In the spring of my sophomore year of college I was introduced to Dr. Frans De Waal. He is one of the top primatologists in the world and I was given the wonderful opportunity to introduce him at my university’s spring symposium.
He has written many books including “The Age of Empathy," “Good Natured," and “Peacemaking among Primates." One of his works has stuck out to me and has inspired me to write numerous papers and speak with many others about, “The Bonobo and The Atheist."
This book talks about the nature of one of our closest relatives, the bonobo. Despite also having extremely violent tendencies, like humans, this altruistic animal can show us that we don’t have to fight fire with fire, or be complacent with injustice.
They can teach us that loving empathy can change the world. This week I am focusing on gender and the strength in numbers to love others and create a better world for girls now, and our future daughters.
One difference between other primates and human culture in the mammalian species is gender. Females run things in their communities and their dominance is respected. They have less violence and more peaceful problem solving opposed to our “civilized” approach to conflict, which is violence.
“Since evolution occurs through both the male and the female lineage, there is no reason to measure human progress purely by how many battles our men have won against their hominins. Attention to the female side of the story would not hurt, nor would attention to sex. For all we know, we did not conquer other groups, but bred them out of existence through love rather than war,” De Waal says.
I’m not saying that we should over throw our current leaders in dominance, but I’m also not saying we shouldn’t. Gender inequality is real and so is daily violence in our world. The link between whom we idolize as our leaders has correlations with how we solve our problems.
When we have leaders who are quick to war and violence, what is stopping everyday people from doing the same over petty quarrels? Along with gender us females need to support each other, we can learn the results of this from chimpanzees.
De Waal describes groups of wild communities where all of the females support each other, “The result is a reduced power gap between the sexes. Since all females are present all the time, actively supporting each other, it is impossible for any male to get around the female power block.”
We need to work together and help one another. Don’t loose friendships over petty arguments or guys. We can fight inequality against us but we need to work together.
The wage gap, the glass ceiling, sexual assault, harassment from cat calling, these are all things that will effect women that you know. These things don’t have to stay the way they are, we can move past being complacent with violence and assault.
De Waal says, “They (bonobos) show that our lineage is marked not just by male dominance and xenophobia but also by a love of harmony and sensitivity to others. We must focus on that harmony and sensitivity to help solve our problems."
Next time I will be focusing on another aspect of human life that we can learn about from one of our closest genetic relatives.
