The Goal of Humanity
The barrier to understanding might simply be human ego. Humans think that they are
intelligent and many also think that they are sufficiently intelligent to "invent new concepts"
and by implication have those concepts accepted and used widely. The fact is that no hermit
can do any of that. At the present it takes a society-level living system to accomplish what
might be called intelligence. The Roman Empire might be considered intelligent because
they learned to build roads and aqueducts and that technology "stuck" in a meaningful way.
I am an inventor, but could I invent if it wasn't for a warm home built by others and heated by
natural gas delivered by large groups of humans? I didn't have to invent my thermostat nor
did I have to build it. Given this support, I am able to invent, patent and sell licenses to my
inventions. Without an infrastructure the size of a society, I couldn't do what I do. The
problem is that it is very easy to think that I am the total self-contained source of that
intelligence. When you are told that you are a genius, it takes quite a bit of thinking to finally
decide that you, by yourself, you are not even intelligent.
Philosobot
Dawkins, The God Delusion
The barrier to understanding might simply be human ego. Humans think that they are
intelligent and many also think that they are sufficiently intelligent to "invent new concepts"
and by implication have those concepts accepted and used widely. The fact is that no hermit
can do any of that. At the present it takes a society-level living system to accomplish what
might be called intelligence. The Roman Empire might be considered intelligent because
they learned to build roads and aqueducts and that technology "stuck" in a meaningful way.
I am an inventor, but could I invent if it wasn't for a warm home built by others and heated by
natural gas delivered by large groups of humans? I didn't have to invent my thermostat nor
did I have to build it. Given this support, I am able to invent, patent and sell licenses to my
inventions. Without an infrastructure the size of a society, I couldn't do what I do. The
problem is that it is very easy to think that I am the total self-contained source of that
intelligence. When you are told that you are a genius, it takes quite a bit of thinking to finally
decide that you, by yourself, you are not even intelligent.
Philosobot
Dawkins, The God Delusion
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