# Intelligences : Home >[!info] >The Intelligences (or Lines in [[Integral Theory]]) are the multiple sensitivities each human has within them. > >They are referred to as "Lines" in Integral, and often in the Ancestor Culture as well, to indicate the fact that they develop relatively independently, with advancement in one having little effect on the others. # Background In our current culture, it is commonly thought that humans posses one type of intelligence, something akin to the type they test for in school, IQ. Over recent years, there has been more widespread recognition of a second type of intelligence, emotional intelligence or EQ, that is quite separate from someone's booksmarts. In fact, it seems like there are at least a dozen or more of these intelligences that each human being has. In the [[Metaphysics|Ancestor System]], we recognize and work with 7, each one emerging sequentially from a stage in our evolutionary lineage, starting with cells. Each following species retains the previously attainted intelligence, and adds a new one of their own that developed to help them navigate their new world. # Evolutionary History Our earliest biological ancestor, early [[1 - Cells|Cells]], had only one intelligence, [[i1 - Kinesthetic Intelligence|Kinesthetic]], which we call **i1** (**i**ntelligence 1). The could sense and feel contact with other cells and objects. (~4 Billion Years Ago) After them, early [[2 - Fish|Fish]], our first ancestor to have eyes and be able to experience pleasure and pain, had [[i1 - Kinesthetic Intelligence|i1]] like Cells, and added on top of it **i2**, [[i2 - Aesthetic Intelligence|Aesthetic Intelligence]]. Due to their ability to differentiate between sensations, they could develop a taste for what felt attractive and unattractive. (~540 Million Years Ago) Next, early [[3 - Reptiles|Reptiles]] developed **i3**, [[i3 - Practical Intelligence|Practical Intelligence]], on top of i1 and i2. Our first ancestor to live on dry land, reptiles had to contend with a radically different environment than their aquatic ancestors. This new 2-Dimensional environment contained food in discrete places on the ground, instead of being carried through the 3D ocean space, requiring higher logistical understanding. Additionally, their lifestyle is built around holding territory to attract mates, lording over a certain patch of land, which requires increasing executive functioning and decision making capacity. (~310 Million Years Ago) Subsequently, early [[4 - Mammals|Mammals]] required **i4**, [[i4 - Emotional Intelligence|Emotional Intelligence]], due to mothers giving live birth and taking care of their young offspring. Emotional intelligence allows for rapid communication of internal states to one another, even without direct communication, and allowed mother to understand and feel the child's emotions instantly to better take care of them. (~200 Million Years Ago) Next, Monkeys and [[5 - Apes|Apes]], our first ancestors to live in male-female multi-age troops, developed **i5**, [[i5 - Expressive Intelligence|Communicative Intelligence]], to be able to maintain complex group structure of many individuals. Here more than every before, complex communication through facial expression, tone, body language, etc were needed to uphold the intricate web of relationships that comprise primate society. (~55 (Monkeys) - 25 (Apes) Million Years Ago) After them, the first ancestor we call human, [[6 - Early Humans|Homo habilis]], developed **i6**, [[i6 - Abstract Intelligence|Symbolic]] or [[i6 - Abstract Intelligence|Abstract Intelligence]], allowing them to make the first complex tools. To be able to make a crude tool is to see a rock as not simply a piece of stone, but as containing within it the possibility of another object. This is to see beyond the strictly material plane and start to be able to recognize patterns and concepts that transcend physical reality. (~2 Million Years Ago) Finally, fully modern humans, [[7 - Modern Humans|Homo sapiens]], the biological template each one of us is still to this day, developed our great gift and curse, **i7**, [[i7 - Spiritual Intelligence|Spiritual Intelligence]]. This intelligence concerns the meaning of things, their purpose, their why - not just from a practical, or mechanistic standpoint, but with regards to ultimate ends. It seems this intelligence also arose with or from the awareness that we die, and developed as a response to this, to provide meaning and worth to an experience we knew without a doubt would come to an end. # In Modern Humans In every human alive today, upon reaching physiological maturity around puberty, all 7 of these intelligences, [[i1 - Kinesthetic Intelligence]], [[i2 - Aesthetic Intelligence]], [[i3 - Practical Intelligence]], [[i4 - Emotional Intelligence]], [[i5 - Expressive Intelligence]], [[i6 - Abstract Intelligence]], and [[i7 - Spiritual Intelligence]] are fully present. In human beings, the intelligences don't manifest in their *original,* ancestral way, but rather manifest in ways that make sense in a human context. That is to say, our kinesthetic intelligence is much more complex than the type cells had, given our bodies are drastically more complex. Our emotional intelligence is vastly beyond that of early mammals, as we are able to feel love for people that we can't see with our eyes, have never even met, or are not even alive - something only possible with the symbolic intelligence being online (being able to think about something non-material). We can even love things that have never existed in the material world, like Gods, or ideas themselves (only possible with i4, i6 & i7 collaborating)! So not only have our intelligences in many cases become more powerful than our ancestors' versions of them, they also interact to create new effects that our ancestors could never experience. # Stack, Development, Potency There are **3 ways** in which the expression of these intelligences *differ* from person to person. The first is what we call **Ranking**, or **Stack**, which is the idea that these intelligences are very rarely evenly distributed naturally within a person, and most people have a relatively clear dominance ranking of these intelligences in them. The personality types that result from these Stacks often even have common names in culture, like Jock (i1), Nerd (i6), Theater Kid (i5) etc. So, from most dominant to least dominant, everyone has a Stack of intelligences with which they process the information coming into awareness. For example, [[Ari Nazem|Ari]]'s Stack is: i7, i5, i2, i4, i6, i1, i3. Next, just because we may naturally be dominant in an intelligence does not mean it has developed. The second way in which the intelligences vary is in their **Development**, that is, the degree to which they have been trained, refined, practiced, honed. We may naturally be high in say, [[i7 - Spiritual Intelligence]], but never have had the chance to develop it properly, while