What if we Were More Intelligent?

Last month, I watched the movie Lucy on the plane. Even though it was not one of the best movies I ever saw (far from it), I still keep thinking about it. The interesting thing about it was the particular set of questions raised by it. In short, the movie is about a woman called Lucy (played by the beautiful Scarlett Johansson) who involuntarily consumes drugs that enhance her brain capacity from ten percent (the film works with the premise that this is the norm for humans) to the total of 100%. A brilliant neuroscientist (played by the amazing Morgan Freeman), who devoted his entire life to hypothesize the outcomes of humans being able to utilize more of their brain’s capacity, can witness Lucy’s transformation. The way the movie plays this plot out is not so interesting to me, because it seems forced at times, but I rather enjoy the larger questions that it raises: What would happen to the world and us humans, if we were able to become more intelligent? What would the world look like? How would humans interact with each other? Would there still be violence in the world? Would people still waste time on petty little things or would we focus on the bigger, pressing issues that need to be addressed.

I enjoyed the naming of the protagonist and the film as Lucy. It wasn’t a coincidence, but was carefully chosen and makes perfect sense. The protagonist is named Lucy, because the name indicates a connection between her and the first known female, our almost human (Australopithecus afarensis), ancestor who lived 3.2-million-years ago and who scientists discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. National Geographic reported that scientists named her Lucy after the popular Beatles’ song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds that was played again and again at the party to celebrate the unearthing of our earliest ancestor. The Lucy of the movie is the pinnacle of human evolution as she is the highest developed human who ever lived. So the name Lucy is linking the most primitive to the most sophisticated "woman" in human evolution.

Before going into the details of the hypothetical questions, we have to note that the premise of the movie, that humans only use ten percent of their brain’s capacity, is wrong. For many decades, scientists have unsuccessfully been trying to debunk it. The original statement that led to this false belief goes back to the 1890s, when a scientist first declared that humans only used a small percentage of their brains, but never actually attached a number to this statement. It kept getting repeated and in the 1930s, the figure of ten percent became attached. Despite scientists' many efforts to destroy the common misperception and a number of conclusive studies to show that humans activate “most parts of their brain” during every day and "many parts of the brain" remaining active while we sleep, the myth still persists until today. The movie plays into this and will unfortunately help to spread the myth even further.

Despite the false premise, the movie raises many interesting questions. Even if we humans use most parts of the brain throughout the day and many parts even during the night, there seems to be still a lot of room for improvement. So what if we (the human race) were to become more intelligent? What would that look like? How would we interact with each other and in what kind of world would we live in?

The movie made us believe that violence would still play a big part in everyday reality, even if we were more intelligent. I doubt that. I believe that if we were to be more intelligent, there would be no need for violence. If people would be more reasonable, we would come to the conclusion that violence leads to more violence and cannot be a solution. Using simple logic, we would realize that intolerance and discrimination of any kind are unacceptable forms of dealing with others. Period. People would realize that dividing people up in different groups worth different treatment makes no sense. Why would a human life in one region of the world count less than in others? Why would girls be valued less than boys? Why would one skin color be preferable to any others? All these differentiations, we would realize, make no sense.

If humans were more intelligent, intelligence would not only encompass hard factual knowledge or the ability to reason, but also social and emotional intelligence that leads to empathy and responsibility. Humans would be more aware of the inequalities that persist in this world today and more willing to help each other, because we are all one (the human race). Competition between nations would not persist. Exploitation would not be tolerated. Rich people would share their wealth with less fortunate, not because any government forced them, but because they would agree that the money needs to be invested in the most reasonable way. Food supplies, for example, would be divided up differently so that no person in inner-city districts in the Western world and in broad regions of the least developed world have to go hungry or starve to death. 

Humans would make sure, out of responsibility toward each other, that everyone lives in decent, acceptable living conditions and that every child receives a good education, not only because that is the right thing to do, but also because it is the best way to assure future political stability and economic well-being. We would realize that with increasing globalization and interconnectedness of the world, we need secure, clean, safe, and positive living conditions everywhere to protect ourselves against poverty, violence, and orthodoxy.