What makes us human?
Feb. 3rd, 2007 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dream_labyrinthI've just finished another book by Robert Merle, Le propre de l'homme. It seems to not have been published in English, which is a pity.
So, to understand what I am talking about here, I need to give a bit of a background:
The book is about an American anthropologist and his wife, who adopt a chimpanzee to teach her to talk and raise her, basically as a scientific programme but soond developing into more.
They get Chloe, as they call her, from a zoo - the zoo wants to give her away because her mother has killed her previous child and they don't want to run the risk. In their house (a sheep farm), they built a room for her that is pretty much a playroom except for the barred windows.
The narrator, Dr. Dale, and his wife Suzy learn Ameslan (American Sign Language, for those like me who had never heard that word before) from Emma, a mute woman who also becomes Chloe's nanny. Chloe learns the language quickly, but also develops, as the Dales wanted, an understanding of English. She doesn't understand everthing, but certain key words.
But there are also many problems: Once, when Chloe sees herself in the mirror and then the housekeeper's grandchild, who is about the same age, she gets sad because she is, as she puts it, "ugly" - which for her is not only a word describing the looks of something but also the character, therefore making her depressed for days.
She also destroys pictures she sees of her biological mother, and considers "ape" a swear word, and her human family can't figure out whether or not they should try to make her understand that she is not a human.
Some people in the village don't like her, one woman claiming that it's against God's will to teach an animal to speak, others saying that Chloe is dangerous. That group gets an ego boost when Chloe, on a trip to the store with a farm hand, is verbally attacked by a local boy. She understands what he says and jumps at him. The farm hand pulls her back and drives off with her, and the boy throws stones after the car, but he then goes home to tell his father that the animal has tried to bite him, so the Dales get some trouble with the local population.
Interestingly, Chloe remembers what the kid said, as three years later, she repeats those words of herself after the housekeeper harasses her - in Spanish, which Chloe can't understand, but she understands the intention. She becomes sad and depressed and later calls herself a filthy ape, and refuses to sleep in her bed but makes herself a bed on the floor next to the dog.
The difficulties increase to dangerous proportions when Chloe becomes a teenager. She is at that time stronger than her human family, and increasingly difficult to manage. First she attacks the girlfriend of Dale's son out of jealousy, then bites the son when he punishes her. Later she tries to kill the Dales' cat (of whom she is jealous because the cat is allowed in rooms she is not allowed to enter, and whom she dislikes because when she was younger she tried to pet the cat and the cat scratched her). More and more, the Dales realise they have to do something, but Suzy doesn't want to give up her "child", and Dr Dale doesn't want to put Chloe into a zoo.
Then some local men organize a hunt near the farm house. The Dales' dog, whom Chloe likes a lot, has been put on a leash to stop him from running with the hunters, but he barks so much that Chloe releases him.
He is shot, and that turns out to not have been an accident. Tom, the brother of one of the most ardent haters of Chloe shoots the dog because his brother said it would ruin the hunt, and he brags about it in front of Chloe. Chloe steals his gun and breaks it, then he attacks her, and it takes the combined efforts of the hunters and the Dales to seperate the two. The guy swears to kill her.
He is mentally retarded, but his brother doesn't consider him a danger to anybody and refuses to have him committed and even taught him to shoot. However, the women in the village think him very much a danger, as he follows them around and stares and they don't think he'd stop at staring if given a chance.
The death of the dog poses a new problem for the Dales, because now they have to explain to Chloe what dying means. She asks why people die, and is shocked to find the head of her family can't explain and can't do anything about it.
Shortly after that, the Dales admit to themselves that they have reached a dead end: Chloe doesn't seem to learn any more, she doesn't seem to develop any new skills. They wonder whether the scientific project is at an end, and what this will mean for them.
But then one night Tom, the guy who vowed to kill Chloe, breaks into their bedroom with a gun and a hunting knife, telling them he's going to kill Chloe who sleeps in the next room. Then he tells Suzy to undress, and when she refuses, fire a shot into the wall. Chloe runs into the room and attacks him, and they fight. In the end, she bites his throat but dies herself because he managed to stab her.
throughout the book, there is that question of what makes humans human, what it is that seperates us from animals. Chloe can talk, she has and expresses likes and dislikes, she has a remarkable memory.
What she doesn't have is a head for numbers - teaching her to calculate is doomed from the start as she can'd deal with numbers larger than five. Death, even though it is a difficult concept for her to understand, she seems to understand after an explanation.
