The Origin of the Self-Destructive Species: A Second Visit

This is "Caesar," leader of the "Simians" (see the text)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I originally published this column over ten years ago, on The Greanville Post. At that time, one stimulus for it was that I had recently seen the movie "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" and had published a review of it (which is no longer available on line). In that review, I noted that among the levels on which the movie could be seen, was as an essay in paleo-anthropology. In the movie, there is a group of great apes that had acquired human-like intelligence as a result of earlier human experimentation carried out on them, and had escaped from the labs in which these experiments had been carried out. They are collectively known as the "Simians." There is also a group of Homo sapiens who are survivors of a world-wide, highly fatal infectious disease epidemic which the humans conveniently name the "Simian flu" (even though its origin was of human manufacture, to be experimented with on apes.) Why, one might ask, was it useful to visit the story in 2014, and then, to revisit it at this time?

Well, in brief, in the United States we are facing an attack on the current system of ownership and exchange of goods and services that is intended to concentrate the ownership of an ever-larger portion of the means of production and their products, in a smaller and smaller number of private hands. And of course, the designers of the new system, spelled out in great detail in a U.S., document entitled "Project2025," have found, in the U.S. at least, two persons with, one might say, particular characteristics of their persons to lead the struggle for them.

As it happens, part of the explanation for the current state of affairs in the U.S. does depend very much on that unique characteristic of the species Homo Sapiens. That is, in distinction from all the other animal species, in order to survive it must convert elements found in the environment to other forms and structures, that is to provide food, other forms of sustenance, shelter, and eventually more complex means of production. To further explain my hypothesis on that fundamental difference between Homo Sapiens and all of the other species, in 2014, I found it useful to turn to the story-line of the movie, "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes." For the most part, I still do.

It is what is going on now, a world-wide intra-species conflict over, to use an all-encompassing for it, "trade," that brings me to re-publish the column. Also, as it happens, on television I recently again, saw the second and third movies in the series, "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes," "War for the Planet of the Apes," which reminded me of my column from 2014. And indeed, the following text is essentially unchanged from the original.

In the movie, the surviving Simian population leads a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, in a communal setting. One outstanding feature of that society is that while they have one acknowledged political leader, Caesar, no one appears to have either a) any control over the hunting-gathering processes or b) any material advantages over anyone else. They also appear to not engage in intra-Simian violence, as a routine. In fact, they have an often-repeated saying, in part to distinguish themselves from the surviving Homo sapiens: "Ape does not kill ape." However, in the story as told by the movie, one episode of intra-species violence does occur, an attack on Caesar. When the latter wins and condemns the perpetrator to death, before he does so, Caesar pronounces the profound words: "You are not an ape."

The Homo Sapiens population in the movie is, well, classically Homo sapien. They have guns aplenty and with few exceptions are ready to use them at a moment's notice. Violence, against other species and within their own, is both commonplace and for the most part fully accepted. But of course, they are members of the only species of animal on the planet that kills, indeed slaughters, each other in numbers that have grown ever larger in the geologically very brief period of time that the species has existed in its so-called "civilized" mode of organization.

The Homo sapiens are devious, both with each other and with the Simians. (To repeat) most importantly, unlike the Simians, the Homo sapiens cannot exist for very long without converting one or more elements that they find in their environment into one or more other foods, goods, and services. The Homo sapiens survivors that appear in the 2014 movie lives in San Francisco and environs. They use electrical power, produced by gasoline-fueled generators, to supply the electrical power they need on an ongoing basis to run a variety of conversion processes that forms the basis of the plot-line. That is, the Homo sapiens are currently about to run out of power, as the fuel supply for the electrical generators they are currently using itself runs out. However, if they can physically get to an abandoned electricity-producing dam that just happens to lie to the north of where the Simians live, their group can survive for some considerable period of time. The plot of the movie concerns the struggle between the Homo Sapiens and the Simians to enable the former to achieve that goal.

