Chimp Empire on Netflix: A Philosophical Review

What can animal behavior tell us about ethics? Right-wing, left-wing, and religious people have different takes...

If you are reading this, chances are you’ll love the Netflix docu “Chimp Empire” (trailer). It really is stunning. Do check out the fascinating interview with its maker James Reed on Joe Rogan (#1988) as well.

When watching the social dynamics of those chimp groups in the splendid Netflix documentary Chimp Empire, it is hard not to recognize many of our own traits and behaviors. It’s like a purified, raw version of the drives, ambitions, and struggles we all face, but which, in humans, are often hidden behind a pile of theories, rationalizations, and coping strategies.

Those chimps, on the other hand, just live it out directly: gender roles, tribalism, the battle for moving up the hierarchy, aggression, border conflicts, but also care, camaraderie, and bonding.

This touches some timeless questions that have only become more pressing in recent times. Among those are:

1. What is the relation between our natural, animal-like drives and ethics?

2. How close are we to the animal kingdom, anyway—and what’s the difference between us and them?

There are mostly three types of answers, often given by three different groups: left-wingers, right-wingers, and religious folks. This is obviously an oversimplification, but I think it’s a useful exercise to think about these three takes as the stereotypical options that still drive much of our thinking.

What is “natural behavior”? And is it “good”?

On the right-wing side, there is a tendency to identify behavior that is considered natural and proclaim that this is how it should be. That is, you look at traditional gender roles, for example, or even tribalism, see that these things seem almost universal in primates, and infer that this is what’s natural, and therefore ethical. Consequently, you see attempts to change such things as unnatural, and therefore unethical.

More left-leaning people generally don’t like that argument. However, since they are mostly materialists and can’t refer to something higher that nullifies the “argument from nature,” they often have to go along with the basic premise. This means to preserve their political preferences about, say, gender roles or tribalism, they have to re-interpret and give a different take on what is natural: they search and point to examples from the natural world that favor their ethics and politics. Hence, all the talk about matriarchal animal societies, supposed homosexuality among animals, or the more cooperative and caring aspects of animal behavior.

This turns the dispute between left and right into an argument about empirical substance.

But you don’t need to invoke David Hume to understand the problem here: just because animals, or even humans, are driven by certain instincts and instinctively organize their societies along certain principles, doesn’t mean that these are “good” or worth striving towards.

Both left-wingers and right-wingers, if they make an argument from nature, are open to the objection that well, we humans can choose otherwise, and in fact often do so; so what does our animal nature have to do with ethics? Even if there are matriarchal animal societies, or rampant patriarchy, or tribalism, or homosexuality in animals: why should we care? We still have to figure out what’s right and wrong.

This issue has befuddled Social Darwinists for a long time, too. Philosopher David Stove described this conundrum very well:¹ if Darwinism is true, then the weeding out of the unfit is akin to a natural law. But if this is so, why do we need to help it along by polemicizing against those who protect the weak and therefore “act against nature?” Why do we need eugenics? A natural law will just play itself out regardless. But if we, as a society, can override such “natural laws” anyway, then why bother? We are back to the moral question of what is right and wrong, which cannot be answered by science, Darwinian or otherwise.

There is one insidious way out of this conundrum that some modern leftists seem to go, at least implicitly: they don’t just argue that we, as humans, can override biological drives (religious people make the same argument), but they also deny the need to battle against those instincts if we want to choose otherwise. That is, they proclaim we are entirely free to choose whatever we like, as an individual or as a society, without the need to consciously work on it, which requires effort because it may go against biological urges. It almost amounts to a denial that there is such a thing as biological instincts. In this scenario, you end up in the worst of all worlds: materialism without empirical reality; no instincts, but no higher authority either, except the whims of your supposedly disconnected consciousness.

The third group, the religious side, gives a different answer entirely: traditional behavioral rules are not seen as ethical because they are natural, in the sense of widespread among animals or even human groups, but because they are ordained by God. In fact, most religious people emphasize the differences between the animal world and humanity, arguing that there is a clear break between the two. What’s more, the biological instincts, i.e. our animal nature, are often seen in a negative light, as something to be overcome by effort and religious zeal.

