Misunderstanding Evolution

There is snow on the ground this morning, but school is still on today. Bow is napping, and I am taking it easy.

The snow on the ground early this morning

All is peaceful and I am reviewing. It's a time to take stock of everything, toward the end of the year, before looking forward to the next year. One thing that has struck me lately is how the concept of evolution is being misunderstood by "forward thinking" people. Take, for instance the expression "we are more evolved than that." What on earth does that mean?

Bow outside briefly yesterday -- too cold to stay long, but still fun

Evolution is about natural selection by environment. It implies nothing about one animal or plant being "better" than another in some general, absolute sense. Yet people with pretenses toward enlightenment are using the term as if evolution were about a scale of preference, from worse to better in a long line of improvements, like the great chain of being: with man at the top. The whole time that these people are singing "everything's beautiful in its own way" -- they don't believe it.

What is more, they don't seem to understand that no being can evolve to a place where it is exempt from the laws of the universe. I was trying to tackle this topic on my other blog in a post entitled Misremembering Robin Hood. On my Facebook page, I posted a picture of a rabbit from children's book In Case There's a Fox, and I wrote:

"What if rabbits tried to make a living out of eating foxes? If you understand why that could not work, then you understand why robbing the rich to feed the poor would also not work as a self-sustaining system."

Along came someone and accused me of being in favor of "dog-eat-dog".  She said we need to evolve beyond dog-eat-dog. Since dogs eating dogs would be cannibalism. and I had just explained that cannibalism does not work, clearly I wasn't in favor of dog-eat-dog. Nor do we need to evolve "beyond" that, as it was never possible in the first place. Yes. an occasional killing and ritual eating of a conspecific can happen, but as an ecosystem that could not work, because it would be like a perpetual motion machine. If you feed on someone else, then that someone else needs to feed on something else, not on you, or there will eventually be nothing for anyone to eat. It's also the same reason why two friendly neighbors cannot make a living by taking turns selling each other books they have written. And it's the same reason why our chickens could not live on the eggs they themselves laid.

But this person was so scandalized by the idea of comparing some people to rabbits and others to foxes that the next thing she wrote was something about Nazis. (And you know that when people start calling other people Nazis, a rational discussion is unlikely to ensue.)  And then she came up with this:

If you want to argue science and evolution...I suggest you check out the most recent information on chimpanzee behavior. Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, sharing 98% of our DNA. So far from being the gentle vegetarians they were thought to be, it turns out that they are homicidal, genocidal, wage war, and commit sexual atrocities on each other (and on humans they think of as being like them). That is our genetic inheritance

I for one never thought chimpanzees were gentle vegetarians. Have you seen the canines on a chimpanzee? What would lead anyone to think that? Where people get these misconceptions, I don't know!

I gently told her that I happen to live and work with a chimpanzee twelve hours a day. And then she said, did I see what a chimpanzee at a sanctuary had done to a volunteer who worked there when she put her hand on a chain link fence?

I would not recommend putting chimpanzees behind chain linked fences, standing on the other side of the fence, and sticking your hand in -- or even getting anywhere near that fence. You know why? You just made it an us-versus-them situation. If you want to get that close to  a chimpanzee, then cultivate a face to face relationship over a long period of time, and go in without barriers.

Bow and I together
Notice the holes in the grid are so small that you can't stick a finger through

Some of those sanctuaries should call on me to help them design their enclosures. They should also hire me as a consultant for chimpanzee psychology. They should not recruit any people who think chimpanzees are "gentle vegetarians" or pacifists or beatniks or whatever other misconception about chimpanzees happens to be current.

We are different from chimpanzees, but I would not say ever that we are "more evolved." We did not evolve from chimpanzees nor they from us. We had a common ancestor somewhere down the line, and there may have been some interbreeding even once we split off. But by and large, we evolved under different conditions to specialize in somewhat different skills. We have a lot in common, and we can live and work together, but only if we are on the same side of the fence. Put up a fence between you and the chimpanzees, and you have just declared war.

