I’m guessing she wouldn’t print her answer in Parade Magazine.
Now, you could say she actually is using her intelligence to solve a problem, which is, how do you earn a living in this wretched capitalist system? Parade has a circulation of more than thirty million and a readership of more than seventy million, so I’m guessing she makes a decent living from solving a couple of absurd questions each week. I’m also guessing she could do this work in her bathrobe. Anyone in this wretched capitalist system who can make a decent living while wearing a bathrobe has certainly solved one problem.
But like many of the other problems she solves, there’s no good reason to solve this one. She’s married to Robert Jarvik, of Jarvik artificial heart fame, and was herself chief financial officer of Jarvik Heart, Inc. She doesn’t need to do this. She clearly has her expenses covered and could, if she chose, use her intelligence for life-affirming purposes.
Sadly, I think vos Savant is not unique in using her gift in the service of trivia.
In my thirties I went to a Mensa meeting. I had no social life, and so with visions of literary salons dancing in my mind, I headed off to a bar where I’d read in the newspaper that they held their monthly meetings. Now, those of you who know my work know I’m a teetotaler, and that I don’t really like alcohol culture. But I’ve been to a fair number of bars for blues shows, and this once for a Mensa meeting. The only people in the room were the bartender and the Mensa members. I sat down with the other eggheads, expecting a dazzling conversation about what we are personally and collectively going to do about the mess this culture has created. But that’s not what happened. Instead the conversation mainly consisted of how various members of the group had found grammatical errors in the local newspaper and duly reported these to the offending reporters. One had even found a misused word in a headline! From there the evening basically turned into a free-form version of Trivial Pursuit where each person attempted to top all others in his or her capacity to share obscure mathematical, grammatical, historical, or mass media factoids. I lasted about a half an hour before I moved to sit at the bar and nurse a glass of water while I talked with the bartender about how she wished she could join a union.
I’d been expecting Lewis Mumford and instead got Marilyn vos Savant.
In retrospect I’m not sure why I’d been fantasizing about literary salons; when I was in graduate school for creative writing, I went to a few parties—okay, one party; I said I had no social life—and it was more or less like the Mensa event, except that the trivia was centered around, for some reason I’ll probably never understand, The Brady Bunch. Instead of talking to a bartender, I took a long walk.
So maybe the biggest sign of our intelligence is an attendance to trivia as the world burns.
How droll.
I’m still dancing around the subject, which is that humans are smarter—the best!—because we’re so good at solving problems. Humans eradicated smallpox, once it had outlived its usefulness at killing Indigenous peoples. Humans landed on (and bombed) the moon. Humans created the Internet, which has as its primary economic use pornography, i.e., the objectification and degradation of women.
Wait. That doesn’t sound so good. Let’s try this again. So I’m writing this lying in a warm bed in a warm house looking out the window at a wind- and rainstorm. These wind- and rainstorms used to mainly come in December, but now, because of global warming these past few years, they mainly happen in March. I’m eating cashews from a plastic bag by the bed.
How many problems had to be solved in order to allow me to be here, out of the cold, first handwriting this and then typing it into a laptop computer? Well, there’s the problem of converting a living forest to 2x4s for the house, the problem of converting a living beach to glass for the window, a living river to hydroelectricity to run the heater. There’s the problem of clearing land for cashew plantations, and the problems of drilling for and then refining oil to use to transport these cashews from wherever the hell they were grown to my local supermarket, and the problem of creating plastic for the bag. There’s the problem of inventing computers, and the problems of how to perform the toxic and water-intensive processes of manufacturing them. There’s the problem of destroying local economies to force people off their lands and into the sweatshops that produce the computers. There’s the problem of having (and paying for) large militaries the world over to enforce the dispossession of those who lived on the land where cashews are now grown, and to enforce the destruction of the local economies to force people into sweatshops. And on and on. And these problems were all evidently solved, because here I am, lying in bed typing on the laptop and eating cashews.
I’m sorry. I guess I’m still not behaving. I should discuss our intelligence, as evidenced by our ability to solve problems, with more reverence for our superiority.
I’ll try.
Seriously, it takes a lot of intelligence to invent automobiles, doesn’t it? Never mind that they are one of the three or four most destructive objects ever invented.
I’m still not getting into the proper spirit of human supremacism. Let me try again. We’re the smartest species since we solved the problem of too many damn salmon by putting in dams. Er, no, that’s not right. We solved the problem of how to violate—I mean harness for power—a river by putting in a dam that will kill the river, kill the now-submerged riparian zones, leach mercury out of the soil, and rob the area below of sediment.
