Why are humans so smart yet so stupid?

[Darkover]

We aren't smart; we're arrogant. We believe ourselves to be smart because we compare ourselves to animals that lack our abilities. However this doesn't make us smart; it just makes us more capable than they are. Surely the true measure of intelligence should lie in our actions and the outcomes they produce. Many consider humans intelligent due to our capacity for creation. However, examining the methods employed and the effects our various creations have had on the world, we see a less impressive picture. In reality, our creations have often been to our detriment. Our actions have led to the degradation of our natural environment, pushing us toward a future where we can't exist in our own habitat. Paradoxically, we are creating our own extinction and that of all other living beings around us. Despite this awareness, we can't stop ourselves because our pursuit of immediate gratifications and self-centered motives overpower our self restraint, even at the expense of our survival. Does that sound like the behavior of any intelligent creature to you? While we mock creatures like the dodo or lemmings for their perceived foolishness, we often overlook our own. Rather than being smart, humans display astonishing stupidity

 

[Havnis]

We are building a new world on the rubble of old ones , not for us homo genom survivalists but for something beyond biological intelligence.

 

[lizzywizzy09]

We sometimes overthink things to the point of inaction or stupidity. Oh wait, that's just me.

 

[Pluto]

It's a very good point.

The way I see it, the problem is very deep. In a word, it is primitiveness. For all its engineering sophistication, nuclear weapons are just an evolution of the clubs and stones of early warfare. Likewise the philosophy of viewing nature as an enemy to attack, or other people as objects to exploit. It's all at the lowly starting blocks of societal evolution.

An advanced society would have 'the golden rule' as its fundamental basis for everything. That would manifest through every single aspect of the culture, economics and politics. The result would be radically different to what we know of human society.