Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Maybe what we’re afraid we’ll find if we look too closely is some resolute malevolence lurking in the heart of man, some unquenchable selfishness and blood lust; that down deep we’re all mindless crocodilian killing machines. It’s an uncomplimentary self-image and of course, if widely held, it would

work to undermine human self-confidence. In an age when the global environment is within our power to ruin, the notion is not cheering for our future prospects.

What is odd about this point of view—apart from the notion that criminals and sociopaths really take heart from the scientific finding that humans have evolved from other animals—is how selectively it makes contact with the data about animals and, especially, about our closest relatives, the primates. There we can also find friendship, altruism, love, fidelity, courage, intelligence, invention, curiosity, forethought, and a host of other characteristics that we humans should be glad to have in greater measure. Those who deny or decry our “animal” natures underestimate what those natures are. Isn’t there much to be proud of, as well as to be ashamed of, in the lives of the monkeys and apes? Shouldn’t we be glad to acknowledge a connection with Imo, Lucy, Sultan, Leakey, and Kanzi? Remember those macaques who would rather go hungry than profit from harming their fellows; might we have a more optimistic view of the human future if we were sure our ethics were up to their standards?

And if our intelligence is our distinction, and if there are at least two sides to human nature, shouldn’t we be sure to use that intelligence to encourage the one side and restrain the other? When we reconfigure our social structures—and in the last few centuries we’ve been tinkering with them like mad—isn’t it better and safer to have our best understanding of human nature firmly in mind?

Plato was afraid that when the superimposed social controls are slumbering, the wild beast within will incline us to incest “with a mother or anyone else, man, god, or brute,” and other crimes. But monkeys and apes and other “wild beasts” hardly ever commit parent-child or sibling-sibling incest. The inhibitions are already up and running in other primates, and for good evolutionary reasons. We demean the other animals when we attribute to them whatever predispositions to incest we find in ourselves. Plato feared that the animal within will incline us to “any deed of blood.” But monkeys and apes and other “wild beasts” are powerfully inhibited against shedding blood, at least within the group. The established lexicon of dominance and submission, friendships, alliances, and sexual partnerships keeps real crimes of violence down to a dull roar. Mass murder is unknown. True main-force warfare has never been observed. Again, we undervalue our non-human ancestors when we blame them for our violent proclivities. Very likely, they had inhibitions in place that we routinely circumvent.

Killing an enemy with teeth and bare hands is emotionally far more demanding than pulling a trigger or pressing a button. In inventing tools and weapons, in contriving civilization, we have disinhibited the controls—sometimes thoughtlessly and inadvertently, but sometimes with cool premeditation. If the beasts who are our nearest relatives engaged recklessly in incest and mass murder, they would have rendered themselves extinct. If our non-human ancestors did, we would not be here. For the deficiencies of the human condition, we have only ourselves and our statecraft to blame—not the “wild beasts,” and not our distant ancestors, who cannot defend themselves against self-serving accusations.

There is no reason for despair or timidity here. What we should be ashamed of is the counsel that urges us to avoid self-doubt even at the cost of hiding our nature from ourselves. We can solve our problems only if we know who it is we’re dealing with. To balance whatever dangerous tendencies we perceive in ourselves is the knowledge that in our ancestors and close relatives, violence is inhibited, controlled, and, in encounters within the species at least, devoted mainly to symbolic ends; that we are gifted in making alliances and friendships, that politics is our business, that we are capable of self-knowledge and new forms of social organization; and that we are able, better than any species that ever lived on Earth, to figure things out and to build things that never were.