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.
Interpretation
The quote observes how mood can spread among groups of primates, illustrating a form of social synchronization.
Frans De Waal highlights the phenomenon of mood contagion observed in primate groups, where individuals collectively experience similar emotions and behaviors, such as playfulness or sleepiness. This synchronization is not only fascinating but serves an important function in their social dynamics, enabling coordinated activities and enhancing group cohesion.
In practice
During a team-building retreat, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of collective morale and teamwork.
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.
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.
Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.
Beauty is nature's brag, and must be shown in courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, where most may wonder at the workmanship.
I believe that the great Creator has put ores and oil on this Earth to give us a breathing spell ... as we exhaust them, we must be prepared to fall back on our farms, which are God's true storehouse. We can learn to synthesize materials for every human need from things that grow.
When you see the natural and almost universal craving in English sick for their 'tea,' you cannot but feel that nature knows what she is about. ... A little tea or coffee restores them. ... There is nothing yet discovered which is a substitute to the English patient for his cup of tea.
To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals.
Water is the exile, carried back in cans and flasks, the ghost between your hands and your mouth.
Once you've been in space, you appreciate how small and fragile the Earth is.
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