If you don't like chimpanzees because they get violent and wage war, then you probably secretly don't like humans, either. You don't accept yourself or that aspect of your own being. And you probably don't understand the ecology that you purport to want to save.

In any ecology and in any economy, different participants contribute in different ways and serve different functions. Producers are very important, and they are always more numerous and at the bottom of the trophic pyramid, because no system can work that is top heavy. And no matter how they develop and change to fit the circumstances, no individual or species can evolve to be immune from the rules of reality. Which is why cannibalism is never going to work, and we can't make a living by taxing each other.

Why Segregate?

Is segregation ever good? Most people will agree that segregation by race is a bad idea. But how about by species?  What if somebody said to you: "Dogs belong with other dogs, not humans. It's inhumane to deprive a dog of the society of his own kind." Would you agree, disagree,  or partially agree and partially disagree?

We have two dogs in our household at the moment. I do think that Teyman, even though she was initially very hostile to Brownie, is much happier now that she has another dog to associate with in the back yard, when we humans and chimps are busy doing other things. But every time both dogs come into the house, they both want to cuddle with me and Sword. Sometimes they try to push one another aside, to get a better position with the humans.

What about segregation by age? Do the elderly prefer the companionship of other elderly people?Are they better off in an old folks' home rather than as part of a family with people of many different ages? The same issue presents itself with small children and adolescents. Are they better off when they are segregated by age and sent off to school with their same age peers? Is it better for them to model themselves after the behavior of other children or of adults?

Today I came across an essay by Paul Graham entitled "Why Nerds are Unpopular". There he argues that we segregate children by age in school because it makes it easier for a few adults to watch them, while all the other adults are busy doing something productive. Because of the specialization in our industrialized society, Graham argues, an adolescent who might have served as an apprentice in pre-industrial society is completely useless, and has to be watched in order to keep him from getting out of hand. Schools are merely prisons where children are kept, and because they are segregated by age, and the adults are mere wardens, they set up their own savage societies after the model of Lord of the Flies. This is why bullying is so prevalent among adolescents, and also why so many adolescents are seriously depressed and have thoughts about suicide. It's enforced idleness and segregation by age and not being allowed to make a meaningful contribution that accounts for teenaged behavior, not a surge of hormones.

So, what about chimpanzees? I once had a discussion  with an Israeli volunteer with the Jane Goodall  Foundation's Shoots and Roots who argued that Bow would better off in a society of chimpanzees. Yes, I should be allowed to visit him, but the other chimps should be the ones to make the rules under which he should live. I argued that as Bow's mother, I should be his primary caretaker, though he should  be allowed to play with other chimpanzees. Just as my daughter was socializing with other children her age, but still lived at home with  her family, I wanted the same thing for Bow.

"No," the Israeli Shoots & Roots volunteer insisted, "everyone is better off with their own kind. Even autistics should live with autistics in an institution, though they can visit with their family occasionally."

Do you think that autistics should live a segregated life? I don't. Do you think dogs should always be parts of wild dog packs? I don't. Do you think that adolescents are better off in a society of their own, without adult models for appropriate behavior? I don't.

Segregation is usually not a good thing. It is better to be part of a society where we interact with all kinds of people than to form a ghetto of people who superficially resemble us along one point of comparison. Even in the jungle, there are many animals living in an ecosystem. It's usually being too similar that makes us incompatible, not being too different. Two different groups of chimpanzees may fight over the same territory. But think of all the other animals that can occupy that territory, as long as they are not fighting over the same ecological niche. There may be only one alpha male to a group, but think of all the different ages, sexes and dispositions that are tolerated within the same group. Segregation by age, sex, or species is unnatural. It happens only in industrialized human societies. Everywhere else, coexistence of those not fighting over the same niche is the norm.