Sunday, 09 September 2012 07:25By Kelpie Wilson, Truthout | Op-Ed
Occupy Oakland demonstration, October, 2011. (Photo: Glenn Halog)Sometimes, when I feel my head exploding over the sorry state of our poor, overheated planet, I find it helps to step back from immersion in our species’ affairs and assume the vantage point of the disinterested alien or far-future anthropologist. An accurate analysis of the extreme disfunctionality of human society and the wreckage of our planet is not possible from within the contemporary belief systems of capitalist-communist, christian-muslim, democrat-republican, etc. As alien-anthropologists, let’s examine homo sapiens in 2012 and see what we find.
We begin with the great apes as a point of reference to see what evolution and history have made of the third chimpanzee (scientist Jared Diamond's term for homo sapiens). Great apes have well-defined characteristics that we also see in dear old homo sap: the love of imitation and games; cleverness with tool use and gestural language; polymorphous sexuality (bonobos); male dominance (gorillas); violence and warfare (chimpanzees); bonds of affection within family and clan; nonreciprocal altruism; and finally, a strong moral sense of fairness and justice alongside a sizable capacity for the practice of "tactical deception."
Anthropologists have made a study of "tactical deception" in primates, which is just as it sounds - the use of deception to manipulate your fellows into giving you what you want. A 2004 study by Richard Byrne and Nadia Corp, psychologists at St. Andrews University in the UK, found that the sneakiest monkey and ape species are those with the biggest brains, because it takes a lot of processing power to invent and carry out deceptions. Here are some behaviors that count as sneaky among primates: to avoid a beating from the dominant silverback, a female gorilla hides in the bushes to mate with her boyfriend; as his mother is about to swat him, a juvenile baboon stands up and hoots, "Lion on the horizon!" fooling everyone, including his mama; a lucky chimp spots a cluster of ripe fruit and covers his face to hide his delight - he'll come back later when no one is around so he won't have to share.'
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten