"Nim was raised as if he were human – almost. He was dressed in shorts, T-shirts and nappies. He would eat at the table with the rest of the family.
"Under LaFarge’s tuition he quickly began to pick up signs: 'eat’, 'Nim’, 'me’, 'hug’, 'sorry’."
(Project Nim: the chimp who was brought up like a child)
Fascists claim that Nature is essentially cruel.
Fascists justify such things as false flag terrorism on the grounds that this is how Nature works.
But Nature is a mixture of kindness and cruelty.
On 8 August 2011, we read of new research showing that chimpanzees can be unselfish and kind.
The research is published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(Chimpanzees Not Selfish) t
"It's now suspected that all primates and mammals possess empathy and associated charitable behaviors."
"Since empathy is an old mammalian trait, there is no reason why the sort of altruism we describe should be unique for the primates," says researcher Frans de Waal.
"I expect it will be found in dogs (and) rats," says de Waal.
It should be noted that insects, and many other creatures, help each other out.
De Waal and colleagues devised an experiment in which chimps chose 'tokens' which led to food.
The chimps nearly always chose the tokens that "would yield food rewards for both the selector and the nearby observing chimp."
Primatologist Christophe Boesch says: "All studies with wild chimpanzees have amply documented that they share meat and other food abundantly, that they help one another in highly risky situations, like when facing predators or neighboring communities, and adopt needing orphans."
Boesch said altruistic behavior happens in the wild.
Jack (left) and Ralph (right) from Lord of the Flies. (http://lordoftheflies.org/gal/lotf.htm)1. Chimpanzees will help humans without any reward in return.[8]
Bonobos have been observed aiding injured or handicapped bonobos.[9]
Animals that cooperate are more likely to survive.
Cooperation is a very successful survival strategy.
It has been the basis of all the most dramatic steps in the history of life.
(Evolution myths: 'Survival of the fittest' justifies 'everyone for ...)
http://lordoftheflies.org/Research by Darlene Francis and Michael Meaney shows that kindly environments, involving hugs and warm touch, make individuals better suited to survival and reproduction.
"Rat pups who receive high levels of tactile contact from their mothers - in the form of licking, grooming, and close bodily contact - later as mature rats show reduced levels of stress hormones in response to being restrained, explore novel environments with greater gusto, show fewer stress-related neurons in the brain, and have more robust immune systems." (Darwin's Touch: Survival of the Kindest Psychology Today )
http://lordoftheflies.org/In his book, The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that empathy helps survival.
"The nasty, brutish existence dominated by 'savage competition, ruthless exploitation, and deceit' that Dawkins describes is far from the norm for animals that live in social groups.
"They thrive because of the cooperation, conciliation, and, above all, the empathy that they display towards fellow members.
"The support and protection they receive from living in a group more than compensates for any selfish advantage they might have achieved on their own." (Survival of the Kindest - SEEDMAGAZINE.COM)
So, we should choose leaders who believe, not in bombs, but in kindness and cooperation.
2. In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, we find Ralph, the good guy who favours cooperation.
And we find Jack, the bad guy who believes in survival of the most brutal and devious.
Jack is the bully who tries to get his way by conning people, seducing people, or intimidating people.
Jack is the sort of person who becomes a politician or a spy.
We should choose leaders like Ralph and not leaders like Jack.
Superficial charm?3. Jim Kouri is a vice president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police.
Kouri describes the personality traits common to psychopathic serial killers. (Oh-oh! Politicians share personality traits with serial killers: Study)
These traits include superficial charm, an exaggerated sense of self-worth, glibness, lying, lack of remorse and manipulation of others.
These traits, Kouri points out in his analysis, are common to American politicians.
We should stop voting for psychopaths.
Germans and English play football during World War I.4. Most people are not psycopaths!
In the 1940s, Brigadier Gen. S.L.A. Marshall claimed that only 15-20% of America's World War II soldiers would use their weapons in battle.
