The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris

The Human Zoo is a book written by the British zoologist Desmond Morris, published in 1969. It is a follow-up to his earlier book The Naked Ape; both books examine how the biological nature of the human species has shaped the character of the cultures of the contemporary world.

The Human Zoo examines the nature of civilized society, especially in the cities. Morris compares the human inhabitants of a city to the animal inhabitants of a zoo, which have their survival needs provided for, but at the cost of living in an unnatural environment. Humans in their cities, and animals in their zoos, both have food and shelter provided for them, and have considerable free time on their hands. But they have to live in an unnatural environment, are both likely to have problems in developing healthy social relationships, both are liable to suffer from isolation and boredom, and both live in a limited amount of physical space. The book explains how the inhabitants of cities and zoos have invented ways to deal with these problems, and the consequences that follow when they fail at dealing with them.

From this point of view, Morris examines why civilized society is the way it is. He offers explanations of the best and the worst features of civilized society. He examines the magnificent achievements of civilized society, the sublime explorations that make up science and the humanities. And he also examines the horrible behaviors of this same society like war, slavery, and rape. This book, and Morris's earlier book The Naked Ape, are two of the early works in the field of sociobiology.

The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris

Every human on the planet should at one time take a look at the human species from a detached point of view: consider them from the mind of some alien species and then question if you think we’re a bit odd, predictable, or whatever descriptive word you want to use. Desmond Morris’ 1967 classic The Naked Ape does just that. No, he is not pretending to be some alien species, but he is analyzing the human as an animal, from the view of a zoologist, rather than the more common means of a psychologist or sociologist.

The Naked Ape is in fact referring to the human body — one that is “naked” in the sense of less body hair than other apes and also a stripped down (literally) examination of our animal nature. Some of the topics Morris discuses are human sex, child rearing, exploration, fighting, feeding, and comfort. He compares our habits to those of the apes, noting some of the similarities beside some of the differences.

After reading a book by Jane Goodall, in which she talks about chimpanzees' need to groom one another as a means for casual social interaction, Morris compares this behavior to our version of “grooming”, social chitchat. Humans do it when a group gathers, and as they grow more comfortable with one another, the conversational topics might delve into deeper issues, but then the chitchat, or “grooming” emerges once again when the group is parting ways.

Also, when Morris is discussing the patterns of human sexual interaction, he gives readers an entire chapter of the mechanical sexual process without a shred of eroticism. He discusses the idea of the “pair-bond” between two naked apes; how do they achieve such? Why do they engage in such a large amount of pre-copulation activity? If your first response is to answer this in reasons you’ve heard before, Morris takes it deeper as he discusses the biology behind it. Again, pretend you are some alien species and you’ll notice and recognize patterns that you might not have found otherwise.

It is important to also note that because of the year in which the book was written, some of the statistical information will not be accurate to that of today, and also some dated words are used, such as “Negro” to describe the black male. Yet this can’t be really criticism considering this was penned in 1967, and although there might be some minor differences as these, the overall text is timeless. Morris shows how since our origins, not much has changed in our behaviors.

Morris also makes an interesting observation involving young children and what their favorite animals are. When they are very young, Morris points out that children will list large animals as those they admire most (such as lions, tigers, bears, etcetera), yet as children age, their selections change to smaller animals (cats, dogs, rabbits), or in other words, animals they can physically nurture themselves, and claim the role of the “parent”. He also notes the patterns in what humans define as their least favorite animals (such as spiders and snakes) and discusses why this is the case. What is it that causes the Naked Ape, on average, to detest spiders and snakes so much? Read and find out.

I was attracted to this book after reading the interview with Desmond Morris on Cosmoetica. Morris not only addresses the many similarities we share with other apes, but also the not so obvious differences we have. For example, female naked apes are the only animal species we know that can experience an orgasm, as well as having a hymen. He also notes that our primary sexual position is face to face, and that the female breasts serve more to sexually arouse males than for mere infant suckling alone since the breast is not as conducive to infant suckling the way the breasts on other apes are. (Noting that when a human mother breastfeeds, she must be aware that the breast could literally suffocate the child if she’s not paying attention. Just as a contrast, other female ape species’ breasts consist mainly of large nipples pointed outward, making it easy for the infants to feed).

I have only touched on the very little that is contained in this book, which is a delight to read. I encourage everyone to visit and revisit The Naked Ape and remove yourself from your own species for a while. And the next time you are drying off after a shower, all this talk just might lead you to look a little longer at that Naked Ape in that mirror. (It’s ok; just don’t get caught).

