Extended Family
When I go to the zoo I often attempt to engage in conversation with the gorillas. It doesn’t usually work out. The problem is that gorillas are not humans and as such, do not exhibit any ability to converse in English. The other problem is that I cannot distinguish gorillas from humans, so this is, probably, going to continue well into the future.
There, I said it. You people all look the same. And by people I mean primates.
Call the P.C. firing squad.
The differences between humans and other primates are, in reality, not that amazing. They have a lot of the same bits and pieces that we do yet there is a pretty incredible resistance within human communities to the idea that we’re cousins of a sort separated only by a very short span of time (in terms of universal time, anyway). Human beings are proud creatures for whatever reason, but when I look around, I don’t see a great deal to be proud of, but hey, that’s me. This pride (often inspired by religion or a general lack of awareness) is instrumental in allowing many people to disconnect from their heritage and to see the animal world as somehow being “other” or, even worse, as simply being another resource to mine for our personal benefit. I’ve often found the best remedy for this is a healthy dose of science. To learn about our common ancestry is to recognize our common origin and to see the family ties between us and the creatures that share the world with us.
Now, I’m not denying that people have done some pretty marvelous things in their short time on this earth. They’ve created civilizations, music, culture, and medicine. They’ve shared and been shared with. They’ve learned to communicate with spoken and written language and they’ve learned how to tell stories. It can be tough to look at animals living out their rather limited existences in the forests and out on the plains and not feel some sense of superiority, that, somehow, there is a purpose in us being the top of the food chain. There isn’t. We are animals just like all the other animals, though we are remarkably successful ones. We can look at these things we have created and see ourselves as masters of this earth and of its creatures, but that’s ignoring the darker side of our rise to power. We are the only species that can not only destroy itself entirely, but that can also take much of the rest of the earth with us. Does that sound supreme and intelligent to you? Does it sound divinely ordained? It sure as shit doesn’t sound like it to me.
It sounds pretty goddamn stupid.
I understand that this is a nuanced issue of weaponry and the right to defend oneself and ones borders, believe me. My point here is that while we may be more intelligent, in some ways, than our animal brethren, we are ridiculously stupid on a macroscopic level. Humanity as a whole needs to think about things like this every now and again to keep ourselves humble both as individuals and as a species.
That’s what evolution and science in general have taught me: humility. It’s hard to think you’re this perfect creature that is somehow above and separate from the wildlife that surrounds you when you know that you’re family in some very meaningful ways. To know that we share DNA that is very close to that of the apes and all other animals is to know that we owe them our respect and our recognition.
Denying the kinship between animals and humans is a travesty. To look at the things we do to creatures that can’t really defend themselves and justify it with books we write to satisfy our own egos is criminal. I’m not saying we need to live right alongside the gorillas, here. It would just be nice if people would recognize this connection and appreciate it.
I mean, gorillas are so stupid anyway, right? They live out their lives in the forests, eating fresh fruit, relaxing, and having sex without any real inhibitions to speak of. That sure sounds terrible compared to the awesome lives most of us have, chained to desks trying to pay off our college loans. And that’s the lucky ones among us.
I take back what I said before, we’ve clearly got this shit figured out.
Gorilla in a red tie. Awesome! Too bad you’re sick though. Get well soon 😉
don’t forget throwing poo! such a shame that we’ve forgotten our roots…
some of us still sling the metaphorical shit. Just look at tabloids 🙂
Some consider agriculture the “greatest mistake we’ve never recovered from” or somesuch. Before we started modifying land to grow our own food, we were free from this disjunct from the rest of the nature. But then we discovered the notion of “private property” and all of a sudden you get women devalued, ugly social hierarchies constructed, not to mention some bad health decisions (ew, monocrops). Oh, what has our intelligence wrought?
I tell myself I shouldn’t get angry about it (after all, natural selection brought this about too – stupid co-opting of traits) and that the past can’t be undone, but it is super annoying to have one’s uterus be the focus of property rights because a simple notion of food security spiraled out of control.
Since you mentioned it, prior to agriculture, humans formed matriarchal societies with female, mother deities. You could say that in such a society, where men didn’t even know their children and women slept around freely, the male was devalued, and this was merely a trigger for a reversal of positions.
