The instinctually challenged species

 Looking at the literature on the genetic basis of instinct has convinced me that I don’t understand what instinct is.

Eric Hoffer called humankind “nature’s mistake.” Here’s part of the explanation:

 

The source of man’s creativeness is in his deficiencies; he creates to compensate himself for what he lacks. … He became a thinker to compensate for the ineffectualness of his instincts.

 

Yesterday’s note on bird nests made me think about the survival skills we learn, as opposed to those we have by instinct. Few of us live in a shelter we devised by instinct. That’s obvious — but I’d never thought of it, as Hoffer did, as evidence of the ineffectualness of instincts.

• Source: Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition; New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1974, p. 4.