. Once we cease imagining we’re superior to wild creatures and meet them instead as equals standing on common ground, all things are possible. We can begin to cultivate humility about our humanity, the lack of which has produced so much grief for all involved. Who knows? Maybe some of their innate intelligence will rub off on us.
