Brains

The shortcut for depicting superior aliens is to give them a giant head. Giant head means giant brains; giant brains means giant intelligence; giant intelligence means superior.

Never mind that there are many uninspected assumptions in that chain. Think about that last link. We know that high intelligence tends to correlate with more successes, higher income, better health, lower crime rates, and so on. That's all good, but you don't necessarily get those kinds of benefits unless you have a civilization around you that gives you enough leisure to develop some of that skill. "Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap." You're better off if you plant intelligently, but if you don't yet know what you should be looking for the price for spending time observing may be higher than you and your family can afford. There's an upfront cost to making use of intelligence.

The greatest benefits don't appear until you can take the time to specialize a little, and there is enough of a framework of reliable rules to be rewarded for it. Or in other words, a little civilization. The more, the better, I presume, but some minimum is essential.

But lots of people live without that minimum. For them the best program is to mature quickly and work hard, and not be too trusting of outsiders. And history is crammed to overflowing with tribes who liked to prey on their neighbors; having a berserker temper might be useful in helping the neighbors deal with their tormenters. In a civilized society that kind of temper would lead to crime, but elsewhere it might help you fend off the Vikings.

Superiority seems to be relative to the situation. And if the question is not simply what's best for you, but what's best for your family, things look a little muddier. We ask the intelligent among us to spend so much time in school without marrying that their families have to be smaller--there are only a few years to spend. And for a lot of us the reply to the question is "What family?" Unless you have the rest of the world for your family and serve them somehow (I'm thinking of nuns in a hospital, or explorers out finding new islands), it seems as though creation trails off with you--not a sign of obvious superiority. Something should pass on to the future.

Civilization is obviously superior to chaos. But it doesn't immediately follow that the people who do best in some instance of civilization are therefore superior to the others: think monarchy. I don't know that we have a clear instance of a meritocracy: the machinery we have might have been designed around a slightly different set of values and resulted in a different set of "meriting ones". For example, we value entertainment very highly, and reward some entertainers better than surgeons. We don't value farming as much: too hard; though we do value adventure camping which is even harder. Similarly with attitudes: fidelity and honor don't get as much notice as in other eras, so someone who is loyal but not clever is honored/rewarded only on the basis of the revenue his cleverness produces.

As a Christian I believe that intelligence is a gift that brings obligation and does not make one man superior to another. A civilization needs to have honorable room for those who aren't as sharp. But even from a purely secular system of values a civilization that does not provide a space for them will find them making a space for themselves. And I suspect that it will be less resiliant as well. (Our society feels brittle. I haven't traced out why it seems so, but too many things rely on "And tomorrow will be like today, or even far better," with no obvious fallbacks.)