we are "herd" enough that the benefits of learning from others overcomes the need to be smart enough to work it out yourself.
But individualistic enough that we won't follow the herd all the time (we might want to improve that given the success of religion and dictators).
But what I am trying to say is that intelligence is a necessary but not sufficbet condition. We also need ... politics ... for want of a better word.
Our brains seem to be wired as levels of co-operating systems coming to collective decisions - and that is a pretty good way to describe politics and society.
Human species is less a collection of organisms feeding and dying and more a distributed brain, trying to wake up.
Now that each node has a pocket sized way to communicate with each other node, I wonder what the conditions for consciousness really are?