having spent lots of time training an intelligence stacked lower in us, say [[i6 - Abstract Intelligence]] in school. So understanding the Development level of your intelligences can be just as helpful in understanding yourself as your Stack. Finally, there is the **Potency** of the intelligence as a percentile of the population. So while someone may be [[i6 - Abstract Intelligence|i6]] dominant within their own Stack, they may be say, 50th percentile of i6 globally. We don't tend to focus on this too much, since the intelligences are mostly standardly distributed and most people are in the middle, but it can be helpful to understand if one of your intelligences is naturally on the tails (outstanding or handicapped) in terms of potency because it will have big effects in your life. # On Voltage Now, there is one more element to mention here, which is not limited to just the Intelligences, but affects someone's whole system: [[Voltage]]. With regard to the Intelligences, which we can think of as electrical circuits, voltage is the power being thrown into those circuits. So when motivated, by sheer force of energy spent, a high voltage person can seem to be more dominant in an intelligence than they naturally are, as they can generate similar numbers of output through the circuit regardless of its resistance by just throwing more energy at it. Encountering this resistance, especially for long periods (many years) when not aligned with one's optimal path, seems to have very negative effects on the person, unsurprisingly often around a feeling of wasted energy, and desire to be in situations with lower resistance so the same energy makes more impact. All of us feel this when we have been forced into using inferior intelligences at the expense of that energy going to our more dominant ones. I have just seen this tend to happen more to higher voltage people, especially at [[Drive 3 - Status|Level 3]], because they are more inclined to go into suboptimal uses of their energies for the sake of winning status. This is definitionally impossible below Level 3, and rare to see above it. # Brief Historical and Cultural Analysis ![[lines over time.png]] Throughout human history, different cultures have prized the very intelligences differently. What may be the prized intelligence in one culture may be seen as unimportant, weak, or even insane by another culture. Tracing the detailed history of the changes in the valuing of intelligences is a huge topic, especially since it varies so much from specific culture to culture. I am looking forward to creating a detailed treatment of this sometime in the future, but in the meantime, here are just a few broad cross-cultural examples that should paint the picture and inspire some thinking of your own: Many premodern societies tended to place a much higher value on the Spiritual intelligence, i7, and the Kinesthetic intelligence, i1, than modern industrialized societies do. In time when life was often guided by religious principles, and spirits and Gods were referenced in conversation daily, the people attuned to these things and able to give insight into them were often highly prized and respected, as shamans (indigenous cultures), priests (medieval Europe), prophets (Middle East), sages (India), to name a few. Additionally, before industrialization and the resulting technological sophistication, one's physical prowess (usually in males) was usually quite directly tied to their productive capacity in areas like as hunting, farming, construction, or war. Thus, having high naturally high athletic ability was greatly prized and respected, as it made a huge difference in daily life. With the advent of guns, factories, farming machinery, sophisticated construction machines, and new war machines like planes and tanks, intrinsic athletic ability became less useful in favor of the ability to design and pilot such tools and machines. Today in our digital world, it plays less of a role than any era before, whereas for the majority of our history it was easily one of the most important things. Since the Scientific Revolution of the 16th & 17th centuries, the Symbolic intelligence, i6, has steadily become more and more important and favored, with the concept of intelligence itself even being tied to it directly. This fixation on i6 as a sufficient metric for total intelligence is captured in the slang of calling someone Einstein. In fact, taking a larger view, Einstein himself was clearly deficient in many crucial intelligences, [glaringly](https://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/06/arts/dark-side-of-einstein-emerges-in-his-letters.html?smid=url-share) for one, i4 (Emotional), so it may not be as big of a intelligence compliment as one might think. i6 hyper-dominance - like all hyper-dominances in the other elements as well - has begun to be challenged with the widespread awakening of [[Drive 4 - Love|Level 4]] in the Western world since the Post-War era (1960s & 70s). Level 4 (in its divine form)[^1] is tolerant of all types and intelligences, and is allergic to the idea of dominance or hierarchy of any one. This has lead to a radical fracturing of culture - for better and worse - allowing individual disciplines to operate on their own logic which does not have to gel with others. It has allowed the intelligences to be expressed on their own, for their own sake. So, for example, this allowed art to explore purely aesthetic (i2) directions, with no regard for its meaning (i7), difficulty of creation / skill / technicality (i3), or even emotional impact (i4). Hence the common critiques of modern art. This was not possible before, in [[Drive 3 - Status|Level 3]] societies, where there is a specific take on how the world works, what is good and bad, and thus the art reflects that and always has meaning. Conversely, Level 4 is allergic to any meta-narrative or cohesive worldview, tolerating a panoply of non-compatible perspectives, and so we have novel for-their-own-sake aesthetic objects like modern pop music, modern art, aesthetic (non-cultural / traditional) tattoos, etc. This is just a brief overview of how the intelligences have been prioritized differently and allowed to do different things throughout history. I will explore this in depth sometime later in 2024, when I put together a linear treatment of human history, showing its placements in the system over time. # The 7 Intelligences ## [[i1 - Kinesthetic Intelligence]] ## [[i2 - Aesthetic Intelligence]] ## [[i3 - Practical Intelligence]] ## [[i4 - Emotional Intelligence]] ## [[i5 - Expressive Intelligence]] ## [[i6 - Abstract Intelligence]] ## [[i7 - Spiritual Intelligence]] [^1]: That would be true Level 4, which can be rare to find, as the Level 4 we often see is colored by trying to tip the scales back away from the things that are dominant, leading to suppression of the old rulers (masculinity, cognition) and causing its own problems. But that is a story for another time.