The Descent of Man

By Crispin Sartwell

In a stunning conceptual advance, scientists have discovered that orangutans have culture, while human beings do not.

First the orangutans. According to a recent article in Nature, members of a tribe of orangutans learn various behaviors from one another that differ from the behaviors of other tribe. For example, one group of orangutans give an enthusiastic "Bronx cheer" before retiring, while others maintain a pointed silence. And even neighboring groups have different hunting, gathering, and dietary habits.

These results are similar to those of studies among chimpanzees, and scientists expect eventually to show that other primate species, such as gorillas and bonobos, also possess culture.

Obviously, such studies presuppose a certain definition of "culture" which depends fundamentally on diversity, and holds that creatures have culture where groups within the same species have different conventionally fixed behaviors.

But by this standard, human beings are more like termites than like primates, and we are evolving every day toward the level of cinder blocks. Wherever you find humans, they eat at McDonald's. They salivate like Pavlov's dog at the sight of Nike swoosh. They buy Justin Timberlake albums. They subscribe to AOL. They go to big, darkened rooms, and watch anything, even "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones."

Human beings, like apes but much more autonomically and less playfully, are mimetic creatures. Humans will, for example, have a series of surgeries to try to make themselves look the images they see in magazines. No gorilla would sink to that level. You can affect human behavior profoundly with a few well-placed billboards.

They line up en masse to meet people in Mickey Mouse costumes or to see blockbuster exhibitions of the works of painters they hate. They gather round their televisions all over the world to gape in stupefaction at American Idol and the Bachelorette. They all shop at Target. They don't smoke, even in bars. They send their children to huge hive-like "schools" for training in conformity.

Humans favor bureaucratic forms of social organization, whereas orangutans, to say nothing of bonobos, insist on much less bland, uniform, and routinized social structures. All over the world, people refuse to drive cars until the bureaucracy issues them a little card. They stop at the sight of a red octagon, no matter what traffic conditions present themselves. They pay their taxes with hardly a murmur. In general, humans are slavishly obedient and totally unreflective. They observe a thousand arbitrary rules without even asking why they should.

Such behavior would bring an enthusiastic Bronx cheer from any self-respecting orangutan, and shows the close genetic link of homo sapiens to mushrooms and other of the greater fungi.

And speaking of "Attack of the Clones," human cloning is today doubly redundant. First of all, it simply churns out people genetically identical to their forebears. But second, this is fundamentally unnecessary, not to say undetectable, because we are all identical already.

Of course, as an expression of pride in your species, you may point to certain remaining shreds of cultural diversity. But these are purely vestigial - due to isolation, poverty, and sheer ignorance. As soon as folks in the Amazon rain forest or Liberia have access to consumer goods and lists of regulations, they too will join us among the fungi.

Whatever bonobos actually are, we have much to learn from their profound cultural diversity, their quiet dignity, and above all, from the rude yet encouraging sounds they direct at one another before bed.