Oh, and wars have been fought over prime uteruses. Let us not forget Helen.
Untrue. The notion of ‘property rights’ predates humanity by millions of years. Loads of species defend mates, food, territories. It is not uniquely human, and I don’t understand why people keep insisting that it is, or that our version is somehow qualitatively different.
Agriculture and other technologies are not the source of society’s evils — they’re just the means by which we’ve succeeded so well. Human nature is a lot older than 10,000 years.
I base my argument from the book “Sex At Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Society,” since you expressed interest in a source.
It seems gorillas really rock the red-tie look pretty well. Donky Kong must have been a real trend-setter.
If you think about it, most animals are very similar. Compare your body to a dog – ribs, shoulder blades, spine, skull, organs, all built and mounted in a very similar way. Heck, even whales could be thought of as giant, misshapen humans with funny teeth and a hole on their backs.
When you look at stories about outer space adventure, the writers/artists that manage to come up with alien species idea that aren’t humanoid still much of the time are based in our Earthly blueprints- it’s hard for us to even come up with something entirely new, because the Earth and how it works is all we really know!
But I’m getting off topic now I think. Also, before I read the description, I thought this comic was going to be a more specific commentary on different sects of the human race being only a tiny fraction of a percent different on a genetic level, yet things like racism still get in the way even today.
If you hop on a plane and fly to… some remote village in the Himalayas, let’s say, and attempt to engage the rural peasants you find there in a(n English) conversation, odds are they won’t understand a thing you say. Odds are the reverse will be true–communication would be impossible.
So we assume these poor mountain folk are some new and rare breed of hairless ape? Some lesser creature? Inherently inferior? Innately dumb?
Nonhuman?
Of course not. That’s just silly.
So why is it that those assumptions are the most natural thing in the world if we’re in a forest talking to a three-toed sloth? Or at the beach, to a dolphin?
Fact is, we don’t really know how smart most creatures on this planet truly are, because we lack the ability to converse with them. And that inability is as likely to be a result of our OWN intelligence (or lack thereof) as theirs.
Reminds me of Ender’s Game by Orson Scott. A species was almost wiped out as a result of being unable to communicate.
http://tinypic.com/r/2ivjk47/7
lololol
A+
being at the top of the food chain can be lonely so why not make us some friends! I’m sinceresly looking forward for man-beast chimeras, splicing some higher lever cognitive functions can’t be that hard on primates.
http://cseserv.engr.scu.edu/NQuinn/ENGR019_301Winter2002/090299sci-ge-mice.html
I really thought I was the only one who thought this way. Every time I talk to someone about humans coming from apes or chimpanzees or monkeys I always get the, “I just can’t believe that we came from animals” reply. It’s really frustrating to hear that from others because it’s not that they don’t believe the science it’s that they want to deny it. Anyways, it’s really refreshing to see that there are others who share the same opinion, and you put it in such a nice articulate way too 😀
This is totally relevant. This is more relevant now than it usually is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ_WeLi09p0
But again, TMBG are never not relevant.
All the bad we do is clearly made up for by apple and it’s glorious IPad. lol
I’m always wondering what it will be like when another species finally evolves enough to be on a level similar to humans (and or aliens). Would we accept them as being intelligent creatures, or suppress their growth like an unwanted minority? The scientific community would probably be ecstatic. I think the real problem would come from the religious society. I can see some of them clearly having issues with ape men or cat women. Perhaps if they are discovered in a less religious country they will be better received?
…Assuming religion still exists at that point.
Ok anyway as we all know, we (the mankind) are at some point in the, let’s face it, not so distant future are ultimately going to destroy ourselves and a no small percentage of all other inhabitants of our planet.
My point: lets commit a mass suicide and save our planet?
Anyone?
You first…
I feel Godcat’s confusion.
And btw, Best. Rant. Ever.
Maybe God is just nearsighted. They’re both “wearing” mostly black with a huge silver patch on their chest. It’s an easy mistake to make if you can’t see very well.
You seem angry, K. I don’t blame you. I’m angry, too.
I want humans off this planet. Just gone. I don’t even care where. Mars, space colonies, heaven or the surface of the sun. So long as they just leave Earth and it’s smarter inhabitants alone.
