The two species’ social structure could scarcely be more different. Chimp society consists of a male hierarchy, dominated by the alpha male and his allies, and a female hierarchy beneath it. The alpha male scores most of the paternities, cutting his allies in on others. The females try to mate with every male around, so each may think he’s the father and spare her child. How did a chimplike society ever give rise to the egalitarian, largely monogamous structure of hunter-gatherer groups?

um. what distinguishes us from chimps, apparently, is our complete self-delusion. our evolutionary advantage is hallucinatory self-congratulation. no in all honesty, i'm sure that social cooperation is a feature of our species, as it is of many others. and i'm sure it's adaptational in some circumstances. it is also the way we get into stampedes of collective delusion. rockets, the piece points out, can't be made by one person all alone. nor can such a person develop an arsenal of rockets and launch a nuclear exchange. it will take all of us acting in concert to end life on earth for all the species on the planet. not only do we act more like chimps than new york times writers seem to think we do, we act more like chumps. what i like is the way the question is framed: how can we explain the fact that our species is so amazingly great, so much better than all the rest? it's as though i wrote an autobiography with the goal of explaining why i am so much better than everyone around me. that in itself would be a refutation of the presupposition it was meant to explain.

male humans are so peaceful, our societies riddled with extreme pacifism. unlike human females, girl chimps are all flirtatious and exhibitionistic. chimps are so disgusting. we rock! thank god we've overcome the primates' tendency toward power/sex hierarchies. but what can explain this? 

a good example of how we have transcended chimp hierarchies and become so excellent is the moammar/beyonce million dollar gig. the blood-soaked cells and idiotic political theories, the banal songs and continuous offering of gold-clad butt are things that chimps can't even dream. nor did moammar and beyonce get to that gig by themselves; you have to have a staff to make alpha. indeed, their ascent pre-supposes our acquiescence/cooperation, crystallized as cash. the key is leadership, role modeling. chimp hierarchies are not the achievement of non-cooperating individuals.

 

i'll just take one tiny example of the fact that this whole 'intellectual' structure is built in mid-air: the whole orientation takes chimpanzees unproblematically as representing an earlier phase of human evolution. well we used to do exactly the same thing with africans. chimps may not be as smart as we are, but they are not as stupid either.