A New Year, and fresh fields of—er, “nonsense” to contend with. It was only the 2nd of January, and already the BBC was headlining the latest attack on the ontological uniqueness of the human species. And, vying for dumbest science story of the year.
“The basis for laughter may have originated in an ancient primate ancestral to both humans and modern apes, a study suggests.”
The BBC’s source was an article in Biology Letters. Two scientists, Marina Davila Ross from the University of Portsmouth, and Elke Zimmermann at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hanover, studied the play behaviour of 25 young orangutans at four primate centres around the world.
Ms. Davila Ross claims: “In humans, mimicking behaviour can be voluntary and involuntary. Until our discovery there had been no evidence that animals had similar responses. What is clear now is the building blocks of positive emotional contagion and empathy that refer to rapid involuntary facial mimicry in humans evolved prior to humankind.”
Breaking news: apes do mimicry. The rest is bosh; although the abuse of the word “empathy” is chilling.
As the year wears on, there will be hundreds of stories like that in the media. They are part of the background noise of our advanced decadence.
What do we mean by ontologically unique? We mean unique in our very being. This is the philosophical assertion that human beings are different in kind from all other members of the animal kingdom. The assertion is associated with the Judeo-Christian tradition, and made very clear in the Bible where we are “created in the image of God,” and exist not for nature, but nature for us. The polar opposite of this view is radical environmentalism, which asserts that man is a scar on the face of nature, and the fewer of us there are, the better.
The stakes in this “conflict of worldviews” are very high. For the crucial idea in the secular law of the Christian-founded West is that human life is sacred. Those capable of rational thought should realize that by glibly abandoning this premise, they abandon every valid ethical argument against cannibalism, for instance. Let alone abortion or euthanasia.
Since genomic studies prove man shares most of his DNA with chimps, what is the moral difference between them? For that matter, what makes man any different from a fruitfly, or a banana, with both of whom we also share whole telephone directories of DNA?
I had a cat who was capable of irony and drollness. I couldn’t begin to tell you the number of ways she manifested this—all characteristically subtle. I may have mentioned this cat before, the most brilliant and, also, athletic of all the cats who have honoured me by their association. She had an advanced appreciation of the vertical as well as the horizontal spatial field, and could bat flies out of the air with a single paw. I taught her to play a form of badminton with bunched-up aluminum foil.
It is obvious to me that irony, drollness, carnivorousness, and badminton originated in an ancient ancestor common to both humans and cats, and therefore human behaviour is essentially feline.
Now, in all honesty I must warn there is skepticism from some quarters on my claims for this cat, Meggins Poochus (1984-1991). But I’m unable to demonstrate her accomplishments only because she died before the birth of YouTube. Sad to say, she hanged herself in the latter year, in protest against having been fitted with a flea collar. (Never fit a cat with a flea collar; it is a terrible affront to the animal’s dignity.)
When I told her story to friends, one rather charmlessly suggested, “Next you’re going to tell me your tinfoil-batting feline prayed, worshipped, and studied the Bible.”
No, not exactly. She was a tabby, and had no Protestant inclinations whatever. But she could walk on water (so long as it was frozen), and recite feline versions of the Creed in Latin, Greek, and Aramaic. Well, after a fashion. Sometimes she got them a bit confused.
People would have more respect for cats if they would listen to them more carefully. Often a cat is dismissed as merely “purring” when closer attention will reveal a rich field of perception and learning.
And I would have more respect for Darwinian “science,” if it did not employ precisely the reasoning I just did, to prove human behaviour originates in cats.
- Robin Hoodism is on the rise - Sunday January 2, 2011 at 9:35 am
- Taking on the Reformation - Wednesday December 29, 2010 at 8:53 am
- The miserly Canadian - Wednesday December 22, 2010 at 5:23 am
