The evolutionary corruption of social voyeurism

“ Social status is a salient feature of group life in many primates including humans and macaques [1] . Position in the dominance hierarchy influences access to food and mates and is a predictor of health and reproductive success [2] . It is also associated with individual differences in behavior; for instance, more dominant macaques make more prosocial choices and are more likely to make a choice that leads to reward for both themselves and another as opposed to a choice that leads just to reward for themselves [3] , [4] . ”

“ A neural circuit that covaries with social hierarchy A neuroimaging study reveals that individual variation in brain circuits in structures below the cerebral cortex of macaques is associated with experience at different ends of the social hierarchy.==Abstract== Despite widespread interest in social dominance, little is known of its neural correlates in primates. We hypothesized that social status in primates might be related to individual variation in subcortical brain regions implicated in other aspects of social and emotional behavior in other mammals. ”

“ The leader of a troop of monkeys acts as the sentinel, and utters cries expressive both of danger and of safety. [9] Social animals perform many little services for each other: horses nibble, and cows lick each other, on any spot which itches: monkeys search each other for external parasites ”

“ We will confine our attention to the higher social animals; and pass over insects, although some of these are social, and aid one another in many important ways. The most common mutual service in the higher animals is to warn one another of danger by means of the united senses of all. Every sportsman knows, as Dr. Jaeger remarks, [7] how difficult it is to approach animals in a herd or troop. Wild horses and cattle do not, I believe, make any danger-signal; but the attitude of any one of them who first discovers an enemy, warns the others. ”

“ A good billiard player probably has more associations in connection with this single pastime [136] than a dog with his whole life’s business. In the associations which are homologous with those of animals man outdoes them and adds an infinity of associations of a different sort. The primates would seem, by virtue of their incessant curiosity and addition to experience not for any practical purpose but merely for love of mental life, to represent an advanced stage toward this tremendous quantity of associations. ”

“ Why have I never been taken among the Monkey People? They stand on their feet as I do. They do not hit me with hard paws. They play all day. Let me get up! Bad Baloo, let me up! I will go play with them again."
"Listen, man-cub," said the bear, and his voice rumbled like thunder on a hot night. "I have taught thee all the Law of the Jungle for all the Peoples of the Jungle—except the Monkey Folk who live in the trees. They have no Law. They are outcastes. They have no speech of their own, but use the stolen words which they overhear when they listen and peep and wait up above in the branches. ”

“ The monkeys called the place their city, and pretended to despise the Jungle People because they lived in the forest. And yet they never knew what the buildings were made for nor how to use them. They would sit in circles on the all of the king's council-chamber, and scratch for fleas and pretend to be men ”

“ There are tales I could tell that—”
“That need a clear night when we are all well fed to praise properly,” said Bagheera quickly. “Our man-cub is in the hands of the Bandar-log now, and we know that of all the Jungle-People they fear Kaa alone.”
“They fear me alone. They have good reason,” said Kaa. “Chattering, foolish, vain—vain, foolish, and chattering, are the monkeys. But a man-thing in their hands is in no good luck. They grow tired of the nuts they pick, and throw them down. They carry a branch half a day, meaning to do great things with it, and then they snap it in two. ”

“ They belonged to the tree-tops, and as beasts very seldom look up, there was no occasion for the monkeys and the Jungle-People to cross each other’s path. But whenever they found a sick wolf, or a wounded tiger, or bear, the monkeys would torment him, and would throw sticks and nuts at any beast for fun and in the hope of being noticed. Then they would howl and shriek senseless songs, and invite the Jungle-People to climb up their trees and fight them, or would start furious battles over nothing among themselves, and leave the dead monkeys where the Jungle-People could see them. ”

“ Man, from the activity of his mental faculties, cannot avoid reflection: past impressions and images are incessantly and clearly passing through his mind. Now with those animals which live permanently in a body, the social instincts are ever present and persistent. Such animals are always ready to utter the danger-signal, to defend the community, and to give aid to their fellows in accordance with their habits; they feel at all times, without the stimulus of any special passion or desire, some degree of love and sympathy for them ”

“ One of the highest and surest signs of civilization is that a people have learned to obey the commands of those who are placed over them. ”

“ Let the mulberry-tree be cultivated in accordance with regulation; then persons of fifty years old will be able to wear silk. Let due attention be paid to the breeding of poultry, and swine, and dogs; then persons of seventy years old will be able to eat meat. Let there be no interference with the labour of the husbandman; and there will be no mouths crying out for food. Let education of the people be reverently attended to;―above all, let them be taught their duties towards their parents and brethren;―and there will be no gray-headed burden-carriers to be seen along the highway. ”

“ Let him appeal less than has hitherto been done to the coarse and often hurtful stimulus of individual ambition, and more to the sense of comradeship and mutual good-will which is never wholly lacking in children. Let him exhibit civilization, as we now enjoy it, as the joint product of unnumbered minds and hands co-operating, often unconsciously, toward a common end ”

