Does intelligence end with us?

Deep thoughts...

At the lower levels of biological composition, you have molecules making up the parts of a cell (mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum, ribosomes, nucleus) which serve particular functions of the whole cell, all parts work together to help the survival of the cell.  At the cellular level you see some behaviors that are *almost* intelligent.  Like you can watch a paramecium use its cilia to go after food sources.  They seem intelligent despite not having a brain.  We would say these behaviors are by evolution, that any cells that didn't do that behavior "died" so therefore the behavior was selected.

Now, you group cells together to create organs, and the organs serve the same kind of purpose that the individual cellular parts serve.  That is, the organs help the larger composition (in this case the body) to survive, and the survival of the body is beneficial to the organs and down to the cells, all of which accomplishes the processing of energy by the molecules of the cells (and you can probably take it down even further than that).  Each level gets increasingly more complex.  At the level of a biological organism it is complex enough that not only can it consume other biological organisms, but in some cases can even make a digital watch (a shout out to Douglas Adams :) )

What's the next level of organization?  I see a few candidates.  One would be that we work together to form a company, companies to form an industry, industries to form an economy, all of which sustains the individuals.  Another I see would be that we work together to form a family, families to form a neighborhood, neighborhoods to form cities, and so on.

Generally speaking, (jokes aside about government intelligence or management intelligence) we see that the working together is more beneficial to all of us than working alone.  We accomplish more, all for the processing of more energy and the survival of us as a whole.  This is a pattern that holds throughout all of the levels.

But, I see a break in the pattern.  And that break is in the self awareness.  Self preservation of each group would be an automatic given.  Obviously the survival of the fittest decisions play into here.  The better a company is able to adapt to environment and threats to its existence, the longer it survives.  Ditto with nations.

But where would we look to find a larger conscious level of thought in that whole process, one that would be self aware?  Do you see any living behaviors of the economy, of the countries, of this forum, anything that suggests that there is some kind of self awareness as a pattern of the overall thought process for any group?  Can we recognize that self awareness of the larger group given that our cells individually do not recognize the self awareness of us?  Does it take even more extraordinary intelligence than what we possess in order to recognize a higher intelligence than us?