The path from ape to human is not just one of evolutionary pressures producing more and more effective brains; not just a tale of the evolution of intelligence. Without intelligence, we could never have got started on that path, but intelligence alone was not enough. We had to find a way to share our intelligence with others, and to store useful ideas and tricks for the benefit of the whole group, or at least, those in a position to make use of it. That's where extelligence comes into play. Extelligence is what really gave those apes the springboard that would launch them into sentience, civilisation, technology, and all the other things that make humans unique on this planet. Extelligence amplifies the individual's ability to do good -or evil. It even creates new forms of good and evil, such as, respectively, cooperation and war.
Extelligence operates by putting ever more sophisticated stories into the Make-a-Human-Being kit. It pulled us up by our own bootstraps: we could climb from tribal to barbarian to civilised.
Shakespeare shows us doing it. His period was not a rebirth of Hellenistic Greece or Imperial Rome. Instead, it was the culmination of the barbarian ideas of conquest, honour and aristocracy, codified in the principles of chivalry, meeting its match in the written principles of a tribal peasantry, and disseminated by printing. This kind of sociological confrontation produced many events in which the two cultures meet head on.
This was exemplified by the Warwickshire enclosure uprisings. In Warwickshire, the aristocracy carved up land into small parcels, and the peasantry got very upset because the aristocracy didn't give any heed to what kind of land was in each parcel. All the aristocrats knew about peasant farming was a simplistic calculation: this much land will suffice for that many peasants. The peasants knew what was actually involved in growing food, so that the only thing you could do with a small piece of woodland, for instance, was to chop down all the trees to make room to grow some food.
Today's bean-counting managerial style in many businesses, and all British public services, is exactly the same. This kind of confrontation between the barbarian attitudes of the nobility and the tribal ones of the peasantry is precisely portrayed in many of Shakespeare's plays, as an illustration of low-life, with its folk wisdom as comic relief and pathos, set against the lofty ideals of the ruling classes - leading so often to tragedy.
But also to high comedy. Think of Theseus, Duke of Athens, on the one hand, and Bottom on the other, in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
THE ELVISH QUEEN
In the heat of the night, magic moved on silent feet.
One horizon was red with the setting sun. This world went around a central star. The elves did not know this. If they had done, it would not have bothered them. They never bothered with detail of that kind. The universe had given rise to life in many strange places, but the elves were not interested in that, either.
This world had created lots of life, too. None of it had ever had what the elves considered to be potential. But this time ...
It had iron, too. The elves hated iron. But this time, the rewards were worth the risk. This time ...
One of them signalled. The prey was close at hand. And now they saw it, clustered in the trees around a clearing, dark blobs against the sunset.
The elves assembled. And then, at a pitch so strange that it entered the brain without the need to use the ears, they began to sing.
'Charge!' cried Archchancellor Ridcully.
The wizards, all bar Rincewind, charged. He peered around from behind a tree.
The elf song, a creative dissonance of tones that went straight into the back of the brain, ceased abruptly.
Thin figures spun around. Almond eyes glowed in triangular faces.
People who knew the wizards only as the world's most avid diners would have been quite surprised at their turn of speed. Besides, while it may take a little while for a wizard to reach maximum acceleration, he's then very hard to stop. And he carries such a cargo of aggression; the stratagems of the Uncommon Room at UU are guaranteed to give any wizard a maximum load of virulence just itching for a target.
The Dean hit first, striking an elf a blow with his staff. A horseshoe had been wired to the end.
The elf screamed and twisted back, clutching at its shoulder.
There were many elves but they hadn't been expecting an attack. And iron was so powerful. A
handful of flung nails had the effect of buckshot. Some tried to fight back, but the dread of iron was too strong.
The prudent and the survivors took to their skinny heels, while the dead evaporated.
The attack took less than thirty seconds. Rincewind watched it from behind his tree. He was not being cowardly, he reasoned. This was a job for specialists, and could safely be left to the senior wizards. If, later on, there was a problem involving slood dynamics or fretwork, or someone needed to misunderstand some magic, he would be happy to step forward.
There was a rustling behind him.
Something was there. What it was changed as he turned and stared. The first talent of the elves was their singing. It could turn other creatures into potential slaves. The second talent was their ability to change not their shape but how their shape was perceived. For a moment Rincewind caught sight of a slim, spare figure glaring at him and then, in one blurred moment, it became a woman. A queen, in a red dress and a rage.
'Wizards?' she said. 'Here? Why? How? Tell me!' A gold crown glittered in her dark hair and murder gleamed in her eyes as she advanced on Rincewind, who backed up against his tree. 'This is not your world!' the elf queen hissed. 'You'd be amazed,' said Rincewind. 'Now!' The queen's brow wrinkled. 'Now?' she repeated. 'Yes, I said now,' Rincewind said, grinning desperately.
'Now was the word I said, in fact. Now!'
For a moment the queen looked puzzled. And then she somersaulted backwards in a high arc, just as the Luggage's lid snapped shut where she had been. She landed behind it, hissed at Rincewind, and vanished into the night.
Rincewind glared at the box. 'Why did you wait? Did I tell you to wait?' he demanded. 'You just like to stand right behind people and wait for them to find out, right?'
He looked around. There was no sign of any more elves. In the middle distance the Dean, having run out of enemies, was attacking a tree.
Then Rincewind looked up. Along the branches, clinging to one another and staring down at him in wide-eyed amazement, were dozens of what looked, in the moonlight, like rather small and worried monkeys.
'Good evening!' he said. 'Don't worry about us, we're just passing through ...'
'Now this is where it all gets complicated,' said a voice behind him. It was a familiar one, being his own. 'I've only got a few seconds before the loop closes, so here's what you have to do. When you go back to Dee's time ... hold your breath.'
Are you me?' said Rincewind, peering into the gloom.
'Yes. And I'm telling you to hold your breath. Would I lie to me?'
There was an inrush of air as the other Rincewind disappeared and, down in the clearing, Ridcully bellowed Rincewind's name.
Rincewind stopped looking around and hurried down to the other wizards, who were looking immensely pleased with themselves.