You’re Not Supposed to Know It All: How Collective Intelligence Redefines Success, Ideas, and Decision-Making

Manifestation

Apr 1

“Inspiration is always trying to work with you. Trust it and it will trust you. The work wants to get made and it wants to be made through you.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

In a world driven by performance, self-optimisation, and personal growth, we often carry an invisible burden: the idea that we should know more, do more, and be more. That if we just try harder, think smarter, or push further, we’ll finally reach some summit of certainty, clarity, or success.

This pressure doesn’t always show up as burnout. Sometimes, it shows up as a surplus of ideas with no clear direction. As clients often describe, inspiration itself can become overwhelming—dozens of projects in mind, none of them quite taking flight. We procrastinate not because we’re unmotivated but because we’re uncertain. We start prematurely and then run out of steam. We judge ourselves not for failure, but for a kind of stalled brilliance: the ideas we had but never brought to life. And perhaps most quietly, we wonder why others seem more inventive, more decisive, more capable of following through.

But what if intelligence was never meant to be a solo pursuit?

What if our most remarkable human capacities—our creativity, our innovations, our problem-solving—emerged not from within individual minds but from the spaces between us? From shared culture, accumulated knowledge, and the thousands of years of thinking tools passed down through time?

In their article What Makes Us Smart?, researchers Joseph Henrich and Michael Muthukrishna challenge the longstanding belief that intelligence is an individual trait. Instead, they propose that human smartness stems from a deeply social process—what they call cumulative cultural evolution. Intelligence, they argue, is not something you achieve alone. It is something you inherit, participate in, and pass on—through language, culture, institutions, and collaboration.

This perspective doesn’t just reshape how we understand innovation and intelligence. It also has profound implications for how we relate to ourselves, our work, and the inner pressures we carry. Through the lens of neuroscience, mindset, and cultural science, this essay explores what it means to let go of the myth of the heroic mind and embrace the power of the collective brain.

Even in systems like Human Design, this truth echoes quietly: not everyone is built to process inspiration similarly. Some are here to ideate; others, to discern. The brilliance isn't in knowing it all—it's in knowing how you’re meant to engage with what’s already here.

Because sometimes, the real block to progress isn’t lack of effort or vision—it’s the belief that you must figure it all out on your own.

The Problem With Heroic Intelligence

We love stories of the lone genius. The inventor in the garage. The visionary with the world-changing idea. The brilliant leader who sees what no one else can.

But these stories, while compelling, are rarely true.

Henrich and Muthukrishna name this tendency the “myth of the heroic inventor” and the “myth of the heroic brain.” These myths suggest that intelligence is primarily a function of individual brilliance—a product of neural horsepower, raw insight, or mental algorithms. The reality, however, is far more nuanced—and far more collective.

Take innovation. We often imagine it as a bolt of inspiration in one person’s mind. But innovation, the authors argue, is rarely the result of solitary genius. It is far more often the recombination of existing ideas—a slow layering of cultural knowledge that accumulates across people and time. The same breakthrough, they note, often emerges in multiple places independently when the right network of ideas is available. That’s not a coincidence. It’s the collective brain in action.

And yet, in Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies—where most research on intelligence is conducted—we tend to glorify analytical thinking, individual achievement, and isolated mental effort. This WEIRD bias, they argue, distorts our understanding of what makes humans smart. It also fuels the silent self-judgment many people carry when they feel like they’re not keeping up, not thinking clearly, or not innovating fast enough.

For some, this inner pressure manifests as a near-constant hum of ideas—with no clear sense of which ones to pursue. For others, it’s a sense of creative drought, where inspiration seems to have dried up. In both cases, the assumption is the same: I should be doing better on my own. This creates a damaging loop where the absence of clarity is mistaken for a personal failing rather than a signal to engage the wider system.

Even in systems like Human Design, this myth of the heroic mind is gently undone. According to Human Design, not everyone is built to process inspiration the same way—and we’re certainly not all built to act on it. The Head Centre, for example, is a pressure centre—designed not to resolve every question but to explore and contemplate. Inspiration moves through it, often without a logical endpoint. Yet many people mistake this pressure for a personal responsibility to “figure it all out,” or worse, a failure when clarity doesn’t arrive.

Similarly, the Ajna Centre governs mental certainty and processing. Some people have a defined Ajna, meaning they’re designed to hold consistent perspectives over time. Others are open here, taking in mental stimuli and experiencing a range of ways of seeing—fluid, adaptable, sometimes contradictory. Neither is more intelligent. But both are vulnerable to the myth that they must “arrive” at fixed answers to be worthy or wise.

