Anthology of Ideas

One thing that I have always loved about C.S. Lewis’s book The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe is the fact that animals are intelligent. In a children’s fantasy book this is easy because you don’t really have to explain why people sit down at the table and start chewing on something that was singing and dancing not so long ago. Unfortunately, without the explanations there is a gaping hole in the thought process behind the book.

For example, in the real world baby chickens are cute and most people wouldn’t choose to eat one just for that reason. However, how many people would eat chicken if it was not only once a baby chicken but could also sing and dance? Humans tolerate eating them because, after all, they are animals. However, once that chickadee looks up at someone and says “Are you my mommy?” they wouldn’t eat it no matter how old it got. My solution to this is to have my cake and eat it too. Yes, there will be intelligent animals; but, there will also be non-intelligent animals.

Intelligence is not a definitive trait. Not all humans in the world will be intelligent — they will just be glorified animals. How can you get away with this? Easy. Think of a creature about to be born, if X and Y happens the creature is intelligent, but if not both X and Y happens the creature is an animal (defined here as a creature without intelligence on par with that of a human.)

For human-like creatures the chances of being born as an animal are small, but no species will be able to completely avoid it — this ties in with a class structure where those individuals that are related to an animal are “untouchable.” However, for creatures that would normally be defined as an animal (bears, horses, dogs, unicorns etc) the chances are the exact opposite. Even if one of these creatures is born with intelligence they are not immediately human-like; they must choose between living as their species or as a human. Don’t forget although the chances of a intelligent creature being born to animals is small most of the intelligent creatures are the prodigy of animals because they have much larger numbers. Thus there is no class struggles between the upper and lower intelligences and they do frequently interbreed.

The creatures born with human intelligence are capable of human communication, but at the same time they can still communicate with their animal relatives. Although on a completely different level. This sets it up so that we can create a world where there are huge battles with animals fighting along side men, where the polar bear chasing you is just trying to return your keys, where you can still eat chicken even though one is your next door neighbor, but at the same time keep a level of realism.

At a later time I will go deeper into how the actual intelligence works and the processes behind it functions.