Are we just Cave Men disguised as Civilized Rational Beings?

Are we just Cave Men disguised as Civilized Rational Beings?

Are we rational, civilized beings?
Or Cave Man in disguise?
Or, possibly even simply hairless walking Chimpanzees who make better tools than these distant cousins of ours?

Well, based upon human history option 1 is a non starter. An additional reason to reject option 1 is that psychologists now know that our rational mind is not really in charge of our choices, our subconscious is. What our rational mind does do very well is rationalize what the subconscious desires and execute the will of the subconscious; thus making it a valuable ability. I will make a caveat to give us a bit of hope: I think there are exceptions: those who have devoted years of discipline in a highly rational way, but even then, they would be rational only when devoted to their chosen discipline.

When I asked AI: “Are we cave men pretending to be rational?” it told me:
Not exactly — but we are deeply influenced by the cognitive framework of our ancestors. Our brains evolved for survival in small, tribal, prehistoric groups, not for navigating complex modern societies. This means:
We may still be “in Plato’s cave,” interpreting the world through a lens shaped by ancient instincts.
Our rationality is real, but it’s filtered through evolutionary constraints and sensory limitations.

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Another way of responding to this question is to see that we are the only tool making animal with a complex cerebral cortex that has created complex societies. This means that in some ways we might be seen as a “transition” species between a typical animal and some future truly rational being. C.S.Lewis puts that idea this way:
Humans are amphibians…half spirit and half animal…as spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time, means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation–the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, in a series troughs and peaks. – The Screwtape Letters

Given the fact that the most powerful country in the world has a leader who seems to be behaving more like a chimpanzee than a rational being I think seeing ourselves as cave men is actually quite generous. Personally, I have nothing against cave men and accept that we are mostly, but not completely, behaving like our cave man ancestors. I say not completely, because I know that evolution does not stop and that civilization, for all its many faults, has accelerated our evolution dramatically. That does not mean that some humility would be appropriate when we look at our problems – like the ecological annihilation of life on Earth – and accept that we are less rational than we believe. I would guess that being more humble about the over riding power of our animal/cave man desires would better allow the part of us that is rational to be listened to more often than it is. Perhaps this would be a step in the right direction that would allow to honestly deal with the disaster we are making and become the homo sapiens we claim to be.

Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we’re all just cavemen with briefcases

hungry for a wise man to tell us stories.

Perhaps the solution to our current disastrous chimp like behaviour is just that – we need a different story. So what can you do today? Find and then live out a different story from the one destroying both the human and non-human worlds.