“ In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. ”

“ Stripped of all incidentals, the assertion is that, neglecting mental culture, we have been led to neglect man's higher interests; we have fallen into a slough where everything is subordinated to gain and the rights of man are not regarded; a grasping selfishness brings about combinations in manufacturing interests and makes possible the accumulation of vast fortunes; a base 'commercialism' pervades all society ”

“ The spectacle is a concrete inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the nonliving. ”

“ A sociology that believes that a separately functioning industrial rationality can be isolated from social life as a whole may go on to view the techniques of reproduction and communication as independent of general industrial development. Thus Boorstin concludes that the situation he describes is caused by an unfortunate but almost fortuitous encounter of an excessive technology of image-diffusion with an excessive appetite for sensationalism on the part of today’s public. This amounts to blaming the spectacle on modern man’s excessive inclination to be a spectator. ”

“ The spectacle obliterates the boundaries between self and world by crushing the self besieged by the presence-absence of the world. It also obliterates the boundaries between true and false by repressing all directly lived truth beneath the real presence of the falsehood maintained by the organization of appearances. Individuals who passively accept their subjection to an alien everyday reality are thus driven toward a madness that reacts to this fate by resorting to illusory magical techniques. ”

“ The prestigiousness of mediocre objects of this kind is solely due to the fact that they have been placed, however briefly, at the center of social life and hailed as a revelation of the unfathomable purposes of production. But the object that was prestigious in the spectacle becomes mundane as soon as it is taken home by its consumer — and by all its other consumers. Too late, it reveals its essential poverty, a poverty that inevitably reflects the poverty of its production. ”

“ This manner of picture-appreciation lies, of course, close to the pleasures of memory, to the indulgence of habit, and to the complacence of conservatism; just as the pleasures aroused by the picture which it is the fashion to admire lie close to the self-satisfaction born of conformity to the prevailing moral code. These fashionably-born and habit-bred emotions form a large part, a very large part, of the delight we find in picture-gazing. Art galleries are full of people who gain little from their visits there beyond these simple and familiar emotions. ”

“ Several times last night, when the supernumeraries entered the arena to drag out the bodies, the young ruffians in the gallery shouted, “Supe! supe!” and also, “Oh, what a coat!” and “Why don't you pad them shanks?” and made use of various other remarks expressive of derision. These things are very annoying to the audience.
“A matinee for the little folks is promised for this afternoon, on which occasion several martyrs will be eaten by the tigers. The regular performance will continue every night till further notice. Material change of programme every evening. ”

“ There are a great many widely differing lies, but there is no guidance, no moral guidance, stemming from a religious outlook on the world. And the people of the Christian world live like animals, guided in life by nothing other than personal interests and mutual strife; and they are only differentiated from animals by the fact that since time immemorial animals have kept the same stomachs, claws and fangs, while humanity moves, ever more rapidly, from dirt roads to railroads, from horses to steam, from spoken sermons and letters to the printing press, telegraph and telephone ”

“ The winds of despair are, alas, blowing from every direction, and the strife that divideth and afflicteth the human race is daily increasing. The signs of impending convulsions and chaos can now be discerned, inasmuch as the prevailing order appeareth to be lamentably defective. I beseech God, exalted be His glory, that He may graciously awaken the peoples of the earth, may grant that the end of their conduct may be profitable unto them, and aid them to accomplish that which beseemeth their station. ”

“ In the last analysis there is in the degenerate a brain incapable of normal working, and its aberrant functions are manifested in feebleness of will, inattention, a predominance of emotion, a lack of knowledge, an absence of sympathy or interest in the world and humanity, and decay of the notion of duty and morality. ”

“ The victim of indulgence thus sinks into vice and drifts into evils that an active will power would have avoided. Morbidness, disease, auto-intoxication, a weak will and vicious inclinations appear when social conditions throw into the hands of individuals a surplus that permits a cessation of strenuous activity. ”

“ In such pursuits they not only waste their physical and mental forces, but they undergo a process of moral depravation which renders them incapable of any kind of service useful to human beings. Accepting in society the position of purveyors of amusement to the rich, they lose the sentiment of human dignity. ”

“ Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores, throw printing-presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure and with impunity, depend on it, this government cannot last. By such things the feelings of the best citizens will become more or less alienated from it, and thus it will be left without friends, or with too few, and those few too weak to make their friendship effectual. ”

“ Since the path that all people under popular government as well as under forms more despotic are pursuing so energetically and hopefully leads to the certain destruction of the foundations of civilization, what is the path that social science points out? What must they do to prevent the extinction of the priceless acquisition of fellow-feeling, now vanishing so rapidly before the most unselfish efforts to promote it? The supposition is that the social teachings of the philosophy of evolution have no answer to these questions. ”