Somayeh’s Reviews > Our Inner Ape: The best and worst of human nature > Status Update

People often imagine that in nature weakness automatically means elimination - a principle hyped as the "law of jungle"- but in reality social animals enjoy considerable tolerance and support. Otherwise, what would be the point of living together?

When Confucius was asked if there is a single word that could serve as a prescription for all of one's life, he arrived, after a lenghty pause, at "reciprocity".

In humans,ethnic groups that used to get along reasonably well may all of a sudden turn against each other,as the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and the Serbs,Croats and Muslims in Bosnia. What kind of mental switch is flipped that changes people's attitudes?I suspect switches are controlled by the perception of shared versus competing interests.So long as individuals feel a common purpose,they supress negative feelings.

We routinely Dehumanize our enemies-like the chimps, treating them as less than one of our own species... Us-versus-them thinking comes remarkably easily to us.

We routinely Dehumanize our enemies-like the chimps, treating them as less than one of our own species... Us-versus-them thinking comes remarkably easily to us.

Among bonobos, there's no deadly warfare, little hunting, no male dominance, and enormous amounts of sex. If the chimpanzee is our demonic face, the bonobo must be our angelic one.

When people commit genocide, we call them "animals". But when they give to the poor, we praise them for being "humane". ...