I’m sometimes of the opinion that a decrease in cognitive ability would be a good thing for the human race. Look how deeply destructive we are—high IQ results in cleverer ways to exploit our environment. All the brilliant people are still biological beings, with the need for social status, food, sex, shelter, and often children.

Also, on a personal note, I thought that Zapffe made a very poetic point in his Last Messiah essay:

One night in long bygone times, man awoke and saw himself.

He saw that he was naked under cosmos, homeless in his own body. All things dissolved before his testing thought, wonder above wonder, horror above horror unfolded in his mind.

Then woman too awoke and said it was time to go and slay. And he fetched his bow and arrow, a fruit of the marriage of spirit and hand, and went outside beneath the stars. But as the beasts arrived at their waterholes where he expected them of habit, he felt no more the tiger’s bound in his blood, but a great psalm about the brotherhood of suffering between everything alive.

That day he did not return with prey, and when they found him by the next new moon, he was sitting dead by the waterhole.