The point I’m trying to make is that so many of the “solutions” to what members of this culture so often perceive as problems quite often lead to other problems, many of which probably could have been predicted were the people looking at these original “problems” both a) intelligent; and b) not evil. The only way I can see that someone putting in a dam could not predict that this would wipe out anadromous fish species, destroy the submerged lands, dispossess the human and nonhuman inhabitants, harm wetlands downriver, and so on, would be if those suggesting these “solutions”—e.g., dams—to “problems”—wanting electricity—were either a) unforgivably stupid; or b) unforgivably evil. Take your pick. None of this is cognitively challenging in the least. And of course you could say that they are simply unforgivably entitled, and don’t care about those they harm, but a) that doesn’t seem very smart; and b) that seems pretty evil. And we can talk all we want about claims to virtue and about social systems that reward atrocious behavior and so on, but beneath it all, this is what it comes down to: are they really that stupid, or are they really that evil?
You could ask, “Well, how else are they supposed to generate the electricity they need to run their factories?” But that’s not my problem, and coming up with a “solution” to that “problem” is not the responsibility of those who will be murdered by the dam. If you can’t generate electricity without causing significant harm to those humans and nonhumans who will not be receiving the benefits of this electricity, then you really are only “solving” the “problem” by foisting its harmful effects onto others, in which case you shouldn’t be calling yourself superior or intelligent, but instead a thief of these others’ lives. Theft and murder do not by themselves qualify you as intelligent or superior.
Or let’s talk about pesticides. Recently scientists have discovered (for the umpteenth time) that pesticides are causing terrible ecological problems, killing off domesticated and native pollinators, other insects, birds, amphibians, streams, meadows, human beings.
I’m sorry, why is this surprising? Which part of neurotoxin did these people not understand? Was it the neuro, or the toxin? At my public talks I’ve long rhetorically asked, “Who’s the idiot who came up with the idea of putting toxins on our own food?” But I think the real question is, “Who’s the idiot who came up with the idea of bathing the entire world in neurotoxins?” That’s fucking nuts. It’s stupid. It’s evil. It’s both.
Shit. I’m still not doing a good job. I’m trying, though. Really, I am.
Each time I start off by thinking about how great we humans are because we’ve solved this or that problem, but then each time I have to go and let out an explosive fart in the midst of our “We are Number One” Celebration Party by remembering and pointing out the negative consequences of so many of the “solutions” we come up with to “problems.”
So I’m going to try again. Humans are clearly superior because we have invented plows (never mind for now that plows are probably the single most destructive human invention ever, and that agriculture was the single biggest—and least intelligent—mistake any creature has ever made; oh wait, I’m still not in the spirit of it), space heaters, locks, screws, levers, torque wrenches, artificial sexual lubricant (scores of different formulations, including wild cherry–flavored), laptop computers, telephones, airplanes (no prairie dog ever did that!), nuclear reactors, reading glasses, artificial hips, sleeping pills, refrigerators, reclining chairs, cameras, municipal water treatment plants, rockets to go to the moon, satellite television, the printing press, backhoes, and chainsaws.
Sure, all of these were in some ways solutions to perceived problems, but as a sign of greater sentience than others, or as some other sign of superiority, we run into the same old familiar problems.
The first is that it’s once again and as always tautological: (some) humans invented refrigerators, therefore (some) humans decide that the invention of refrigerators is a relative sign of intelligence or superiority, thus (some) humans have determined that humans—especially the ones who invented refrigerators—are smarter and superior.
Aardvarks might choose other criteria.
•••
The second problem is that the whole notion that only humans solve problems is ridiculous anyway. Don’t you think human use of antibiotics created a problem for bacteria? And what has been the response of bacteria to this problem? Don’t you think that bacteria creating resistance to these antibiotics and communicating this resistance to other members of their community is a solution to this problem? And what about the development of antibiotics in the first place by fungi? Wasn’t that a solution to a problem?
If you just look around, you’ll see a more or less infinite number of elegant solutions created by nonhumans and nonhuman communities to whatever problems these nonhumans and their larger communities have faced. It’s a beautiful, wonderful process called life, and unless you have been rendered completely insensate by a grotesque human supremacist ideology, it’s pretty fucking obvious.
Sadly, the one problem it seems nonhumans and their communities have yet to be able to solve is the sociopathy of human supremacists.
•••
The third reason it’s ridiculous to say that inventing refrigerators is a sign of intelligence and superiority is that if it is, what does that say about those Indigenous human cultures who never invented refrigerators (or cameras, telephones, or perhaps more to the point, iron blades, war chariots, galley ships, steel breastplates, tall ships, muzzle-loaders, breech-loaders, long-range artillery, machine guns, tanks, bombers, aircraft carriers, nuclear attack submarines, predator drones, and so on)? Does this mean they were less intelligent, because they didn’t invent backhoes and chainsaws? Does this mean they were inferior? Are those really arguments you want to make? If so, are you really that racist? Because the belief that the invention of any of these “solutions” is a sign of intelligence and/or superiority implies that the failure to invent any of these “solutions” is a sign of a lack of intelligence and/or superiority, which means that it implies that those who have invented these “solutions” are more intelligent and/or superior to those who did not. This means the civilized are superior to and/or more intelligent than Indigenous peoples. Another way to put this is that they are higher on the Great Chain of Being than are Primitives.
