@HegelMeister,
Wow... I can hardly waste a word on the notion of thought being essential to being... Yes, we must think in order to survive and the better thinking we do the better chance we have against others thinking as much of their own survival... What thought gives primarily is consciousness: The awareness of our being... But we are very little rational, using reason to accomplish unreasonable goals, or using it as chess players do, because the other is using it... We have for the most part succeeded to the point of failure because we related rather than reasoned...Humanity has never reasoned so much as when they have argued, and in primitive democratic societies, argument, social reasoning was more common that private reasoning... Humanity has survived almost to the present because it has availed itself of the common mind which it did out of the needs and abilities offered by the relationship, primarily gentile in nature, but always natural to a degree... Two heads are better than one, and many minds are better than a few, but no matter how much the mind of the individual is multiplied, the quality of thought is no better or more likely to result in continued being...