The Big Picture

Religion one might suppose is the bastion of morality and without it humankind would resort absolutely to bad behavior. We would become, it is still thought, like wild savages of the Hobbesian ilk even though we know that the Hobbesian view of primitive man is completely off the mark. We know that primitives are quite capable of forming harmonious groups and making moral judgments.

Here is a story of a group of primitives grappling with a peculiar problem within their ranks without benefit of a spoken language. The group was cannibalistic, feeding on members of other groups that could be isolated, attacked and killed. At one point in this group’s existence one of their number, a female with a young daughter, began cannibalizing within the group itself. The pair would come upon a mother with an infant who were alone and defenseless. The female and her daughter would snatch the infant from its mother, kill it and eat it. After a few of these incidents the female’s aberrant behavior was somehow communicated to the rest of the group despite their lack of a spoken language. The female was admonished with threatening sounds and gestures by dominant males whenever she would so much as look at one of the group’s infants. After sometime the female in question finally seemed to get the message that her behavior was not acceptable and ceased her abnormal endeavors.

This is an example of the formation of a primitive moral structure in the wild by a group that was solely on its own and operating merely from innate powers of judgment concerning right and wrong. Where else could their judgment have come from? All they had was their natural selves to inform and instruct them. They were not subject to any established law or moral authority that could guide them in judging the troubling situation. And it was a situation that none of them had ever confronted before. So, the manner in which it was dealt with originated from an inherent sense of propriety.

But this story must be entirely fictional. Such primitive events could not be known? After all, the group had no language, no way of telling its story and making it a part of an oral history. There would, then, be no way for anyone to know about it. Therefore the story’s conclusion is completely unwarranted.

But even if the story is entirely fictional, I think we can see a structure in it that could serve as a coarse model for our civilized moral orderings. Of course, one could create such a scenario by a kind of reverse engineering. But, again, so what? One could only do so because of what is now in place. There is no way of assigning the origins of morality to such primitive types in any demonstrative convincing way. The story would have to be an actual event to have any legitimacy whatsoever.

Well, the story does depict an actual event that has been clearly documented from observations of a community of chimpanzees in Gombe as part of Jane Goodall’s extensive research there.

In a chapter entitled “Communication” in her book “The Chimpanzees of Gombe” Ms. Goodall writes, “One female, Passion, and her daughter, Pom, began to kill and eat the babies of other community females… They were only seen to do this when the mothers of the victims were with dependent young only. There is no firm evidence that any individuals other than the mothers who were attacked ever knew about the bizarre behavior. On the other hand, the mothers were, it seems, able to communicate at least their fear and/or dislike of Passion to some other community members. When Gilka (who had already lost one infant to the killer) screamed as Passion approached to stare at her newborn, two adult males, one after the other, rushed over and attacked Passion. In fact, Passion’s behavior led to one extremely interesting communication sequence. This involved Miff, a female who had saved her baby from Passion but who remained extremely fearful of and hostile toward Passion for many months after the attack. When the infant was still very tiny, Miff encountered Passion and at once fled, screaming, until she met two adult males, some hundred meters away. Miff then turned back toward Passion, her screams became aggressive waa barks, and glancing over her shoulder at the males, she started back the way she had come. The males, responding to her solicitation for help, followed. When they reached Passion, the males displayed (made threatening gestures) and Passion fled”

This is indeed an extremely interesting scenario for reasons other than communication between chimps. First of all, if one were to imagine what would happen within a chimp community with respect to intramural cannibalism without having any actual knowledge about the actual event one would no doubt come up with quite a different scenario. One might expect the mothers to defend their infants from the initial attack, as indeed they did, but one might also assume that the matter would go no further than that. “That’s life in the jungle among savage apes,” one might say, “You lose your kid to someone stronger than you, that’s just the way it is and that’s the end of it.” “That’s the law of the jungle!” After all, what recourse would chimps have, after the initial incidents had occurred, to do anything about them?

Such assumptions serve to keep the chimps at a comfortable distance from us. They are savage beasts living in a monkey eat monkey world and are incapable of making the kinds of judgments about behavior that we as human beings are capable of making. But such assumptions based on a broad and widely held view of life in the jungle, are by virtue of Ms. Goodall’s studies along with other relevant literature, proven to be entirely erroneous.

Join me, if you will, in a thorough unbiased examination of this particular scenario involving the chimps of Gombe. Now, the mothers of the infants who Passion preyed upon were the only ones who knew about the incidents directly because in order to be successful Passion’s victims had to be in isolated situations. That something was somehow communicated by those mothers to other members of the community about Passion’s aberrant behavior indicates that the chimps felt they certainly did have recourse to further discourage that behavior. There was a judgment made by the chimps that Passion’s behavior was wrong and a sporadic but, nonetheless, concerted effort, contingent on potential or actual incidents, was diligently pursued.

But what exactly could the mothers have communicated to the other chimps regarding their experiences with Passion? The two adult males, for instance, who were summoned by Miff; did they know before coming upon Passion that she was what Miff was so upset about? Or were they following Miff with no idea about what the trouble was? And when they did come upon Passion was it a complete surprise? Were they expecting, perhaps, to find some invaders from another community causing a disturbance? The two males didn’t act surprised at the sight of Passion. They immediately threatened and chased her away. So, either they knew whom to expect from what Miff communicated to them or, upon the sight of Passion, they immediately connected her with the information previously conveyed to them by other mothers. But whatever the case may be the two males availed themselves to Miff’s ravings without hesitation and dealt with Passion in no uncertain terms as soon as they saw her. It was as though they were perfectly tuned into the situation at the outset.