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins

This is what we EHMs, (Economic Hitmen), do best: we build a global empire. We are an elite group of men and women who utilize international financial organizations to foment conditions that make other nations subservient to the corporatocracy running our biggest corporations, our government and our banks. Like our counterparts in the Mafia, EHMs provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure, electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial parks. A condition of such loans is that engineering and construction companies from our own country must build all these projects. In essence, most of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices in New York, Houston or San Francisco."

"Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations who are members of the corporatocracy (the creditor), the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principle plus interest. If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, then like the Mafia, we demand our own pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the installation of military bases, or access to precious resources such as oil or the Panama Canal. Of course, the debtor still owes us the money and another country is added to our global empire

September 11 dramatically altered many people's perspectives on life and the world around us. The horrific events which occurred on that beautiful mid-September morning in 2001 changed John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Mr. Perkins, a highly respected economist, had once worked as chief economist at Chas. T. Main, an international consulting firm in Boston. Even though he worked for a private corporation, he was sent abroad under government contracts to convince leaders of developing countries, places of strategic importance to the US, such as Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Panama, Ecuador, etc., to accept enormous "loans" from the United States. The money would then be used to pay American companies to build local infrastructure and other projects. So while American corporations were profiting from these "loans," the countries were sinking into overwhelming debt. The poorest people, who benefited least from these projects, were the ones stuck with the responsibility for payment. These countries usually became US puppet regimes, open to American corporate manipulation. If a leader refused to play the game, the consequences could be lethal. This is blatant economic blackmail - where your best buddy turns out to be the vindictive loan shark.

Perkins resigned from the job about 20 years ago, because morally and ethically, he felt it was "wrong to play such a key role in creating an international empire at the expense of the poor and less advantaged around the world."

The author was paid extremely well to be an "economic hit man," as he describes the position. He worked alongside the heads of the IMF, World Bank, and other notable global financial institutions. Perkins began writing a book shortly after he resigned, with the working title, "Conscience of an Economic Hit Men." He wanted to dedicate the book to Jaime Roldós Aguilera, former president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos Herrera, former president of Panama. He had enormous respect for both men, held them in high esteem, and thought of the two as "kindred spirits." Unfortunately, Roldos and Torrijos had both been his clients. They both died in fiery plane crashes. According to Perkins, their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated, targets of the CIA, because they opposed the goals of corporate, government, and banking leaders, which were, and are, to build and maintain a global empire. The CIA has long assisted American corporations to remain dominant in foreign markets, by overthrowing governments hostile to unregulated capitalism.

In the early 1970s, the Royal House of Saud agreed to send most of their petro-dollars back to the United States and invest them in U.S. government securities. The Treasury Department used the interest from these securities to hire U.S. companies to develop Saudi Arabian infrastructure, and the House of Saud agreed to maintain the price of oil at reasonable limits. In return, the US would use its resources to keep the House of Saud in power.

After attempting to implement something similar to the Saudi policy in Iraq, and failing, US industry, in concert with government, wanted to depose Saddam Hussein. Saddam did not play ball. When the "economic hit men" were not able to convince the infamous dictator to cooperate, CIA "jackals" went in to foment revolution or a coup. It was not so easy, however, to overthrow or kill Saddam. His bodyguards were too good and he used doubles. Perkins draws the conclusion, based on his experience, knowledge and hard facts, that the present Iraqi war was our next step. He cites the billions of dollars in US government contracts awarded to US corporations, like the Bechtel Group Inc., and Halliburton Company's subsidiary Kellog Brown & Root.

The author was persuaded and even bribed to refrain from writing this book about his professional experiences. And, although he began to write on various occasions over the intervening years, he did stop. World events, such as the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1980, the first Gulf War, Somalia, and the rise of Osama bin Laden, convinced him to put his manuscript aside, again and again. Perkins stated in a recent interview with Pacifica Network's Democracy Now program, "When 9/11 struck, I had a change of heart." He concluded the interview by saying, "I believe the World Bank and these other institutions can be turned around....We can change that."

Perkins' tale is a gripping one and the international and political intrigue involved gives the non-fiction book the feel of a suspense thriller. The narrative is very well written and fast-paced. I do highly recommend Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man. Whether you like Mr. Perkins or not, he has some very valuable information and insights to share. One cannot help but benefit.