At the root of this move is the idea that humanity was created in God’s image, which makes us sort of an intermediary between the animal world and the higher realms. This can lead to a downplaying of our biological instincts, or a hostility towards the parts of us that might be considered “animal nature,” or “natural.” In fact, this is a critique that has often been levelled at Christians, especially from the right—think Nietzsche, the Social Darwinists, and accusations of “softness” or “do-gooderism” against Christians more generally.

How to untie this crazy-making knot?

Firstly, I think, no matter where we stand on the ethical implications (or lack thereof) of our biological nature, at the very least we need to acknowledge that there is such a thing. (Left, right, and religious positions should have no problems with it, except parts of the woke crowd.) If we don’t recognize these drives, from gender roles to tribalism, from group aggression to territoriality, then we simply ban them to the realm of unconsciousness: we can neither embrace nor overcome them. They will simply rule us without us being aware of it.

But second, and most importantly, I believe that truth and ethics come together at some point, as I have argued in a previous essay: good actions require real empathy, which can only be based on knowing the other person, as well as all the relevant forces, ideas, and patterns involved. That is, truth is a necessary condition for good. The reverse is true as well: without goodness, such as the desire to truly help others, there are limits to the level of truth we have access to because then we don’t want and need to know about what others—or society—truly need; we only need and want to know how to get what we want.

This means that if we want to strive towards goodness, we must understand our animal nature as best we can; and if we want to understand it as fully as possible, we need to strive towards the good.

Right-wing, left-wing, and religious dogmas and political preferences can stand in the way of truth, and therefore goodness. This makes it useful to keep them in mind when thinking about animal life and our relationship with it.

How close are we to those chimps, anyway?

Christians tend to argue (or used to, anyway) that humans and animals are in a different category entirely. Secular people take a more Darwinist, gradualist view: we are just more evolved animals, a bit like chimps but with language and tools. The gradualist/Darwinist take is, of course, the predominant narrative these days, to the point that sometimes in political discussions the difference between humans and animals disappears entirely: eating animals is then seen as murder, for example.

This conflict is often framed as a dispute between science (Darwinism) and religion (creationism).

But before even thinking about human origins, any discussion about such issues should start with acknowledging the obvious empirical reality that there is a huge gap between humanity and the animal kingdom. It clearly is not just a matter of degree; there is a quantum jump between a chimp and a human. That much should be obvious.

It often isn’t, however. You can see this in Chimp Empire as well when the narrator tells us that “we share 98% of our DNA with the chimps,” which is supposed to make us think we might not be so different from those animals, after all. We all have heard this before.

This conclusion is highly illogical, though: faced with the information that we share 98% of our DNA with the chimps shouldn’t make us doubt obvious reality, that is, the vast gulf between us. The only logical take would be to say, well duh, seems that DNA isn’t as important as we thought! We are clearly missing something here!

The truth is that the origins of life, and the origins of humanity, are still shrouded in mystery. As always, in this day and age where Official Science has taken over the social function of religious and even secular national authorities, its PR arms pretend TheScience knows much more than it actually does.

This also means we are free to look at our own biological nature and study the behavior of chimp groups without theoretical prejudice. The same is true for thinking about our place in the world and the relationship between our biological programming and our consciousness.

As Chimp Empire maker James Reed said on Rogan’s podcast, it turns out, for example, that science has no clue about some of the communication going on between the chimps, such as when they decide “as one” to go on a patrol. This has even led to speculation that some kind of telepathy must be involved. We know less than we think, indeed.

There are a lot of things to learn, a lot of paradigms to be challenged. If we want to advance, I fear we have to break with some of our entrenched thinking habits, wherever we fall on the political or religious spectrum. It’s time we learn how to observe and simply recognize reality for what it is, as both a moral calling and as a precondition for morality itself.

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1. David Stove, Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity, and Other Fables of Evolution, Encounter Books, 2007