‘If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal’: What animal intelligence reveals about human stupidity
Countless species have come and gone since life began on the planet some 3.7 billion years ago. Our many intellectual accomplishments are currently on track to produce our own extinction, which is exactly how evolution gets rid of adaptations that suck.
RACHEL NUWER: The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was, by all accounts, a miserable human being. He famously sought meaning through suffering, which he experienced in ample amounts throughout his life. Nietzsche struggled with depression, suicidal ideation, and hallucinations, and when he was 44 — around the height of his philosophical output — he suffered a nervous breakdown. He was committed to a mental hospital and never recovered…
Would Nietzsche have been happier — and would the world overall have been a better place — had the philosopher been born some other species other than human? On its face, it sounds like an absurd question. But in “If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity,” scientist Justin Gregg convincingly argues that the answer is yes — and not only for Nietzsche, but for all of us. “Human cognition and animal cognition are not all that different, but where human cognition is more complex, it does not always produce a better outcome,” Gregg writes. Animals are doing just fine without it, and, as the book jacket says, “miraculously, their success arrives without the added baggage of destroying themselves and the planet in the process.”
Gregg — who holds a doctorate from Trinity College Dublin’s School of Psychology, teaches at St. Francis Xavier University, and has conducted research on dolphin social cognition — acknowledges that human history is marked by incredible breakthroughs that hinge on our intelligence. Yet, nonhuman animals do not need human-level intelligence to survive and be evolutionary successful, as Gregg points out, which is why this trait isn’t more prevalent across species.
He builds his often hilarious, sometimes unsettling, case against human superiority across seven chapters. Each one deals with a unique aspect of our psyches — from our capacity to conceive of our own mortality to our ability to communicate about “a limitless array of subject matter” — and provides ample evidence showing that not only are these mental attributes unnecessary for survival, they’re oftentimes more a liability than a gift.
Our species stands out first and foremost, Gregg begins, for our tendency to ask “Why?”… Asking “why,” however, is not necessary for success on either an individual or evolutionary scale, Gregg writes. Other species presumably flourish without it, and many have arrived at similar life hacks as humans, but without seeking a deep understanding of causation. Chimpanzees, birds, and elephants know how to self-medicate with plants, clay, and bark, for example. They do not need to know why these remedies work, Gregg writes, only that they do…
For all the good asking “why?” has done us, Gregg argues, it has also had negative repercussions, by justifying biases such as racism… by leading us to create technologies that can threaten to destroy us… Our obsession with morals — “not just that we should behave a certain way, but why we should,” as Gregg puts it — has also generated untold amounts of suffering. Norms that dictate how one should and should not behave within one’s social world exist throughout the animal kingdom. Chickens have pecking orders, for example, but they do not ruminate on whether that system is fair or just, Gregg points out. On the other hand, some species do have sensitivity to social inequity…
But humans take such social norms to an extreme, Gregg argues. We attempt to enforce universal standards for “right” and “wrong” and spin up elaborate justifications, monitoring systems, and punishments to ensure that others follow those made-up rules… Moral grounds have been used to condone the persecution of minority groups; rationalize genocide; and to advocate for eradication of entire cities, including by dropping nuclear bombs…
unlike other species, “our decisions can generate technologies that will have harmful impacts on the world for generations to come,” Gregg writes. Spread across billions of people and coupled with modern technologies, our tendency to live in the moment today is condemning future generations and the world at large to increasingly dire prospects with each passing year… As Gregg points out, “It is the greatest of paradoxes that we should have an exceptional mind that seems hell-bent on destroying itself.”
Yet evolutionarily speaking, our slide toward extinction isn’t outside the norm. Countless species have come and gone since life began on the planet some 3.7 billion years ago. As Gregg writes, “Our many intellectual accomplishments are currently on track to produce our own extinction, which is exactly how evolution gets rid of adaptations that suck”. SOURCE…
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