Also, how did Miff know that the two adult males she came upon while fleeing from Passion would respond as they did? Why would they react as they did to something they were not directly involved in? Miff must have known that the two males knew about Passion and knew they would comply with her urgent request to admonish Passion for her unacceptable behavior even though there was no immediate threat in evidence. One may wonder here why Miff didn’t summon other mothers whose infants had been victimized by Passion’s peculiar dining habits and tear her from limb to limb? For one thing the mothers were not moved to aggression toward Passion unless in defense of their own young. But they could somehow ignite male aggression toward Passion even though the males were not directly affected by her abnormal appetite.

So, the males’ interest in all this, one could say, was purely one of law enforcement. Again we don’t know exactly what the males in question knew about Passion’s intolerable behavior. But something was communicated to them that resulted in their admonition of the culprit. And whatever was communicated to them stemmed from the cannibalistic incidents and it was that specific behavior the chimps’ concerted effort sought to censure. So, we have here a kind of crude department of justice at work. The citizenry brought their complaint to the proper authorities in order to have the matter resolved.

Furthermore, why such a to-do about a behavior which all chimps indulge in, albeit, with regard to chimps of other communities? Of course a mother is going to do all she can to save her infant from any kind of attack, but why wouldn’t that be enough? Why did Miff feel it necessary to send Passion a message via the two males after she had saved her baby? A judgment of some kind was made that Passion’s behavior was wrong over and above Miff’s personal experience with it. There were “rules” about such things, Passion was disobeying them and she needed to be taught a lesson.

There is another interesting angle here, which brings up the question of moral choice. If all chimps are cannibals what is it that keeps them, as a rule, from preying upon the members of their own communities? We say such behavior is abnormal for a chimp. So, why would one chimp in a community indulge in that behavior? And if such behavior is possible in one chimp could it be potentially possible in all chimps? Could all chimps sometimes see one of their fellow chimps as a meal and then have that impulse overridden by an innate and socially developed regard for those of their own community?

Chimpanzees do appear to have an innate feeling of community that is socially strengthened through the conditioning process of the community as evidenced by the extremely thorough research conducted by Ms. Goodall and her team. As a chimp, one begins to learn at a very early age what is and is not socially acceptable behavior; including the degree and kind of aggression one is allowed to indulge in with regard to other members of one’s community. It is a very strong conditioning process aimed at preserving the bonds that hold the community together as a unit. But, for whatever reason, the bonds of fellowship in Passion were weak. The impulse for a convenient meal overrode the bonds of communal fellowship and her weakness caused outrage in other members of the community. Could we say moral weakness, moral outrage? If we think of morality as a conditioning property necessary to the survival of a group, then, yes. If, on the other hand we think of morality as a divine decree over and above natural phenomena, then, perhaps not.

The comparison between chimps and humans that is most striking here is distinguishing between when a certain behavior is right and when it is wrong, allowing it in one instance but not in another. Cannibalizing members of other communities is okay for chimps but they draw the line at cannibalizing within their own community. For us, killing is wrong and against the law but we allow it in self defense, state executions and war. Even cannibalism is allowed when it is a matter of survival; the famous plane crash in the Andes, for example, where the survivors fed on the bodies of the casualties in order to stay alive until rescued. We say these discernments are moral judgments. But how are monkeys able to make similar judgments?

In whatever way one tries to explain away these judgments on the part of chimps, “It’s merely their instinct for survival at work,” for instance, the same explanations can be applied to similar human judgments as well. Of course, one might say here that chimpanzees are incapable of universally outlawing cannibalism as humans have and this is a huge and incomparable difference. But the leap from outlawing cannibalism within one’s community to declaring a universal ban is relative to the leap from eating termites with the aid of a twig (which chimps do) to eating sushi with the aid of chopsticks. Again, it is a difference of degree rather than kind.

We see in these incidents with Passion that the chimps were struggling to maintain an orderly, cohesive community and demonstrated a distinct sense of what is proper conduct and what is not, i.e., a moral sensibility. This can hardly be seen as projecting human terms onto the chimps. Their actions speak for themselves. Everyone involved exhibited an interest in the fitness of the community as a whole. This was achieved naturally through the operation of individual self-interest. It was certainly in the self-interest of the mothers involved in the attacks to have Passion stopped. But the dominant males’ self-interest in the matter seems a little less clear. Why did the two adult males respond as they did to Miff’s solicitations? It did not appear to be in their immediate self-interest to do so. They were, in effect, acting as peace officers in a heated dispute between community members, thus exhibiting a basic purpose of a moral system, to maintain a necessary social cohesion. That is something the males would certainly have self-interest in, one that goes beyond their own self-interest and represents the interest of the entire community.

Finally, the treatment of Passion by her fellow chimps was extremely “humane”. Considering Passion’s heinous behavior, a case could certainly be made for banishing her from the community or killing her outright. But Passion was treated as a member of the community who was misbehaving and needed to be admonished for it. The normal chimps that were judging Passion’s crimes were obligated, it seems, not to cross the line that Passion had. They were only interested in persuading her to stop indulging in her depravity. Eventually, Goodall reports, they were successful in that endeavor.

The behavior of the chimps with respect to Passion’s pathology is easily translatable into our language of law and order. Some examples would be; Law number one - chimps belonging to a particular community shall not kill members of their own community. Law number 2 - cannibalism can only be practiced with respect to chimps of other communities. Law number 3 – anyone breaking law number 1 or 2 will become the object of a concerted effort to cease and desist from committing any more such crimes. Law number 4 - all reports of law breaking are to be referred to dominant males who will do all they can to prevent further incidents of wrongdoing from occurring with respect to law number one. And, one would have to suppose that these laws would be common to all chimps and, thus, universal.

If one is tempted to write all this off as a fluke peculiar to a particular chimp community then one is attributing to the chimps the ability to transcend their own natures and act according to a consciously invented formula unconnected to their intrinsic programming.