Hopefully if you are enlightened enough to be reading the Manifesto you are familiar with the fact that we share 97% of our DNA with chimps. This gives rise to myriad analogies and comparisons between us and our closest relatives.
Chimps are warlike, they fight with other troops. This gives justification to our ideas about war with other countries, other races, any old Other. Chimps have an alpha male structure. This is used to justify our societal structure, in which aggressive, dominant males are rewarded, other males are forced to be subservient, and females are just oppressed outright.
Yes, humans share many of these traits (unfortunately). And so do most other primate species, so it would seem that this is just part of our nature, right?
Wrong. I would suggest that we have another alternative: the bonobo. Once called "pygmy chimps," bonobos are in fact a separate species, and they possess radically different social behaviors. Instead of using aggression and dominance to solve social conflicts, they use sex. Really! They are the original "free love" movement! And instead of being alpha-dominated, the have a more egalitarian society.
So why, when we have two choices before us, do we choose the more warlike? Ok, I know that 99% of the answer is that most people have never heard of bonobos. But the other part is that people don't want to believe it. They don't want to believe that we just might have some socialism in our true natures. They don't want to believe that we are wired to solve our problems with love instead of hate.
The truth is, we'll never know. But what if, instead of believing the standard chimp path....what if we believed in our bonobo possibilities?
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