If someone says a phrase similar to “you’re an animal!”, we shouldn’t feel offended. We should feel comforted that he has perceived our vital energy and capacity and that they have realized that we do not belong to either the plant or mineral kingdom, the other two alternatives that Mother Nature offers us.
It would be another thing if he described us as a “bad animal” or “vermin”, but belonging to the animal kingdom in the warm-blooded subkingdom is, clearly, a reason for satisfaction, a luck to celebrate.
If, on the other hand, they call us a “gorilla” or “orangutan”, they are telling us that we have insufficient mental development; But if they call us “primate” they are correctly positioning us in the subspecies to which we belong.
In my adolescence, The teachers told us that man was the only rational animal endowed with soul, made in the likeness of God. Science has questioned this belief of clear religious origin, since there are quite a few animals that show a similar level of rationality.
Besides, The rational capacity of humans does not guarantee, even remotely, that our behavior is always rational And the explanation is very simple: we are not only rational. Our brain has been configured by evolution into five stages of functioning, inherited from our ancestors. Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology have shown that we have instinctive abilities (like primitive reptiles), emotional memory abilities (like the first mammals in evolution), rapid response abilities through intuition (like great primates), rational abilities ( inherited from the hominids that preceded us) and capacities for vision and planning, the true differential characteristic of homo sapiens.
The brain is built by evolutionary phases
Each stage of Darwinian evolution has left its anatomical record in a new growth area of the brain Furthermore, the human brain is the part of the human body that has grown most dramatically with evolution. As paleontologist Phillip V. Tobias wrote in 1995: “Man, in just a period of 2 to 3 million years, has increased the weight of the brain from 500 grams to 1,400 grams. An increase of almost a kilo of brain.”
To the merely instinctive brain of reptiles, primitive mammals added the limbic system that allows them to retain memory of the emotions of pleasure or pain associated with their previous behaviors and, consequently, gives them the ability to rectify or ratify the instinctive reaction, that is: the control of instincts, the ability to learn based on rewards and punishments. The primates acquired an added cerebral cortex that provides them with the ability to relate their previous experiences with the current experience in milliseconds and intuit whether it is better for them to reject or accept the food, object or company that is being offered to them.
According to paleontologists, the missing hominids developed the polarization of the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex that allowed them to apply logic and deductive reasoning to the problems of their existence, with a response time tremendously lower than previous intuition, but with a wonderful and amazing ability to build tools and progress in the way of life. Language, art, culture and science are born thanks to this evolution of the neocortex.
The last stage of evolution has been the growth of the neocortex of homo sapiens until it exceeds the cranial capacity and spreads across the forehead above the eyes and nose, the so-called prefrontal lobes. There lies our new, more evolved and superior capacity: the vision of the future, the ability to imagine before making a decision what the consequences derived from it may be, the ability to think in the long term and follow principles and rules, etc.
The executive brain
The neuroscientist Elkhonon Goldberg, disciple of the great neurologist Alexander Luria, calls executive brain to the prefrontal lobes because they have the function and ability to supervise and control the rest of the brain areas earlier in evolution. It is like an orchestra conductor who, with his baton, directs the different musicians who play together. But if we use the metaphor of the orchestra, we will have to recognize that, too often, music comes out of tune or out of order.
The explanation is simple: every musician is a vedette impatient who has a tendency to anticipate the director’s baton In more scientific words: the order of arrival of external or internal stimuli to the different brain areas follows the same order of their appearance on the evolutionary scale and, consequently, each brain function receives the information when the previous areas have already begun to function. reply. It can only slow down the initiated reaction or accelerate it, but for a few tenths of a second its own notes have already sounded, whether or not they suit the global harmony.
If we call “intelligence” the ability to adapt to the stimuli of the existing environment to react in a way that offers maximum benefit or minimizes damage (depending on the situation), We can affirm that the human brain is endowed with five intelligences of increasingly greater complexity and scope, following the evolutionary progression.
Instinctive intelligence is granted to us by chromosomal inheritance. It allows us individual survival in the face of dangers already genetically internalized and collective survival at the level of the species. If a bee wants to sting us, our instinct makes us avoid it and try to eliminate it with a swipe. A very beneficial reaction on the street, but it can cause death by accident if we are driving a vehicle launched at high speed on a road.
Emotional intelligence: a new paradigm
The so-called emotional intelligence incorporates rationality and future forecasting to the control of emotions that, without this filter, can make us fall into highly harmful visceral reactions. The insult or aggression that escapes us, not to mention the unfortunate crime of passion.
Intuitive intelligence allows us to make immediate decisions when there is no time to think rationally It is based on the accumulation of previous experiences, it is the result of acquired experience. An automatic and rapid contrast with lived experiences gives us a clear reaction of acceptance or repulsion of the situation, object or person that is offered to us. It is not infallible because our statistics of lived events are never infinite, but it should be a very serious warning to take into account. Often, the evaluation made later by rational intelligence makes us act wrongly contrary to the intuitive warning. It is up to each person to better calibrate their intuition and decide when it is convenient for them to pay attention and when not.
Rational intelligence (also called analytical, logical, deductive or equivalent adjectives), operating completely opposite to intuition, requires time and calm It has been the one that has allowed us to create everything we call civilization and human progress, the one that has overcome the obstacles of nature, the one that has given us tools to overcome our obvious biological inferiority compared to other animals. Also the one that has sometimes been put at the service of human evil, enhancing to chilling extremes the ability to exploit and even take the lives of other people, animals, fauna, the climate, the entire planet. Which can cause real disasters when it lacks foresight for the future. The human species has admired this type of intelligence so much that for more than a century we have wanted to believe, erroneously, that it was the only intelligence we possessed, the only one worth possessing. The famous IQ (IQ) was based on this idea.
Planning intelligence, the domain of the executive brain, is the current great pending issue in Psychology and, of course, teachings at all levels. Knowing how to coordinate all the musicians in the same symphony so that there are no discordant notes is the clear mission of orchestra conductors.
In conclusion
Individually applying any of the five intelligences is not good or bad in and of itself. A musician can play a fantastic “solo” or go out of tune until our ears break. But the clear objective of every orchestra is to interpret magnificent orchestral pieces in harmony and perfect coordination. You have to learn to play following the conductor’s baton.
Maybe we should say that Evolution has given us an intelligence composed of five dimensions to harmonize In any case, it is about achieving effective intelligence that combines instincts, emotions, intuition, reasoning and planning capacity in the most appropriate way for our individual and social well-being.
