Learning From the Monkeys
Who says brotherhood or sisterhood is a concept known only to human beings? In fact, even non-human animals demonstrate the capacity to see one self in others – even more experientially than Martin Buber’s I-Thou concept.
I got this piece of information from one of my students who write a term paper about animal rights. Accordingly, there is evidence that humans are not the only member of the animal kingdom that is capable of making moral decisions.
A book written by Dr. Sagan and Druyan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, is about an experiment that was performed on macaque monkeys. These monkeys were put in laboratory, where they were fed if they were willing to pull a chain and electrically shock an unrelated macaque whose agony was in plain view through a one-way mirror. Otherwise, they starved.
After learning the ropes, the monkeys frequently refused to pull the chain. In one experiment, only 13% of these monkeys would do so while 87% of them would rather be starved than see their same kind suffered. One macaque even went without food for nearly two weeks rather than hurt its fellow.
It was also observed that macaques that had themselves been shocked in previous experiments were even less willing to pull the chain as they had undergone and thus knew the pain, and would rather not inflict the pain to others.
Clearly, this experiment makes us have a glimpse of non-human beings’ virtuous willingness to make sacrifices in order to save their fellows – including those who are not their relatives. By conventional human standards, these macaques, who have never gone to Sunday school, never heard of the Decalogue, never squirmed through a single high school civics lessons, see exemplary in their moral grounding and their courageous resistance to evil.
Among these macaques monkeys, heroism is the norm.
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One Response to “Learning From the Monkeys”
On June 4, 2009 at 8:02 am
may pet ako na unggoy si Janus, 15 years old na siya. Her mother was killed by a hunter and I took pity that I adopted her. She survive the two other unrelated unggoys, namely Elvis and Sharon.I don’t think she remembers them. Both died when she was a year old. Janus never learned how it is to be a monkey. And until now, I don’t quite understand that she is able to pick words, just like her name, eat and she hates the word “unggoy”.
Now, I regret taking her from the forest home. She never learned to be a monkey.
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