She invents games. She invents words by combining words she knows. She is able to tell lies, she does have an imagination.
So what is it that makes us so different?
In the book, a belief of an African people, the Oubi, is mentioned: they think that God made humans and apes at the same time. He gave them the earth and told them to work. The human did, but the ape didn't see the need to work and decided to just use what the world offered without work. God saw that, and to punish the ape for violating His law, He made the ape ugly.
But when He saw the ugly chimp, He took pity in him. He couldn't go back on His word, but to make up for it He taught him music.
Is the only thing that makes us special our work?
So, to understand what I am talking about here, I need to give a bit of a background:
The book is about an American anthropologist and his wife, who adopt a chimpanzee to teach her to talk and raise her, basically as a scientific programme but soond developing into more.
They get Chloe, as they call her, from a zoo - the zoo wants to give her away because her mother has killed her previous child and they don't want to run the risk. In their house (a sheep farm), they built a room for her that is pretty much a playroom except for the barred windows.
The narrator, Dr. Dale, and his wife Suzy learn Ameslan (American Sign Language, for those like me who had never heard that word before) from Emma, a mute woman who also becomes Chloe's nanny. Chloe learns the language quickly, but also develops, as the Dales wanted, an understanding of English. She doesn't understand everthing, but certain key words.
But there are also many problems: Once, when Chloe sees herself in the mirror and then the housekeeper's grandchild, who is about the same age, she gets sad because she is, as she puts it, "ugly" - which for her is not only a word describing the looks of something but also the character, therefore making her depressed for days.
She also destroys pictures she sees of her biological mother, and considers "ape" a swear word, and her human family can't figure out whether or not they should try to make her understand that she is not a human.
Some people in the village don't like her, one woman claiming that it's against God's will to teach an animal to speak, others saying that Chloe is dangerous. That group gets an ego boost when Chloe, on a trip to the store with a farm hand, is verbally attacked by a local boy. She understands what he says and jumps at him. The farm hand pulls her back and drives off with her, and the boy throws stones after the car, but he then goes home to tell his father that the animal has tried to bite him, so the Dales get some trouble with the local population.
Interestingly, Chloe remembers what the kid said, as three years later, she repeats those words of herself after the housekeeper harasses her - in Spanish, which Chloe can't understand, but she understands the intention. She becomes sad and depressed and later calls herself a filthy ape, and refuses to sleep in her bed but makes herself a bed on the floor next to the dog.
The difficulties increase to dangerous proportions when Chloe becomes a teenager. She is at that time stronger than her human family, and increasingly difficult to manage. First she attacks the girlfriend of Dale's son out of jealousy, then bites the son when he punishes her. Later she tries to kill the Dales' cat (of whom she is jealous because the cat is allowed in rooms she is not allowed to enter, and whom she dislikes because when she was younger she tried to pet the cat and the cat scratched her). More and more, the Dales realise they have to do something, but Suzy doesn't want to give up her "child", and Dr Dale doesn't want to put Chloe into a zoo.
Then some local men organize a hunt near the farm house. The Dales' dog, whom Chloe likes a lot, has been put on a leash to stop him from running with the hunters, but he barks so much that Chloe releases him.
He is shot, and that turns out to not have been an accident. Tom, the brother of one of the most ardent haters of Chloe shoots the dog because his brother said it would ruin the hunt, and he brags about it in front of Chloe. Chloe steals his gun and breaks it, then he attacks her, and it takes the combined efforts of the hunters and the Dales to seperate the two. The guy swears to kill her.
He is mentally retarded, but his brother doesn't consider him a danger to anybody and refuses to have him committed and even taught him to shoot. However, the women in the village think him very much a danger, as he follows them around and stares and they don't think he'd stop at staring if given a chance.
The death of the dog poses a new problem for the Dales, because now they have to explain to Chloe what dying means. She asks why people die, and is shocked to find the head of her family can't explain and can't do anything about it.
Shortly after that, the Dales admit to themselves that they have reached a dead end: Chloe doesn't seem to learn any more, she doesn't seem to develop any new skills. They wonder whether the scientific project is at an end, and what this will mean for them.
But then one night Tom, the guy who vowed to kill Chloe, breaks into their bedroom with a gun and a hunting knife, telling them he's going to kill Chloe who sleeps in the next room. Then he tells Suzy to undress, and when she refuses, fire a shot into the wall. Chloe runs into the room and attacks him, and they fight. In the end, she bites his throat but dies herself because he managed to stab her.
throughout the book, there is that question of what makes humans human, what it is that seperates us from animals. Chloe can talk, she has and expresses likes and dislikes, she has a remarkable memory.
