The Society Man Has Created

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32234, 28 February 1970, Page 4

The Society Man Has Created

The Human Zoo. By Desmond Morris. Jonathan Cape. 256 pp. Nothing is more fascinating than when a scientist writes about his own discipline in exciting language which is comprehensible to the layman. Anyone who read Desmond Morris’s best seller •"The Naked Ape” will understand the mesmeric quality of his prose and argument. So effective is it that for a long time afterwards one views the human race and its behaviour through the eyes of a zoologist. This is rather disconcerting as Dr Morris subscribes to the biologistic thesis which allows that environment affects human behaviour but maintains that on the whole, man is innately programmed to behave the way he does. As Dr Morris succinctly put It, “We are all naked apes beneath a wide variety of our adopted costume.” "The Human Zoo” examines the urban society that we primitive tribal hunters have created for ourselves which has often been called a concrete jungle. This. Dr Morris states, is a misnomer. The life of a city dweller is more like the life of a wild animal in a badly-

planned Victorian zoo. Under normal conditions wild animals do not indulge in self-mutilation, masturbation, homosexuality, murder, fetishisms, nor do they develop stomach ulcers. All of these abnormalities have been observed in caged animals. There is a significant difference between “The Human Zoo” and “The Naked Ape.” While the earlier book regards man as primarily an aggressive animal, in “The Human Zoo” Dr Morris makes it quite clear that Man is also programmed to co-operate—“lf we did not carry in us the basic urge to cooperate with our fellow man, we would never have survived as a species.” This does not mean that Dr Morris abandons his belief that Man is innately aggressive. “The basic system—social co-opera-tion when facing outward, social competition when facing inward—applies to us.” In his chapter headed “Ingroups and Outgroups,” which is concerned with race, he states that children make no tribal distinctions until they are taught tribalism or racial prejudice. If this is

so it is rather difficult to agree with his rather terrifying conclusion of a nuclear holocaust with the meek African bushman inheriting the earth and thence “back to the drawing board.” Given the same evidence one could arrive at a different conclusion of ultimate human co-operation without his rather naive concept of a coffee-eoloured mankind.

While many people will disagree with Dr Morris’s broader scientific argument, his observations of human behaviour are as acute as they are amusing. The ten Golden Rules for leaders should make interesting reading for our new politicians as well as their electorates. The ten major functional categories of sex are an indication of the complications that Man’s super-brain has invented for a basic drive.

Under “Status Stimulation” Dr Morris speaks about the changing fashions in male dress. For the last few years male dress has been an adaptation of formal evening wear, for example the lounge suit. The status indication is, “look at me, I’m high class.” The sports jacket indicates leisure. But what of the ’ bizarre dress of the way-out teen-ager? Well, according to Dr Morris it is a sex attraction display—“look at me, I’m gorgeous.” It will indeed be interesting to see what happens in 20 years time when there are bald Beatles in the board Kbom. What will the young people be doing then?

Because observations such as these make the book witty and immensely readable it is difficult to be unsympathetic to Dr Morris's broader contentions. Is Man biologically successful because he has well-programmed instincts? In fact, is he an advanced ape, as Dr Morris holds? Or is he something special, something new in the world? Does not intelligence and educability transform the ape into Man who creates ind controls his own environment? We can see the mess Man is capable of making of his environment, but surejy as a being capable of learning and solving problems he has more hope than Dr Morris, the zoologist, gives him.