Letters to the Editor
cabdriver
Published Letters: 594 Editor's Choice: 8
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@rightly
[Read the article: We are family]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Nothing in our brain capacity or our studies of animals has indicated that they do not grieve, play, laugh, feel anger, fear, joy, or love.
The lack of ability to prove a negative, or even to find evidence for it, does not validate a surmise.
However, to the extent that those terms connote emotions, I think there's plenty of evidence that at least some of the higher mammals share the emotions of grief, a sense of play, anger, a sense of happiness or reward that resembles "joy", and, in a few very circumscribed conditions, a state of affection that approximates "love" in emotional terms.
The emotion of "fear" is much more ubiquitous.
"Laughter" isn't an emotion per se, but a vocalization associated with an emotional response- and not necessarily inspired by mirth, at that. I don't know if I've ever heard a non-human animal laugh, except on Saturday morning cartoons. I've heard chimps make vocal sounds that sound like laughter while smiling, but it would be presumptuous of me to take it that way. They can't tell us what the sounds mean, so there's no way to be sure, although possibly brain imaging comparisons could provide a hint. Hyenas make vocalizations that sound even more like laughter to me than some chimp chatter, but I think that's simply an anthropomorphic projection of mine- along with another associated whimsy along that line: that because I've typically heard them make those "laughter" noises while huddled together in circles and occasionally looking over their shoulders, that they're gossiping. About me.
I don't think what of significance would be proved about animals if it were shown that some species are capable of laughter. I don't find the fact some species have an emotional palette to be particularly surprising.
Where thay differ from humans is that they show no signs of hate, vengeance, genocide, or other human forms of behavior, unless they are treated inhumanely.
Nonsense. Most primate band behavior appears to relate to disputes of territorial dominance, and higher primate species undoubtedly have sufficient long-term memory to nurse grudges and take revenge. Human beings simply have a greater capacity to harbor grudges, since their memories are typically so long and detailed. Acting out of a sense of vengeance isn't a unique curse of humanity; it's a retrograde behavior, a regression to an overriding concern with mammalian territorial disputes. "Hatred" is similar; pretty much the mammalian emotion of anger + the unique human capacity for reflective thought, which is required to intensify the emotion, obsess about it, and settle on a focus for it as the target of wrath.
"Genocide" isn't an emotion like the other two terms you tossed out there, it's a type of organized social behavior. Unlike the emotions of vengeance and hatred- impulse-generated reactions which are common enough in humans to be considered part of a species-wide emotional heritage- genocidal behavior is much more irregular and aberrant. But, like the emotions of vengeance and hatred, it too emerges from our mammalian territorial heritage. Considered simply as a sociobiological behavior, genocide is simply an extreme method of achieving territorial competitive advantage- like many another animal species. The salient difference is Power- the sort of power I alluded to in my previous messages.
So as you can see, I don't think much of "noble savage" theories of non-human animal behavior. The negative characteristics you've brought up about humans are simply human expressions of traits that are widespread among our animal cousins.
Rather than bringing up the atrocious behaviors that humans are capable of because of the harnessing of energy and technology- perhaps more appropriate to the topic to ask: what is it in humans that holds the genocidal impulse in check? What leads humans to turn aside or transcend the impulses toward vengeance and hatred- to make conscious choices to have an abhorrence of those emotional states, and where they lead the life paths of humans?
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Fantastic
[Read the article: Betancourt freed in Colombia]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Fantastic. Great news.
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how it is
[Read the article: Obama advisor Greg Craig: Adding insult to injury]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...supporting FISA amendments isn't going to stop the GOP from attempting to smear him. They're still going to fling poo, and the irony is that it will be the same poo whether or not he votes for the bill. --Silash