Cunning intelligence is ability to silence others
Why are humans generally considered “more intelligent” than animals? Is it maths, astrophysics, sociology or any other sciency stuff?
No.
All of that is trash when you’re dead.
In the first step, intelligence is being alive and, more importantly, staying alive. In the second step, it’s making your needs be heard and thus fulfilled.
In its purest form, power refers to the ability to exterminate voices.
Of course actual murder is always the most straightforward option, but there are many other opportunities to silence others.
This form of “cunning” intelligence I mean here is not altruistic, but quite the opposite. It’s the type of intelligence used by narcissists, by people who want to manipulate, no matter whether they do it knowingly or unknowingly.
The most effective way to silence a person or an entire population is to make them believe that they’re not actually silenced.
To give them the tools to spread their voice, while in reality, you know that you will never listen to them anyway. This is one aspect of what the US military call perception management.
It is the foundation of today’s ubiquitous power structures and the illusion of choice in most contemporary pseudo-democratic voting systems.