Jane Goodall On Chimps as Our Moral Ancestors

Bill Moyers interviews Goodall and ask about human aggression. She deftly reassures him:

Some people have reached the conclusion that war and violence are inevitable in ourselves. I reach the conclusion that we have brought aggressive tendencies with us through our long human evolutionary path. I mean, you can’t look around the world and not realize that we can be, and often are, extremely brutal and aggressive. And equally, we have inherited tendencies of love, compassion, and altruism, because they’re there in the chimp also. So we’ve brought those with us. It’s like each one of us has this dark side and a more noble side. And I guess it’s up to each one of us to push one down and develop the other.

[ht The Dish]