I refer to the animals other than humans as being smarter because they work with the world around them. There is an ebb and a flow that they are a part of. I think humans could be, too, but they’ve decided other things are more important.
It makes me sad more then anything.
I don’t really agree with that. to me animals don’t really work with the planet as that would imply that they know how it works insteadof itjust being something that happens
On an extremely related note, we’re working with dolphins to develop a common language between our species- I am not joking.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/seti-dolphins/
Humanity as a species has… issues. I agree on that.
I think that the problem is that we apply our own standards to other species – of course, what else could we do? – and hence, feel superior.
I don’t think that gorillas have it all figured out better than we have, necessarily. They’re pretty darned awesome at being gorillas, that’s for sure.
I would like to say that humans technically have the ability to choose how to act (from a greater breadth of choices than aforementioned gorillas), but…. nope. We *could*, but we don’t.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with using tools, and though humanity is screwed up in some respects, I don’t think that we’re inherently worse than other creatures. (They do crazy stuff too, after all.)
However, I’d wish that humanity learned long-term planning. Seems to me like all bad decisions are made because nobody considers the consequences in a couple months, a couple years, a century…
I, too, would enjoy talking to gorillas, but their social structure creeps me out. (I’m referring to the murder of baby gorillas and the mother’s subsequent reaction, and if I’m mistaken and it was another type of ape that did that, I humbly apologize to all gorillas everywhere.)
It’s kind of crazy, how disassociated many people are from most of the world. The way people will freak — FREAK — when even mildly inconvenienced by another species bugs the hell out of me. Maybe that’s why I have such a fondness for urban wildlife — it’s nice to see people forcefully reminded every once in awhile that they’re not the only ones trying to make a living around here.
And at the other extreme are those misanthropic folk who want to see us all exterminated (in a general, impersonal sense, of course — such notions don’t usually extend to themselves or their loved ones). While I can in some sense appreciate such a mindset, it does remain entirely unfair — we got here the same way every other species did, and we’ve done some pretty damn cool things along the way. In a few billion years this planet and everything on it is toast, anyway (whether we play a hand in it or not). We’re probably the only chance life on this planet has of surviving the demise of our Sun (intelligences such as ours are not an inevitability — evolution doesn’t work that way — and may be quite rare in the Universe, for all we know). Humanity is something worth celebrating, too.
Is it just me or does k sound especially angsty today?
Nothin’ but angst up in here!! *angst*
You make some excellent points here. May I add that we not only communicate via written and spoken languages but also in the many signed languages of the world?
So what do we do when face to face with a being who doesn’t share our language? We use gesture, pantomime, which is not language in it’s most formal sense, but falls in the space between. And it’s interesting to note how much we can communicate without formal words or signs regardless of the modality of our primary language(s). We use gestures to communicate more effectively with other human beings, even those who do share the same language, and we use gestures with creatures who interact with the world differently, like dogs and gorillas. Creatures who can also gesture due to their biological capabilities, like chimps, have even been able to adopt and express themselves to us using the systems we invent. There’s a brilliance in that, but it hasn’t been fully realized by researchers looking for evidence of a different kind of phenomenon, e.g., their ability to be more human-like.
I think the more deeply we can look into the eyes of our friends and neighbors, our dogs and cats, or a giraffe in the zoo, the more likely we are to begin to acknowledge the validity of the many forms of expression and living well on this amazing planet. When we recognize that each and every one of us has a heart that beats only for so long, eyes that water when we’re afraid or cold or sad, a non-negotiable need for basic sustenance, and ideally, a desire to find space that’s safe enough to grow in, the habitual behavior of stepping on one another to get ahead (which happens in a million ways) is harder to sustain. And in its place we may even find that our more fully developed pre-frontal lobes offer us the biological possibility of exploring ways to understand and support one another, without forgetting our own dignity and that of the beings in our presence.
And one more thing….I think your comic is fantastic!! Thanks for working so hard on it every day, and for so freely offering it up for our enjoyment.
Dude, i wish i could meet you sometime. You have so many interesting things to say that i feel i could hold a great conversation for hours with you. I really like your comics; very relevant, and they always come with some wonderful background!