What she doesn't have is a head for numbers - teaching her to calculate is doomed from the start as she can'd deal with numbers larger than five. Death, even though it is a difficult concept for her to understand, she seems to understand after an explanation.
She invents games. She invents words by combining words she knows. She is able to tell lies, she does have an imagination.
So what is it that makes us so different?
In the book, a belief of an African people, the Oubi, is mentioned: they think that God made humans and apes at the same time. He gave them the earth and told them to work. The human did, but the ape didn't see the need to work and decided to just use what the world offered without work. God saw that, and to punish the ape for violating His law, He made the ape ugly.
But when He saw the ugly chimp, He took pity in him. He couldn't go back on His word, but to make up for it He taught him music.
Is the only thing that makes us special our work?
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-03 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-03 06:17 pm (UTC)If you read about the things Chantek (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chantek) and the other trained primates, like Kanzi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanzi) can do, Chloe's talents don't seem exaggerated.
The fact that primates are able to feel and express emotions have been observed in their natural environment as well.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lana_%28chimpanzee%29)
no subject
Date: 2007-02-03 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-04 09:45 am (UTC)The apes are apparently able to distinguish between the image of somethig and the thing itself. They use tools and adapt things they know and have to new tasks, like inventing new words.
So maybe it is just the extend of our creativity and imagination that makes the difference.
Sorry, I don't do a good job of elucidating my thoughts here
Date: 2007-02-04 08:34 pm (UTC)But the big jump on the sliding scale of "what makes us human" is that as far as i know, apes on their own in the wild haven't seem to had the "idea" be creative for the sake of being creative. I suppose it could be because they are busy just trying to survive. Our more recent ancestors learned to use and make tools, and master fire, and survive well. But at some point 30,000 years or so ago art seems to have been "invented". To me it seems as someone somewhere either had the idea for it, or had a slightly different brain that allowed them to have the idea and utilize the skills that they had.
The apes do amazing things when shown the idea of paint for example, but do they come up with the idea to draw in the dirt with sticks? (That's a question, I don't know if they do) I'm not knocking their intelegence or humanity but the idea to be creative seems to be a little bit of a leap for them.
Re: Sorry, I don't do a good job of elucidating my thoughts here
Date: 2007-02-04 08:42 pm (UTC)It would be an interesting thing to know.
Funnily enough, i think it doesn't actually take that much of the 24 hours of the day to fight for food. I seem to remember to have read somewhere that human societies in Africa that are still on stone age level spend a lot of time just doing nothing.
And the fight for food would not be so difficult for apes living in the right ecological conditions. Though now that I think of it, I think it takes eating meat to develop the brain. Something about the protein, IIRC.
So maybe as long as apes are mostly vegetarian, they wouldn't actually be able to develop brains like we have.
Re: Sorry, I don't do a good job of elucidating my thoughts here
Date: 2007-02-04 09:04 pm (UTC)Big brains do need lots of energy and protein. Chimps do hunt though, so perhaps if they survive in the wild long enough, who knows what will happen.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-04 12:27 am (UTC)I for one have never believed that we are all that different from animals when it comes down to it. Human arrogance and dependence on outdated mythology may preach differently, but if you take the average human being and drop them in the middle of the wilderness without so much as a scrap of clothing on their backs--what are they capable of? What makes the human animal unique is the depth of our communications--and this has opened doors for us that allow us while other animals remain subject to the laws of nature.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-04 01:16 am (UTC)It's the emergent properties that really make things interesting. If I tried to locate a specific brain cell that held 'you', meaning your consciousness, I would fail. I cannot say with certainty the emergent properties of a dog, or a cat, or a chimp because exposure to the right conditions create a more capable mind than one that is not challenged. While a chimp can learn sign language, they do not develop it on their own, despite the fact that it is clearly a better form of communication than interpreting body language and the grunts and clicks. I often wonder what would happen if we taught an entire family of chimps sign language, but then left them on their own. Would they teach it to their children, improve upon it, and still use it? Or is it only good for a generation, and would fail to be taught/learned correctly?
no subject
Date: 2007-02-04 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-04 09:32 am (UTC)And you are very right about the right conditions thing. It's one of the weird things with cloning. CC, the cloned cat, doesn't even have the same fur colour as her "mother" - it would be silly to assume that a clone would have the same personality or talent as the "original". So much depends on what happens before and after the birth.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-04 09:47 am (UTC)