How Humans Are Killing the Ingenuity of Chimpanzees

Photo by Zan Ilic on Unsplash

Cultures are indoctrination machines that teach us how to act in civilized society. For the most part, this is a great thing, especially when it pushes against some of our uncooperative and violent natural instincts. Cultures create many of the interesting irregularities that accumulate in human groups across the world. Some of us eat lahmacun rather than pizza, some of us speak Japanese rather than English, and some of us drive on the left rather than the right side of the road.

These differences are all examples of behavioral diversity, and this diversity emerges through learning and communication. When humans come together and target a common goal, they share their best ideas to improve their joint outputs. Today, the internet allows us to share ideas with people who live on entirely different continents. When we communicate our creative thoughts without diluting or compromising them too much, we contribute to expanding society’s problem-solving tools, and therefore enhance collective behavioral diversity.

In other words, when we communicate with people who have common interests, we end up developing and sharing new ways of manipulating the world around us. Every newborn doesn’t need to invent the wheel; they can simply be taught how to do it by previous generations, and then use their own creative mental energy to invent…