The Antidote

If we examine social intelligence, there is little doubt that it was one of the most critical factors that led to the dominance of humans over other species. The reason we are no longer fending off predators on the planes of sub-Saharan Africa is that we learned how to work together and prosper together. While the cognitive ability to use tools and build dwellings was useful, it was the ability to maintain peaceful cooperation in relatively large groups of humans that led to success.

My realisation over the days researching this topic and then writing yesterday’s article is that we are perhaps in a time where the need for such human intelligence is not so apparent, and the need for there to be cooperative interactions (particularly in Western cultures) has diminished. If so, then what are the consequences of there being little requirement to develop the other, non-classical forms of intelligence?