The majority of soldiers at that time were not psychopaths. (On Killing, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, p. 4 - The Canadian National Newspaper: Twilight of the Psychopaths )
We should not support leaders who want to brainwash our children and turn them into killer soldiers.
5. Psychologist Oliver James, in The Guardian (Guardian Unlimited Special reports So George, how do you feel ...), wrote about George Bush that "The outcome of (his) childhood was what psychologists call an authoritarian personality.
"Authoritarianism was identified shortly after the second world war as part of research to discover the causes of fascism."
We should not vote for people like Bush.
6. Peter Dunn, at The New Statesman (New Statesman - So were the Tories right after all?), wrote: "For several weeks, I have been talking to psychologists and psychiatrists about what drives the Prime Minister.
"One view emerged strongly: there appears to be something worryingly adrift in the mind of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, a man who doesn't really know who or what he is.
"More technically, he is diagnosed as a psychopath capable of reinventing himself with remarkable dexterity, like an actor...
"Therapists agree that the ability to disassociate yourself from the consequences of what you have done is a classic ingredient of the psychopathic condition.
"Dorothy Rowe, a much-published Australian psychologist, compares Blair's style to that of Michael Jackson, the singer. 'Both are dominated in adult life by fantasies,' she says."
We should not vote for people like Blair.
StraussThe Jew who is the chief philosopher of many of the top people is Leo Strauss.
Strauss taught that those who are fit to rule are those who realise there is no morality.
Strauss believed in false flag operations, because rulers have to use deception to achieve their ends.Strauss believed in Fascism.
Strauss believed that a country or Empire has to invent an enemy (such as al Qaeda).
We should not vote for people who are fans of strauss.
~~~
anarchore left a comment on this post: Check out the anarchist Piotr Kropotkin, who found that Mutual Aid was the major factor in survival, not competition.
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_archives/kropotkin/mutaidch1.html
Malooga comments:
The standard academic work is Robert Axelrod's "The Evolution of Cooperation."
May I also highly recommend Susan Rosenthal's "Power and Powerlessness," one of the most important, beautiful and moving books I have ever read. You can download a pdf for free at her website, or listen to it on mp3 for free download from the Unwelcome Guests website.
Also at Unwelcome Guests are many other fine free programs on cooperation.
For the opposite, I recommend Robert Hare's work and website on psychopaths.
Also, a lot of good information at radio4all.net, search "psychopath."
Less recommended is the book "Political Ponerology," which despite its good intentions, naively recommends testing people for sociopathic tendencies and then isolating them; assuming the sociopaths gain control of the testing apparatus and then use it to institutionalize empathic people who oppose them, the result would be a far worse dystopia than even today.
Canspeccy brings up some very important issues. How do we recognize psychopaths, and how do we protect ourselves from them? Also important, is why do people become psychopaths?
Thinkers like Louis Mumford, Jaques Ellul and Ivan Illich have wrestled with these problems and see the issue as having to do with our relationship with technology and how we have created hierarchical, compartmentalized societies that run like huge machines -- where the individual is subservient to the "mega-machine" of empire, shall we say.
It seems to me that the more we can structure our society at the local level where it works for people -- instead of people working for it -- and the more we can foster real community, the better we can reintegrate psychopaths into society and limit the damage that they can do.
Also recommended is Erich Fromm's "The Revolution of Hope, toward a humanized technology."
Global undemocratic governance is all about setting up unaccountable systems: Drones and smart bombs, derivates and commodity future indexes, debt financing, etc.
All of these positions literally cry out for psychopaths to fill them, or force normal people trapped in these positions to become monsters in order to survive.
We must work to oppose and dismantle all unaccountable systems and replace them with the most accountable localized solutions possible.
~~
"Nim began his life with a huge family of devoted caretakers, but for most of the rest of it he was isolated and lonely. He could sign 120 words, but could barely communicate with his own species. For Nim, who died of a heart attack at a relatively young 26, there was no happy ending." (Chimp Raised As a Boy in 'Project Nim'.)
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