So, what we see here is a fundamental conflict between an apparently economically egalitarian society of hunter-gatherers which, among other things, rejects the use of use of intra-species violence (actually in this case intra-genus, for there are a variety of ape species in the group which is dominated by chimpanzees), and the classic Homo sapiens society. An essential characteristic of that society (ours, of course) is that, to repeat, in order to survive, uniquely among the species on Earth, conversion-of-resources-found-in-the-environment to items/substances that the Homo species can use, and needs to use in order to survive, is essential.

Of course, those species survival processes have become ever more complex over time. What has happened in Homo sapiens history is that apparently from pretty close to the beginning of communities organized at any level, then societies, the ownership of the means of production that converts elements found in the environment into those goods and services needed/used for individual and species survival has for the most part been in private hands. It is precisely that mode of ownership, and the means the owners have used over time to protect and project their ownership, that eventually leads to violence within and between Homo Sapien societies on a larger and larger scale.

In one way "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" can be seen as a parable of the apparent conflict that took place tens thousands of years ago, over many thousands of years, between one Homo species, the one that we call "Neanderthal," and ourselves, the "Sapiens." Apparently, the Neanderthals were hunter-gatherers (much like the Simians in the movie) and there is no evidence, at least not yet, that they engaged in intra-species violence. Neanderthals apparently did have larger brain cases than ourselves. Whether or not that indicates that they were more intelligent has been the subject of great debate. Whether or not Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals fought each other, as species, with ours eventually eliminating theirs, presumably through violent means, is also the subject of debate, as is the matter of whether or not there was inter-species breeding. What are not subjects of debate is that we are here and they are not, and, to repeat, that we survive only through the means of conversion-of-resources, that is, once again, known in modern terms known as the "means of production."

As it happens, there is considerable evidence that just about from its earliest of times, human society has been characterized by intra-species violence. As an article in the journal "Live Science" summarized it:

"Compared with most animals, we humans engage in a host of behaviors that are destructive to our own kind and to ourselves. We lie, cheat and steal, carve ornamentations into our own bodies, stress out and kill ourselves, and of course kill others."

That then raises the question of whether from just about the beginning of our version of the genus Homo (and of course there were many others before us): is there a gene or genes for intra-species violence in Homo Sapiens that exists in few, if any, other species? (If they are to survive, most animal species need to have one or more violence [or means of escape] genes directing such activities at one or more other species.) Or is it simply a behavioral manifestation arising out of the necessity of conversion-of-resources-for-survival, that would naturally arise as the means of production were arrogated into private hands.

Either way, behavioral or genetic (and it might have been a combination of both), it is most likely that it was the private ownership of the means of production that has, over time, selected for intra-species violence. This pattern, which supports my hypothesis of the defining characteristic of the centrality of private ownership may have started even before the organization of communities around agriculture:

"Now, analyses of archaeological sites as well as ethnographies of traditional societies are etching a more complex picture, suggesting that some ancient hunter-gatherers may have accumulated wealth and political clout by taking control of concentrated patches of wild foods. In this view, it is the ownership of small, resource-rich areas -- and the ease of bestowing them on descendants -- that fosters inequality, rather than agriculture itself."

And how better to preserve the private ownership of the means of production than through intra-species violence, on the part of the owners and those non-owners who they engage to protect their ownership. Certainly, in known historical times it has not been done through the use of reason.

Thus, to summarize, it would appear that it has been, since the earliest times of the organization of Homo sapiens into communities, the private ownership of those necessary-for-species-survival-means-of-conversion that has promoted, and indeed may have even selected for, the use of intra-species violence and the gene or genes that may underlie it. Since this is most likely the case, and our species has developed ever more violent and massive means of and for intra-species destruction, the future does not look too healthy, does it? At least as long as the ownership of the means of production remains in private hands, that is. It would appear that this hypothesis would help to explain, among other things, what is currently going in the commanding sector of the owner-class in the United States and the policies they are imposing on its population, and indeed, to the extent they are able, many of the other nations of the world.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Article changed on Apr 08, 2025 at 7:29 PM EDT)