The key, as Human Design shows us, isn’t to conquer these mental pressures but to observe them. To recognise when the mind is doing what it’s wired to do, and to trust that not all thoughts require action. The brilliance isn’t in suppressing the pressure or chasing every idea—it’s in knowing which mental invitations are truly yours to pursue.

Here’s the truth behind the myth: You were never meant to know it all. Intelligence isn’t something you’re supposed to prove alone. It’s something we’re wired to build together.

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Smart Is Social: The Collective Brain Explained

If intelligence isn’t individual brilliance, then what is it?

Henrich and Muthukrishna introduce a powerful alternative: the concept of the collective brain. In this model, intelligence emerges not from the size or strength of any one mind but from the interconnectedness of many minds—a cultural ecosystem where ideas, knowledge, and skills accumulate, recombine, and evolve across time.

They describe this as cumulative cultural evolution—a slow but exponential process through which human groups build upon each other’s discoveries, observations, and mistakes. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel because someone else already did—and left us a blueprint. We don’t need to discover mathematics from scratch because our culture hands us tools for abstract reasoning, measurement, and calculation from an early age.

And the more diverse and well-connected these minds are, the smarter the system becomes.

According to the research, four key factors drive this collective intelligence:

Population Size: More people mean more chances for innovation and a higher likelihood that rare knowledge is retained somewhere within the group.
Social Interconnectedness: Ideas need space to move. Too little interaction and innovation stalls. Too much, and we risk premature agreement or the spread of suboptimal ideas. The sweet spot is optimal connection—enough diversity and enough interaction, but also enough independence to preserve novel thinking.
Cultural Transmission Technologies: Institutions like schools, libraries, universities, and even the internet aren’t just tools—they’re accelerants. They allow ideas to spread, improve, and multiply far beyond one brain, one lifetime, or one location.
Cognitive Diversity: Perhaps most relevant to mindset work, innovation thrives when a group includes different ways of thinking, different bodies of knowledge, and different lived experiences. The more perspectives in the system, the more raw material for breakthrough ideas.

This has major implications. It means many of the qualities we assume are “natural” gifts—abstract reasoning, spatial skills, even sensory perception—are culturally cultivated. You’re not born with a superior mind; you’re embedded in a superior system.

For clients overwhelmed by inspiration or paralysed by indecision, this insight can be quietly transformative. The pressure to be original, productive, and insightful on your own softens when you realise that most ideas are inherited, borrowed, and iterated upon. Your best thinking may not come from sitting in silence until you find “the answer”—it may come from engaging with others, trying something out loud, or seeing how your idea lands in a system larger than yourself.

This is where Human Design offers an elegant echo. Some people are designed to initiate (like Manifestors); others are built to respond to what already exists (Generators). Some thrive through waiting for clarity over time (Emotional Authorities); others find certainty in the moment. Your inspiration doesn’t have to turn into action just because it arrived. And if it never becomes something you pursue, that doesn’t make it meaningless—it may simply be fuel for the collective.

Just as the collective brain thrives on diversity, so too does our inner world. You don’t need to act on every thought to be intelligent. You don’t need to start every idea to prove you're creative. Sometimes, the smartest move is to pause, share, adapt—or pass it on.

The relief, then, isn’t just in knowing that intelligence is social. It’s in allowing yourself to stop carrying the entire burden of insight alone.

Your Brain Runs on Culture

We like to imagine our thoughts are our own—that how we reason, what we believe, and what we notice in the world arise from personal experience or logic. But much of what we perceive as “natural” is, in fact, culturally constructed.

Henrich and Muthukrishna emphasise that our brains are not just computational devices—they are cultural sponges. From the earliest days of life, we absorb language, symbols, stories, and structures. These become the scaffolding for how we experience reality: how we group colours, how we measure time, what we consider evidence, and even how we define what counts as a “problem” worth solving.

Consider this:

In some cultures, there are dozens of words for different shades of white; in others, colour distinctions barely exist.

Some societies cultivate skills in spatial navigation from childhood, while others prioritise linear reasoning.
Belief in witchcraft or dreams as valid explanations isn’t irrational in these contexts—it’s epistemologically coherent within that culture’s logic.

These examples aren’t curiosities—they’re insights into how culture shapes cognition itself.

This is cumulative cultural evolution at work. Our minds inherit not just knowledge but tools for thinking—numeracy systems, language structures, metaphors, and mental models. We don’t have to build those from scratch. We simply absorb them. And we pass them on.

Even the development of abstract thinking—something many of us prize—isn’t purely an internal achievement. It’s supported by cultural inputs like formal education, literacy, and symbolic systems. The Flynn effect (a decades-long rise in IQ scores) is less about genetic improvement and more about exposure to cognitively demanding environments. In other words, your intelligence expands as your cultural ecosystem evolves.

