If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity

by Justin Gregg

“Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid.” Terry Pratchett, Pyramids (Discworld, #7)

Nietzsche both wished he was as stupid as a cow so he wouldn’t have to contemplate existence, and pitied cows for being so stupid that they couldn’t contemplate existence.

If there’s one lesson we can learn from the tortured life of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, it’s that thinking too hard about things isn’t necessarily doing anyone any favors.

Don't Overthink it

By all accounts, Nietzsche’s philosophical ideas were integral to the formation and success of the Nazi Party and helped to justify the Holocaust.

Gradually, man has become a fantastic animal that has to fulfill one more condition of existence than any other animal: man has to believe, to know, from time to time, why he exists. —Nietzsche1

Strangely, no other hominid species throughout history evolved chins before Homo sapiens came along. Remarkably, scientists still don’t have a clear answer as to why we have chins.11

Of all the things that fall under the glittery umbrella of human intelligence, our understanding of cause and effect is the source from which everything else springs.

Something happened in our ancestors’ brains/minds that turned our minimal concept of death into full-blown death wisdom.

How?

This is divine moral reasoning that justified cultural genocide.

while same-sex attraction is not unique to humans, homophobia is.

Humans might currently be succeeding as a species not because of, but despite, our moral aptitude.

This brand of cognitive dissonance is what I call prognostic myopia.

It is the most dangerous flaw in human thinking. So dangerous that it might lead to the extinction of our species.