RWTFBS : Chimpanzee and Human

As an introduction RWTFBS is abbreviation to Right Wrong ? True False? Betul Salah ? I wish to make it a series where i can ask questions about a topic. It is not meant to come to a conclusion but serve to stimulate my thoughts perhaps to think differently and to think deeply.

First in the series, I wish to start with the discussion of chimpanzee and human. When I browsed through YouTube videos on evolution theories, I found out a BBC documentary about Chimps right. In the video, Danny advocates that Chimps are human too and we (human) are 99.4% chimps. Below is the video 

Ok, I will start my own self-to-self debate on this matter by defining both Human and Chimpanzee. Both definitions are coming from Oxford Advanced Learner's dictionary 6th Edition. I know that it is truely insufficient to just define 2 terms by a dictionary, many aspects of these life forms have to be taken into consideration after all.

Human: A person rather than an animal or a machine

Chimpanzee: A small intelligent African APE (= an animal like a large monkey without a tail)

From the definition of Human, we can see that any non-animal, non-machine being as individual, person or human. Well, Animal in the same dictionary refer to 1) a creature that is not a bird, a fish, a reptile, an insect or a human being. 2) any living being that is not a plant or a human 3)any living creature, including human beings. 4) a person who behaves in a cruel or unpleasant way or who is very dirty. 5) a particular type of person, thing, organisation etc. We can see that the authors of the dictionary itself is not quite sure of the distinction of human and animal. 

We can define animal from Stedman Electronic Dictionary 6th Edition, Animal is defined as 1) A living, sentient organism that has membranous cell walls, requires oxygen and organic foods, and is capable of voluntary movement, as distinguished from a plant or mineral.2) One of the lower animal organisms as distinguished from humans. By the way what define the lowliness and the highness ? I think this is where all the problem arises. I think for those who defined human as higher being than animal has the sense that animal is less capable than us. However, these lowly animal survive equally successfully as human being in this earth for they still exist in this world as us and others already extinct. Every life form is a wonderful story to tell. Again, what criteria we been used to allow us to define the highness of ranking among living organism. After all, if we are based on humanly criteria, as a human we of course would score the highest! What if we define ourselves in term of strength, elephant would score higher; in term of faking ability, octopus, cuttlefish and some insects would score higher than us.

However you might argue that humans have greater intelligence that allow us to create tools and use tools as compensation.But again, would this consider to judge "animal" from a human perspective ? Speaking about intelligence, we can see that from the definition of chimpanzee, it is described to be intelligent. However wouldn't you agree that human are somehow more intelligent with all the problem solving ability ? Again, we are using "animal criteria for intelligence" with lower benchmark as compared with that of humans. We are still treating them as lower than us. 

Is it of any value to let human as human and animal as animal and let human to stay higher than animal, so that the confusion of "Human are Chimps too" wouldn't have arise by any mean ? But, aren't human considered as animal from biology point of view?

Speaking of 99.4% similarity between genes of human and chimpanzee, 0.6% difference can be significant. Human always proud of our brain size which is 3 times greater than Chimpanzee. Bigger brain size can burden us as we need to consume for energy to meet the needs of the bigger brain. What if the 0.6% of genes affecting the feeding behavior ? Less efficient feeding behavior meaning less energy intake to support the development of brain and more time spending on eating/thinking about eating/seeking for food. Ancient human knows how to use fire, which can effectively shorten the time to eat the same quantity of food, and perhaps increase the nutritional value of food by enhancing the release of nutrient in guts. We can imagine eating a kilogram of carrots one by one raw and also having them cooked into puree before eating. Which one is more time consuming?

Having more efficient feeding, we have better nutrition and more time to think! Thinking about better feeding, reproduction and better quality of life. Indeed, human, in Sanskrit, it is Manussa and manu means to think. The moment you stop thinking you become not so human! Also , in the video it shows that the different between human teams and the chimpanzee team is that human knows how to cooperate and share. This is quite unique to humans that we know the value of sharing.

There are one scene in the video discussing the ability of chimpanzee to have culture just like human do, but at the end the scientist do not agree that human are chimpanzee or chimpanzee as human. This leads me to think that if we are trying to force chimpanzee to match the human expectation ? Is there any good to chimpanzee if human accept them as human? I think they might have to face the problem to fight for their right as most of the minority human groups are facing nowaday. Would then be better if we let chimpanzee as chimpanzee? What are our motive to let chimpanzee as human?

Do you agree the effort made by the chimpanzee trainer to humanify the chimpanzee ? Will the chimpanzee benefits from it? or it is purely human needs for entertainment?

What is so striking about the video is towards the end of the video, the scientist that raised bonobo in a human way said that "if we do not provide the chance for chimpanzee to be raised up like human, how will we know if chimpanzee is of any humanly?" Well... Honestly, for myself, i have lost myself the definition of human. Does it really matter to make them more human? 

I had gone through the debates among buddhist monk regarding the topic "Is human considered more superior?". This discussion appear because in buddhist cosmology, there are "good" realm and "bad" realm, which i think it is misinterpret by lay people. Because we tend to be proud of ourselves and can sometimes be arrogant. human are in the good realm and animal is in the bad realm. The quality of good and bad is determined by the previous karmic energy that imposed on the birth of this life (of course the karma is modifiable in this life, there is no such thing as fore-ordination). The good or bad in my interpretation is the degree of suffering/dissatisfaction that one being experienced and the chance/likelihood to relieve from it. i particular like one of the comment saying intrinsically human and animal are the same, we are mammal! but we are more "superior" in the aspect of we are able to think, we are able to do good and avoid evil act, we know the value of sharing (which in the video the chimpanzee fail to do so)

Lastly, in my opinion it really doesn't matter if chimpanzees are human or not. The most important value that we must instill in us is to treat them with their due, knowing that to exist in this materialistic world, we are subjected to degree of dissatisfaction, what good will it be to exploit them. This is also applicable to the relationship between human being. Does different sex, race, religion, culture, value and so on matter?  

Sabbe Satta Sukhi Hontu.

May all be well and happy.