This is a profound realisation, especially for those who carry a heavy sense of self-responsibility.

Many of my clients describe a constant pressure to think better, decide faster, or optimise more clearly. But much of this inner urgency comes not from a lack of ability but from internalised cultural narratives about what smartness looks like: linear clarity, rational confidence, swift execution. These are not universal truths—they’re cultural preferences. Preferences that often contradict how a person is wired to think.

Human Design adds another layer of nuance here. It reminds us that we each have different cognitive styles, rhythms, and decision-making processes. An undefined Head centre, for example, means you are naturally receptive to inspiration from others—but also prone to feeling like you need to act on every passing idea. An open Ajna means you’re designed to explore multiple perspectives, not lock into fixed conclusions. Yet, in a world that rewards certainty, many people with these configurations internalise the belief that their mental flexibility is a flaw.

It’s not.

It’s a different way of participating in intelligence.

If intelligence is context-dependent—and the tools we use to think are culturally inherited—then the way your brain functions isn’t something to fix. It’s something to understand, work with, and honour. The problem is rarely your brain. It’s the invisible cultural blueprint you’re measuring it against.

This opens up space to ask more constructive questions:

What mental tools am I using, and where did I get them?
Which internal narratives feel like mine—and which are inherited assumptions?
Am I expecting my mind to operate in ways that contradict how I naturally process the world?

When we begin to see our thinking as shaped—not just personal, but participatory—we shift from self-blame to self-awareness. The judgment begins to lift. The noise begins to soften.

Because suddenly, your mind isn’t a battleground. It’s a living participant in a much older, richer, and more collective story.

Read more on unpacking and expanding beyond limiting identity labels here.

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You Don’t Need to Know Everything

If our minds are shaped by culture, and intelligence is a product of connection—not isolation—then the pressure to “have it all figured out” begins to look less like strength and more like misunderstanding.

We are living through an era that glorifies generalism, optimisation, and hyper-independence. Many of my clients arrive burnt out not because they lack intelligence, but because they’ve absorbed a belief that they must be everything at once and this belief often stems from scarcity-based thinking patterns, which I explore more deeply here. But as Henrich and Muthukrishna remind us, that’s not how human smartness works.

In evolutionary terms, intelligence has always relied on something we might call the informational division of labour. As cultural knowledge grew, no single person could hold it all. Communities responded by distributing expertise—someone knew how to make fire; someone else could read the stars. In modern terms, we specialise. We rely on the wisdom and skill of others to fill the gaps. That’s not a weakness. It’s an advantage.

And yet, somewhere along the line—especially in high-achieving spaces—we internalised the opposite. That being successful means having answers. Being valuable means being self-sufficient.

This pressure shows up subtly. Clients speak of not trusting their timing, of pushing through ideas too quickly, afraid that if they don’t act immediately, the inspiration will disappear. Others hold back entirely, convinced that if they can’t see the whole path ahead, they shouldn’t begin at all. In both cases, the underlying assumption is the same: “I’m supposed to know how to do this on my own.”

But real intelligence, as the research shows, depends on recognising what you don’t know and leaning into relationships, institutions, and networks that expand your thinking. It’s about being a node in a larger system, not the system itself.

Even in frameworks like Human Design, this truth shows up. The Head Centre and Ajna Centre, which relate to inspiration, doubt, and mental certainty, remind us that people process information in profoundly different ways. Some people are designed to hold steady perspectives. Others are designed to swim in possibility—not finality.

Some are meant to respond, not initiate. Others are meant to wait for emotional clarity, even if the world is shouting for speed. In this way, Human Design doesn’t just reveal preferences—it shows us that our mental and creative rhythms are biologically, energetically, and cognitively distinct. Trying to force someone into a pattern of constant innovation and rapid clarity doesn’t lead to brilliance. It leads to burnout.

What if you stopped expecting yourself to know everything and started curating the spaces and people who help you think better?

What if your next breakthrough didn’t come from bearing down harder but from letting yourself be part of a thinking system instead of its solitary operator?

That’s not giving up control. That’s participating in the intelligence you were always part of.

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Rewiring the Way We Decide

Understanding that intelligence is collective changes more than how we think about creativity or competence. It also reshapes how we understand decision-making—in our inner lives, in our organisations, and in our cultures.

Henrich and Muthukrishna refer to the emergence of epistemic institutions—social systems that help groups determine what counts as knowledge and how it should be used. These include courts of law, scientific journals, democratic processes, academic peer review, and even public debates. Their purpose isn’t to crown a single person’s perspective as “right.” It’s to create environments where truth can emerge through structure, dialogue, and disagreement.

