If you look at human society, it is very easy, of course, to compare our warfare and territoriality with the chimpanzee. But that's only one side of what we do. We also trade, we intermarry, we allow each other to travel through our territory. There's an enormous amount of cooperation.
Interpretation
Human behavior encompasses both conflict and cooperation, similar to that of chimpanzees.
In this quote, Frans De Waal highlights the complexity of human society by comparing it to the behavior of chimpanzees. While we may engage in warfare and territorial disputes, we also exhibit significant cooperative behaviors such as trade, intermarriage, and allowing free movement within our territories. This duality emphasizes that, like our closest relatives, we possess both competitive and collaborative instincts, suggesting that cooperation plays a crucial role in our societal dynamics.
In practice
In a debate about human nature, this quote can illustrate the importance of cooperation in society.
As in a Russian doll, however, the outer layers always contain an inner core. Instead of evolution having replaced simpler forms of empathy with more advanced ones, the latter are merely elaborations on the former and remain dependent on them. This also means that empathy comes naturally to us. It is not something we only learn later in life, or that is culturally constructed.
Sometimes I read about someone saying with great authority that animals have no intentions and no feelings, and I wonder, 'Doesn't this guy have a dog?'
Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude: We often test them in ways that work fine with humans but not so well with other species.
Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than _x000D_ bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral.
Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.
I have often noticed how primate groups in their entirety enter a similar mood. All of a sudden, all of them are playful, hopping around. Or all of them are grumpy. Or all of them are sleepy and settle down. In such cases, the mood contagion serves the function of synchronizing activities.
In a way, fraud in business is no different from infidelity in marriage or plagiarism in scholarly work. Even people committed to high moral standards succumb.
Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can’t touch and see.
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat?
I had forgotten: this is what it feels like to live in time. The lurching forward, the sensation of falling of a cliff into darkness, and then landing abruptly, surprised, confused, and then starting the whole process again in the next moment, doing that over and over again, falling into each instant of time and then climbing back up only to repeat the process.
When you look at a guy like a Jay-Z or look at a guy like a Nas, you don't necessarily qualify them as conscious rap purely, although they are extremely conscious of the social inequities that prevail.
Just watching an animal closely can take you out of your mind and bring you into the present moment, which is where the animal lives all the time - surrendered to life.
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