I don’t believe Indigenous peoples are less intelligent than the civilized, which means that the invention of refrigerators can’t by itself be a sign of intelligence. I believe the Tolowa, for example, never invented chainsaws, backhoes, or refrigerators at least in part because they had such a different social reward system and such a different way of perceiving and of living in the world, that many of the problems that led to these solutions may not even have been perceived as problems. If you’ve not exceeded your local carrying capacity, and you rely on salmon for food, and you ceremonially smoke them, and if you recognize that your life is tied up in theirs, and if the salmon stay as common (and delicious) as they have been forever (as they should if you don’t exceed local carrying capacity, either through overconsumption or overproduction or overpopulation), there’s really no reason to invent refrigeration. The meat stays freshest in the river. And if you’re not planning on conquering your neighbor, there’s really no reason for you to invent chariots or steel breastplates or machine guns, is there?
* * *
100 And don’t give me any shit about how you could use your credit card to buy ladybugs, which will be delivered to your door and then dumped on your head; this means you have to rely on money, which means it’s only available to the financial elite. This is typical of many of the “miracles” of modern society: they increase our dependence on the economic and political system, as opposed to the real world.
101 Dawkins, The Selfish Gene.
Chapter Ten
Authoritarian Technics
We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.
MARSHALL MCLUHAN
There’s another point I want to make here, one that was made best by Lewis Mumford. This is that technologies—and by extension, I would say many other forms of “solutions” to other forms of “problems”—do not exist in a vacuum. Technologies emerge from and then give rise to certain social forms. Mumford called the technologies and their associated social forms “technics.” Technics, he said, can be democratic or they can be authoritarian. Democratic technics are those that emerge from and reinforce democratic or egalitarian social structures, whereas authoritarian technics are those that emerge from and reinforce authoritarian social structures. The distinction he made is both brilliant and simple: does the technology require a large-scale hierarchical structure? Does it reinforce this structure? Does it lend itself to the monopolization of the technology, and therefore to control of those who fabricate the technology over those who use it?
To put it in its simplest terms, is this technology something that anyone can make? Or is it a technology that requires massive hierarchical (and distant) organizations?
We can ask all of these same questions not just about technologies, but about all “problems” and “solutions.” Authoritarian and egalitarian societies may look at the same situation and perceive entirely different “problems,” to which they will perceive entirely different “solutions.” These “solutions” will then lead to the societies becoming more or less authoritarian or egalitarian. We can also say that unsustainable and sustainable societies may look at the same situation and see entirely different “problems” to which they will find entirely different “solutions.” And human supremacist cultures and non human-supremacist cultures may also perceive different “problems” to which they will find different “solutions.”
An authoritarian, unsustainable, human supremacist culture may look at a river and see both problem and solution. The problem: How do we power our factories? Solution: Dam the river for hydropower. An egalitarian, sustainable, non human supremacist culture may look at the same river and see a different problem and solution. Problem: how do we live in place for the next twelve thousand years (the Tolowa Indians have lived where I live now for at least 12,500 years)? Solution: fold yourself into long-term interspecific communities such that these communities are healthier on their own terms because of your presence. Which means to respect and revere the nonhuman communities who share and are a part of your home, as you are a part of theirs.
Same river. Same orig
inal species composition. Different cultures. Different imperatives. Different attitudes toward the river. Different perceived problems. Different perceived solutions. Different results.
When authoritarian, unsustainable, human supremacist cultures encounter cultures which are none of these, they quite often conquer or destroy them. This is not only because unsustainable cultures must expand or collapse, but also because supremacist cultures by definition disrespect difference. But even when unsustainable cultures don’t outright conquer or destroy those who are sustainable, the sustainable cultures may still find themselves harmed, or if you prefer, infected. For example, a sustainable non human supremacist culture may face the problem of keeping warm in the winter and may choose as a partial solution the wearing of skins of fur-bearing creatures they have killed. After being contacted/infected by an unsustainable and human supremacist culture, they may begin to see their landbase differently. Now they may see the same forest, the same creatures as before, but the new problem is not, “How do we keep warm?” but rather “How do we make money?” or “How do we gain trade goods? How can we get some of those steel pots and steel knives, which are ever-so-much more useful than our clay or reed pots and our stone knives?” Their solution can then become, “By killing fur-bearing creatures to sell their pelts.” And the culture has begun to move away from sustainability and interspecific cooperation and towards unsustainability and human supremacism. This is something that happened time and again across North America, as creature after creature who had lived with the Indigenous humans for millennia were quickly decimated, and the human cultures changed. Thus did technologies such as steel pots and steel knives play a role in changing cultures and landbases.
The Myth of Human Supremacy Page 21