Review of Sophie's World By Jostein Gaarder

It's tempting to get all warm and gloopy over this well-intentioned response by a Norwegian writer and former philosophy teacher to the New Age "pornography" he fears may replace the Western philosophical canon. Sophie's World has rapidly become an international literary phenom. A genre-crossing European best-seller (file under fiction, philosophy, and young adulthood) with nearly a million copies sold to date, Jostein Gaarder's novel, at 400 pages, is a concise, clearly written corrective to philosophic obscurantism.

The foil for Gaarder's pedagogic fantasy is Sophie Amundsen, a spunky 14-year-old whose philosophic journey begins when a pair of timeless ontological posers--"Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?"

--appear mysteriously in her mailbox. A follow-up envelope containing typewritten pages titled "What Is Philosophy?" (11) orient her on a correspondence course in the history of philosophy that eventually turns into a Socratic tutorial. Sophie's enthusiasm shocks her mother, who attributes her newfound interest in the mysteries of life to the influence of drugs.

Nothing could be further from the truth (at least until the Kierkegaard chapter, when things do get a trifle psychedelic). Although Sophie's tutor, Alberto Knox, grounds the philosopher's project in maintaining a sense of wonder, his disquisition is clean and sober indeed. What keeps the novel moving are the tricks Gaarder plays with what we used to call the old r. and i.--reality and illusion. Sophie begins receiving postcards addressed from a United Nations observer in Lebanon to his own 15-year-old daughter, Hilde. As Sophie gradually becomes aware of her existence within a book (within a book (within a book)), the philosophical question gradually take on an existential tinge, embracing problems of determinacy and free will. While not nearly as highfalutin as such would-be popularizers as Umberto Eco, Susan Sontag, or Stephen Hawkins, it's loads of fun in a cool, Scandinavian Alice-in-Wonderland fashion.

The book is for children of all ages, remember, so don't expect detailed synopses of the world's major philosophers, systems, or contexts. The risks Gaarder takes in the interests of simplicity and clarity definitely pay off, however. These include the translation of nearly all technical terms, the omission of the hundreds of titles that would otherwise clutter the book, and his emphasis on the echoing persistence of philosophical themes from the pre-Socratics (whose modernism is conveyed elegantly) to the existentialists Gaarder nutshells right before dropping a few gee-whiz notions about ecophilosophy and how star gazing constitutes a cosmic journey into the past ("Yes, we too are stardust" (392), croons Alberto).

Sophie's World is a model of classic pedagogical technique packaged in most tasteful modernism. From the Socratic dialogues up to and including Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's ultimate collaboration (the perfect companion volume, their What Is Philosophy? tastefully packages chaos as classicism), philosophy has been intertwined with friendship, sharing, and equality. While on the one hand Sophie (and Hilde and every kid who receives this book as the gift of a concerned adult) serves as the willing receptacle of Alberto's wisdom (perform your own deconstruction here), Gaarder has her question frequently the absence of women in philosophy. The only women thinkers accorded a paragraph or two here are beheaded French revolutionary Olympe de Gouges and Simone de Beauvoir. Sophie, nevertheless, seems more than willing to, well, man the barricades in their name.

Ongoing advertisements for environmental activism and world federalism via the United the Nations add to the novel's liberal agenda--which is about where my enthusiasm ends. Gaarder's well-measured conciliatory tone masks the rhetorical (and physical) violence philosophic discourse has generated over the past few thousand years, so don't expect to find Foucault, Deleuze/Guattari, or Derrida--even Heidegger and Nietzsche earn s little as a paragraph each. As noted above, Gaarder holds no truck with the outlaw alternatives sold under the New Age and mysticism rubrics. "The difference between real philosophy and these books," grumps Alberto, "is more or less the same as the difference between real love and pornography" (357). Do we detect an old-fashioned moralist in this dismissal? Gaarder, having stripped down the canon's arguments to their leanest Western cuts, thereby ignoring Muslim or pagan can't or won't see philosophy's manfully conceptualized recourses to faith, transcendence, and immanence as actually forming much of the spiritual bedrock for crystal worship or ufology.

At worst, Gaarder's book is a philosophical Ikea, whose clean lines and slick marketing offer a one-size-fits-all coziness masking the bitter ideological rivalries and utter radicalism characterizes so much of the field's history. On the other hand, any Sophie's World reader inspired to further investigation will collide with all that soon enough, which suggests an even more provocative sequel.

Sociology

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