In other words, we don’t just need smart people—we need smart systems.

These systems are designed to reduce bias, manage complexity, and refine beliefs over time. Some rely on formal mechanisms: secret ballots, turn-taking rules, and evidence hierarchies. Others are cultural norms: encouraging the most junior person in the room to speak first, fostering debate without personal attack, or designing meeting structures that privilege cognitive diversity over charisma.

But this isn’t just a societal issue—it’s deeply personal.

Many of us make decisions within internal systems that mimic bad institutions: rushed, hierarchical, reactive, conflict-averse. We prioritise speed over clarity. We suppress doubt instead of exploring it. We crown whichever thought is loudest and call it intuition, even when our body says otherwise.

This is particularly true for clients who live with mental pressure. They describe a loop of overanalysis followed by impulsive action—or total inertia. They doubt their judgment, question their timing, or assume that clarity should always be immediate and rational. But true clarity often comes from better internal architecture, not louder thoughts.

So what if we began to treat our inner world like an epistemic institution?
Do you allow conflicting perspectives to surface before jumping to a conclusion?
Do you privilege evidence over instinct—or vice versa?
Do you create psychological safety for your thoughts to evolve?

This is where neuroscience and Human Design begin to meet.

From a neuroscience perspective, decision-making involves complex interactions between the prefrontal cortex (logical reasoning), the limbic system (emotion), and the insular cortex (body-based awareness). We are not wired to rely on logic alone—or emotion alone—but to integrate multiple systems over time. The best decisions are rarely instantaneous. They are regulated, felt, and contextual.

Human Design offers a language for this embodied wisdom. It teaches that not everyone is built to make decisions through the mind at all. Many are meant to wait for emotional clarity, or listen to gut instinct, or notice subtle cues in their environment. Mental certainty is often the busiest voice in the room—but rarely the wisest.

To explore how this integrates with neuroscience and authenticity, you can read this article.

What emerges when we stop looking for immediate answers and start building internal systems that allow truth to unfold?

Just as society needs structures that honour diversity, dissent, and evolution, so too do we. We need practices that let our thoughts breathe. We need rhythms that respect our timing. And we need environments—inside and out—that allow us to think, decide, and act in ways that are deeply ours.

This is how mindset work becomes system work. It’s not about thinking harder. It’s about thinking together—within yourself and with the world.

If you're interested in how to rewire mental rigidity, it is explored here.

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Conclusion: Intelligence Is a Legacy We Share

We often treat intelligence as a personal trait—something to protect, prove, or improve. But Henrich and Muthukrishna’s work invites us to see it differently. Intelligence is not a trophy we earn alone. It is a legacy we share.

We are cultural beings living inside a network of inherited knowledge, shaped by tools we didn’t create, systems we didn’t design, and ideas we often absorb before we question. That’s not a flaw. It’s a feature. It’s how we evolve.

This shift in perspective is not just intellectually interesting—it is personally liberating, especially for those who have internalised the pressure to be perpetually inspired, perpetually certain, perpetually “on.”

Many of my clients arrive with heavy questions:

Why can’t I choose which idea to pursue?
Why do I lose momentum once I’ve started?
Why does everyone else seem clearer, more original, more decisive than I feel?

But these questions are rarely about capability. They’re about context. About believing that intelligence must look a certain way: linear, rapid, conclusive. In reality, some of us are here to think in spirals, to arrive at truth slowly, to share ideas and refine them through interaction.

Human Design reminds us of this with quiet elegance. Whether you’re meant to wait for clarity, move with instinct, follow a deep inner knowing, or hold space for others’ inspiration, the brilliance isn’t in controlling the mind. It’s in trusting the way your intelligence is wired to move.

And when we begin to see intelligence this way—as something emergent, relational, and distributed—the pressure to always be right, original, or ahead begins to loosen. We make space for collaboration, for curiosity, for the humility of not knowing and the courage to ask better questions.

Whether you’re redesigning your life, leading a team, or simply trying to think more clearly, the same truth applies: You were never meant to know it all. You were meant to participate in something larger— a collective brain, a cultural lineage, a living system of shared insight.

So, instead of striving to be the smartest person in the room, perhaps the real work is this:

Be the person who listens deeply.
Build environments that welcome diverse thinking.
Curate your cultural and cognitive inputs.

Honour the timing and strategy of your design.

And recognise that your intelligence doesn’t just live in your head— it lives in your connections, your conversations, your nervous system, and your willingness to evolve.

You don’t have to force brilliance. You’re already part of it.

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