When I was in eighth grade I was allowed to go camping with some friends during spring break. It was pretty exciting. I never thought my parents would let me go, but as the youngest of four they had already OD’d on parental caution. We caught a Golden Eagle Trailways bus at the Port Authority in New York, then transferred to a Silver Eagle a hundred miles out, then a Scrap Metal Sparrow to our rural stop. A prearranged taxi took us to our trailhead in the Blue Ridge mountains of West Virginia. The four of us hiked up a rough dirt road under spectacular blue skies. There were snow drifts in the shade, but the sun was warm and toasty. We arrived at a tiny lake near the crest of the hill we had been climbing.  We set up camp, built a fire and stored our perishables in the snow drifts. 

For a few days we explored the area, took dips in the freezing water, dug a latrine, pooped over a fallen tree trunk and gloried in our freedom from families, adults and school. One afternoon we spied a ripple in the trees uphill from our encampment. We watched the disturbance make its way to the far edge of the lake beside us.  When it hit the water, it turned into a twenty-foot water spout that spewed across the surface to us. It was amazing. We’d never seen anything like it. Two of us tried jumping into it when it climbed out of the lake and made its way into our camp. It was like being hit by a two-by-four. We got up and tried it again and again, slammed away each time. 

The whirlwind moved over all of our carefully laid-out camp gear, forks, spoons, cookware and our roll of APT (“all-purpose paper-towels”) lofting and swirling them in the air as it headed off into the woods. We jumped and grabbed at our flying stuff. I reached for the unfurling roll of APT suspended above me, wrapping the stream of paper around my arm as it unspooled overhead. I passed the paper to a friend and jumped for spinning utensils until the invisible force moved off too quickly to follow. We collected our discarded gear in its wake. The little cyclone could only be perceived by the disturbance it created in its surroundings. By itself, it appeared to be nothing.

Later in the week we made our way down the hill, and decided to bushwhack. We camped beside a stream one night, and beside another meandering one when we reached a holler of sorts our final night. It was our last night of freedom. I didn’t know what to do with the energy that was building up inside me at being unsupervised in nature with friends and a campfire. I was vibrating with excitement. I excused myself and went 40 yards away to run back and forth across the stream a few dozen times until my boots were filled with water and the exertion had calmed me down a bit. I sat down beside the fire to dry off as night grew cold. My friends accepted my weirdness. You gotta do what you gotta do.

Recently I watched Chimp Empire on one of the streamers. The alpha males display by charging through the forest, grabbing branches and slamming sticks. Caught in a wide shot the performance seems puny. Pitiful. The reaction shots of the rest of the chimps looking bored further deflates the show. But when an alpha chimp, backed by big lieutenants, wins the display competition, they stalk around full of themselves, strutting their stuff.  Previously unimpressed females may grab their little ones to get out of the way. Beta males without friends may disappear for a bit. Usually, the alpha male doesn’t interfere with the community as they eat fruit and leaves and groom each other. But fresh from a display performance, they are more liable to beat on any handy, vulnerable target. ‘Look at me, the greatest chimp in history!‘ devolves to: ‘this is what I can do to any of you‘.

The alpha male, will lead the large males on patrols of their borders. They need to protect their territory so other troops won’t come in and eat their fruit and leaves. If they are violated, then they’ll have to go and invade a neighboring territory for fruit and leaves. Conflicts are mostly settled by display competitions, but sometimes they spiral into skirmishes and cannibalism. Coming back from patrol they may happen on some monkeys. They’re smaller than the chimps, and they can provide protein. Occasional meat keeps the chimps strong and healthy, and it satisfies bloodlust.

Initially I found the chimp displays disappointing. On the one-hand I thought, ‘that’s all you got?’ and on the other hand I thought, ‘please dudes, get over yourselves‘.  My reaction is a contradiction in itself. It recognizes both my chimpness and my disdain for chimpdom.  When I recall my energy burst on the hiking trip, I know exactly what the male chimps are feeling. They are going through hormone surges that need an outlet. The alpha males can be terribly cruel to weaker members of their troop, but the community is socialized to put up with it. They allow for a chimp who’s going to defend their territory, so they don’t have to attack someone else. They put up with the danger in their midst to avoid potential scarcity. Evolution reinforced this behavior. What happened to those it didn’t save? Some became extinct and some became us. Both winners and losers evolved out of chimpdom. 

We share 98.8% of our DNA with chimps. Chimp DNA made me run across the stream forty times. It made me play football and lacrosse and get into some bar fights.  But we’re no longer chimps. The three billion base pairs or bits of information in each of our cells amplify our 1.2% distinction into 35 million differences per cell. It took some critical thinking skills for us to get out of the forest. But that doesn’t mean that the habits of alpha bullies are behind us. We can always be drawn to the baser impulses of our nature. We can still be losers in evolution.

Bread in the bellies and circuses for distraction allowed emperors to abandon any vestige of democracy in Rome. Those alphas were fueled by fancy togas, gold tiaras and catapults filled with fire. Technology helps us expand our borders in the frontiers of the unknown. But when we look across the substantial borders that remain, the terrifying other that may assault us is not a rival troop. It is our primitive selves. As Carl Jung said, “where there is no love, power fills the vacuum,”. Our weakness is the male alpha chimp heritage unleavened by compassion and intelligence. This genetic weakness can only be overcome by kindness. 

Kindness is benevolence towards our own, in its most inclusive sense.  Kindness is the love of a chimp mother who grabs her child out of the way of displaying male marauders. How many wars have been started by women? (“The face that launched a thousand ships,” did not actually take part in the launching.) How much global warming is due to the competitive drive of the female gender? How much income disparity can be laid at the feet of the queens of Wall Street? How much disinformation has been encoded in the social networks engineered by women? Kindness is the archetypal mother concerned with the welfare of all children. This kindness can be fierce, and it is the sense of unconditional positive regard that knits our social fabric.

We separated from the chimp genome somewhere between 5 and 13 million years ago. History can be viewed as a totem pole of women giving birth to women, with a queue for guys to add some genetic information. During gestation and early childhood we run around and build mostly unnecessary things, often while destroying a number of necessary things. It’s time for our angry males to get over missing our mommies. Sibling rivalry can be left behind. There are more important things to do. I know it’s scary, but perhaps we can express ourselves without puny power displays. The fate of the species awaits our decision.

Frederic 10/23/2024