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.
Marijuana grows naturally...Don't you think making nature against the law seems a bit, I don't know, unnatural?
The price of our vitality is the sum of all our fears
Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us- by that God we both adore- Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore- Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore." Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore.
Whoever debases others is debasing himself.
In Reformed theology, if God is not sovereign over the entire created order, then he is not sovereign at all. The term sovereignty too easily becomes a chimera. If God is not sovereign, then he is not God.
There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling, except in the infinite; for the soul, except in the divine.
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