The Uneasiness of Evolutionary Honesty

I need to introduce a long excerpt before I start:

I am a zoologist and the naked ape is an animal. He is therefore fair game for my pen and I refuse to avoid him any longer simply because some of his behaviour patterns are rather complex and impressive. My excuse is that, in becoming so erudite, Homo sapiens has remained a naked ape nevertheless; in acquiring lofty new motives, he has lost none of the earthy old ones. This is frequently a cause of some embarrassment to him, but his old impulses have been with him for millions of years, his new ones only a few thousand at the most – and there is no hope of quickly shrugging off the accumulated genetic legacy of his whole evolutionary past. He would be a far less worried and more fulfilled animal if only he would face up to this fact. Perhaps this is where the zoologist can help.
One of the strangest features of previous studies of naked-ape behaviour is that they have nearly always avoided the obvious. The earlier anthropologists rushed off to all kinds of unlikely corners of the world in order to unravel the basic truth about our nature, scattering to remote cultural backwaters so atypical and unsuccessful that they are nearly extinct. They then returned with startling facts about the bizarre mating customs, strange kinship systems, or weird ritual procedures of these tribes, and used this material as though it were of central importance to the behaviour of our species as a whole. The work done by these investigators was, of course, extremely interesting and most valuable in showing us what can happen when a group of naked apes becomes side-tracked into a cultural blind alley. It revealed just how far from the normal our behaviour patterns can stray without a complete social collapse. What it did not tell us was anything about the typical behaviour of typical naked apes. This can only be done by examining the common behaviour patterns that are shared by all the ordinary, successful members of the major cultures – the mainstream specimens who together represent the vast majority. Biologically, this is the only sound approach. Against this, the old-style anthropologist would have argued that his technologically simple tribal groups are nearer the heart of the matter than the members of advanced civilizations. I submit that this is not so. The simple tribal groups that are living today are not primitive, they are stultified. Truly primitive tribes have not existed for thousands of years. The naked ape is essentially an exploratory species and any society that has failed to advance has in some sense failed, ‘gone wrong’. Something has happened to it to hold it back, something that is working against the natural tendencies of the species to explore and investigate the world around it. The characteristics that the earlier anthropologists studied in these tribes may well be the very features that have interfered with the progress of the groups concerned. It is therefore dangerous to use this information as the basis for any general scheme of our behaviour as a species.
Psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, by contrast, have stayed nearer home and have concentrated on clinical studies of mainstream specimens. Much of their earlier material, although not suffering from the weakness of the anthropological information, also has an unfortunate bias. The individuals on which they have based their pronouncements are, despite their mainstream background, inevitably aberrant or failed specimens in some respect. If they were healthy, successful and therefore typical individuals, they would not have had to seek psychiatric aid and would not have contributed to the psychiatrists’ store of information. Again, I do not wish to belittle the value of this research. It has given us an immensely important insight into the way in which our behaviour patterns can break down. I simply feel that in attempting to discuss the fundamental biological nature of our species as a whole, it is unwise to place too great an emphasis on the earlier anthropological and psychiatric findings.

from Desmond Morris’ Naked Ape

Let’s move forward, not backward. We should write the future with trade, not rewrite the past with reparations.

The first time I read The Naked Ape, I was struck by this particular excerpt. I agreed with it entirely. Its logic seemed undeniable.

And yet, at the time, it made me uncomfortable. Guilty, even. As a scientist, I could see the biological coherence, but I wasn’t yet equipped—intellectually or emotionally—to understand, let alone respond authentically, to how ideology shapes what’s considered politically correct.

“So—is it okay for cultures, tribes, and languages to disappear?” Of course it is.

As I’ve written before, 99.9999% of all species that ever existed are extinct. Extinction is to a species what death is to an organism: inevitable. Why should it be different for tribes and cultures?

Still, strong movements push to preserve or even resurrect ancient cultures. To be fair, I want to do that with species as well, but for different reasons. These efforts often treat ancient cultures as if they were superior to today’s world or possessed hidden knowledge we’ve lost, as if some great historical injustice must be corrected — like Brazil’s 7–1 loss to Germany in the 2014 World Cup.

It is sad when a culture or language disappears. It represents the end of immense effort, creativity, and human experience. I can mourn that. But, at the risk of sounding harsh, I don’t think we should shield them from the consequences of their own choices, including choices to adapt, evolve, or defend themselves. It may sound brutal to say they lost in the game of evolution, but what better term is there? We’ve always been competing. First for food, shelter, and mates; now for attention, comfort, and convenience.

Modern ideologies often insist that so-called “primitive” cultures offer answers to our deepest questions: how to live in harmony with nature, how to be egalitarian, spiritual, pure. But they ignore reality. Ayurvedic medicine, for example, existed for 3,000 years but never managed to reduce child mortality. Technologically stagnant societies weren’t wise. They were stuck.

Now that I’m better equipped to deal with this, I think what I felt was survivor’s or historical guilt — a need to atone.

Yes, some cultures were violently conquered, colonized, enslaved, pillaged, and destroyed. It was brutal. Tragic. Unforgivable. We must remain aware of that so it doesn’t happen again. And yes, it still happens today. Less than before, but still. But winners didn’t just write history. They won. And that matters. Many who conquered also invented, explored, and built. The line between thief and trailblazer becomes blurry when one turns into the other.

History shows that it wasn’t ethics or morality that drove progress and peace. It was wealth and the improvement in quality of life achieved through trade. Morality came later, paving the road that trade had already carved out of necessity. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Trade required listening, adapting, respecting, and negotiating. Those who traded flourished. Those who remained isolated — geographically, culturally, or ideologically — vanished.

Survivor’s guilt and historical guilt are traps. Not because the past doesn’t matter, but because there’s ultimately nothing we can do to undo it. You wouldn’t take your own life to bring someone back from the dead. In the same way, self-sacrifice won’t reverse historical outcomes.

The idea that, because others were conquered, oppressed, or erased, we must now celebrate the defeated and reject the victorious — by disowning what we’ve gained — is absurd. Even if some form of reparation were possible, I’m not sure we could repent for historical mistakes without creating new ones.

But rejecting guilt doesn’t mean accepting injustice. It means understanding the consequences of the past without turning them into dogma. Can anyone blame me for not wanting to live in permanent guilt?

We must acknowledge history, not to get stuck in it, but to prepare. History repeats. Aggression, though not a stable evolutionary strategy, is a persistent one. Others will try again to colonize, conquer, pillage, and enslave.

Yes, conquerors appropriated. But they also advanced. And those advances made it possible to imagine a new path, one not built on conquest, but on trade.

Trade, remains the most powerful path forward. It reduces inequality, raises standards of living, and builds a future defined by abundance, safety, and peace.

Parenthesis: Needless to say that trade depends on the rule of law, especially respect for private property and contract enforcement. Trade only works when trust can scale.

The solution is not shame. It’s abundance. Raise the standard for all. Build systems that scale prosperity and innovation without romanticizing stagnation. We don’t fix inequality by blaming winners or glorifying the past. We fix it by creating more winners.