Were Humans Ever Intelligent?

How Human Exceptionalism Theories Became All the Rage, and All the Hoax

When primitive humans saw that they could defeat every single predator they came across, theories of human supremacy quickly began to proliferate. These supremacy proto-theories empowered humans to further destroy the environment and drive even more species to extinction, because they provided crucial moral licence: every other lifeform on the planet was here for the Supreme Being to eat, destroy or make extinct – not only because everything belonged to the Supreme Being, but because everything was fundamentally inferior to it.

Of course, supremacy is, and has always been, a myth. Supremacy is an invented, abstract concept, a human construct that does not exist in nature. There are no superior or inferior species on Earth because Earth is a circle rather than a top-down hierarchy. All species depend on one another whether they are predator or prey, and this circularity is, in fact, how life on Earth is able to sustain itself in the first place. The ecosystem may consist of “higher” multicellular and “lower” monocellular organisms, but as far as rights, entitlements, and even actual, palpable power goes, it is a completely flat structure. A single virus has the power to drive the most intelligent species to extinction, and vice versa.

Furthermore, in nature there is no concept of “I am better than you” or “I deserve more than you”, simply because “better” has a million definitions. No one is ever better at everything, which is why species occupy different niches. Everyone does different things that have different value, and this in fact, is the reason why there are 10 million species on Earth. Each and every one of them is the best of the best in something, and that is why it exists. The tiger is faster than the turtle, but they both manage to exist because “better” is not defined only by speed. The turtle has other strengths and therefore occupies a different niche. So, comparing a human to a zebra is like trying to compare apples with oranges. Each has a completely different value and different role. No one is superior or inferior.

This, of course, posed a serious problem for theories of human exceptionalism and supremacy that had already been embedded in society. Supreme according to who? Based on what? Desperate to find evidence in support of their supremacy, humans searched high and low for the ultimate criteria that may qualify a species as a Supreme Being, finally narrowing it down to yet another fictitious, subjective, and non-existent concept: the myth of intelligence. We crowned ourselves the most intelligent species.

Intelligence was really the only feature humans could use to support their human supremacy dogma. Other features simply tend to prove the opposite, that we are in fact, quite inferior: we have no hair on our body to protect us, average eyesight, and inferior sense of smell compared to other animals. Intelligence was intentionally “chosen” to support the human supremacy dogma not because it confers true superiority to a species, but because there was little else there to support the argument. “Intelligence” was weaponized to create false narratives about human supremacy, in the same way that skin color was weaponized to create narratives about white supremacy.

But the main problem with “intelligence” is that humans gave it an extremely narrow definition which suited them, and only them. All beings on this planet can “feel” and “perceive”, and many are self-aware, but they do so in vastly different ways from humans which cannot be compared or even measured. A honeybee can memorize the location and flowering time of hundreds of flowers and use these two pieces of data to map out the most efficient flight course for next morning, a task that would take a human mathematician days to solve. There are many different types of intelligence among the 10 million species of this planet, and any attempt to arrange species on a pecking order from most to least intelligent will run again and again into the same issue of comparing apples to oranges. Each species has developed its own type of intelligence, simply because it has a different role in the ecosystem. No single species is “better”, let alone “supreme”.

Human supremacists will argue that humans are intelligent because they are “self-aware”. How do they know other species are not self-aware? Are they magically able to enter their bodies and know what and how they think? Besides, is it self-awareness humans talk about, or narcissism? Is self-awareness even a measure of intelligence? We seem to be aware of our own death, but this has certainly not stopped us from committing homicide and war. So, is what we call “self-awareness” actually a useful skill, or at least, one that qualifies us as a Supreme Being?

Arguably, if we were indeed the most “intelligent”, we would also be the most responsible. We wouldn’t be pushing other species to extinction and rather than simply being “self-aware”, we would be “Earth-aware”: conscious of the value of all biological life and existence in the universe. Human exceptionalism narratives forever blinded us from understanding the flat structure of the ecosystem. If anything, our destructive legacy on Earth is proof that we have very little “self-awareness”, let alone the capacity for self-reflection, and ability to learn from our mistakes.

Any attempt to define the artificial construct we call “intelligence” will always run into the problem of who it is that is attempting to define it: the humans, the bees, or the dolphins? Each will have their own criteria, their own definition of intelligence, and will use their own language to define it – be it words, pheromones or sounds. Even humans who do discover non-human intelligence, or decipher animal languages like those of dolphins, do not make an effort to consciously understand these languages and simply resort to attempting to “translate” them into human terminology. Who is to say what is intelligent and what isn’t when you are using your own subjective “intelligence” to attack this question? The entire debate around intelligence has taken place strictly within the narrow boundaries of human definitions and constructs, which undoubtedly bias most scientific explorations into the topic. Humans are only one of the 10 million species here. There are 10 million other forms of intelligence that we will never know.

Even the most serious studies on the intelligence of other species are often biased, looking at intelligence and sentience through this human supremacy lens. These studies anthropomorphize other beings, attempting to measure their intelligence by looking for evidence of human skills rather than immersing themselves into the context of that specific species: its biology, its environmental niche, its social structure. Researchers looking into “animal intelligence” usually look for memory and brain processing power, rather than intuition or wisdom, which are forms of intelligence more difficult to measure but possibly more universal, and definitely more “intelligent”. We train monkeys in cages to push buttons to get food, and put octopuses in mazes to see if they are “intelligent” enough to escape, as if intelligence is exclusively about overcoming obstacles. We continue to mistake brain computational power for “intelligence”, like the tall kid in the playground who thinks he is smarter than everybody just because he’s got a couple of heads over the other kids. Was the octopus that failed to free itself from the jar actually dumb, or could it be that it was depressed in captivity and decided to end it all? Are we genuinely listening to the myriad of languages that exist on this planet, or just desperately trying to find echoes of ourselves in other beings? There is a lot of stupidity and supremacy here, on so many levels. Suddenly this human being is not looking very supreme, after all.

Thank you for reading. The rest of this essay can be found in my book The Unhappiness Machine. This is a reader-supported publication. Independent writing like this exists because readers choose to support it. If you find value in these essays, consider becoming a paid subscriber.