by Huss, John
Meanwhile, two features mark contemporary industrial capitalism. First, nearly all the attempts to improve what is valuable in human life and human presence have been carried out in a way that reduces immense amounts of non-human presence over the face of the earth. And, as is made abundantly clear in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), the project of improving human health and welfare is carried out at the cost of immense cruelty and suffering to animals used in biomedical research. The expansion of human value, in other words, means loss of other value on a huge scale, the very value that Routley demands we do not overlook.
In an additional twist to the story of utopia, there is a second often-neglected aspect of contemporary capitalism. This is that its impact on human beings themselves is uneven. Those who are rich and well-to-do have relatively little to fear in the immediate future from climate change and the other challenges of a depleted planet. In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Will Rodman raises Caesar, the ape destined to spearhead the revolt against humans that will lead to the future dominance of the talking apes. Caesar himself was born to an experimental animal, his mother having become super intelligent as a result of being inoculated with a modified virus developed to treat Alzheimer’s disease in human beings. Rodman’s father is an Alzheimer’s sufferer, and Will makes sure that his father receives treatment with the new drug long before the question of human trials is raised.
Those who are well-connected, like those who are rich, receive the benefits of new technologies, new medicines and other new opportunities long before they trickle down—if ever—to those who are poor, weak, or vulnerable. As with medicine and technology, so it is more generally with environmental issues. The loss of freshwater resources, scarcity of food, loss of low-lying lands and a whole host of other environmental changes will generally impact on those who are poor long before they affect the wealthy and well-insured.
The first two Planet of the Apes movies were produced against a background of Cold War tension, the fear of nuclear annihilation, and increasing cynicism about the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. Politically, strategically, and morally the situation of contemporary Western society has not changed so much. Worries about nuclear proliferation are still to the fore, and the fear of global climate change and loss of natural resources to sustain our way of life increases daily as information about accumulating risks becomes ever more available. As humankind pursues the project of human self-realization, it seems that the very fabric of planetary support systems is in danger of collapse (as we argue in our book Understanding Environmental Philosophy).
So we face a multitude of problems. On the anthropocentric view, human beings are special and require that every effort be made to enhance their lives, improve medical care, develop their societies so that they can flourish, develop and prosper, even at the cost of increasing damage to other animals and other living things. But what right have we as a species to inflict such damage and ask other valuable living things to pay the price for human development?
Was Taylor Evil?
Good people feel frustration and despair when they think about how the lofty desire to spread value leads inevitably to its loss, how business even when conducted with humane intent, and the desire to make human life better, leads to human displacement and impoverishment, animal suffering, species loss and reduction in the planet’s ecological viability.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes encourages us to be skeptical about the humane intentions of drug companies who claim to be seeking ways to improve the lives of the sick and infirm even as they answer to the demands of their shareholders as their first priority. Reflecting on these problems, contemporary thinkers are likely to be not much different in their mindset from that of Taylor the cynical and angry space voyager, wondering with declining conviction whether somewhere there is something better than humankind.
Forty-five years on from the first Planet of the Apes movie, the future of humanity is still under threat, not just from nuclear Armageddon but also from environmental catastrophe. There is a difference between the two threats. While nuclear Armageddon threatens many kinds of life on Earth, climate change, declining biodiversity, and ecosystem changes pose a particular threat to the survival of contemporary industrial society and the human race itself. While we cannot survive without the planet’s support systems, many other species and systems can survive without us. A contemporary, more ecologically inspired version of Taylor might still wander the galaxy searching for something better than man, and might be a character with whose anger and cynical despair many could sympathize. But such a voyager would not destroy the world in his own dying moments, even if he were the last human being in the universe.
So we return to the puzzling questions: Was Taylor mad? Was he evil? In terms of the moral evaluation of his deeds, not character, it can be argued that Taylor’s final actions are wrong in three ways.
Suppose, first of all, that we agree with the intuitions prompted by Routley’s last man example. That means we give up the human-centered way of thinking about value, and regard other living things as beings of value in their own right. The action of incinerating the planet destroys immense numbers of valuable beings. Apes, mutants, Nova’s people, the horses, all the other animals and the plants on Earth have value that is wiped out by exploding the doomsday device. From the non-anthropocentric point of view, incinerating the planet shows no respect for life and is clearly an evil deed.
From the human-centered viewpoint, Taylor’s last act is evil too. The anthropocentrist thinks that only humans have inherent value. But what is it to be human? If rationality evidenced by the power of speech is the criterion for being human, as Taylor himself seems to assume, then the mutants are clearly human and so are the apes. Some writers make a distinction between being a human being (biological category) and being a person (moral category). John Locke, the seventeenth-century philosopher, introduced the idea that persons are morally special through their self-conscious rationality. A rational parrot, for example, would be a very special being, and Locke accordingly devotes some time in his famous Essay to discussing the question of whether a parrot might aspire to rationality and be a parrot person (Book 2, Chapter 27). The anthropocentrist who values rationality, and sees it as the essence of being a person, would regard Taylor as having wiped out morally significant beings, since both mutants and ape-persons are clearly rational. Hence the act is a great wrong.
Many people regard our being members of the biologically human species as the morally important thing. Think of how we protect infants and young children, and treat them with special care, long before they show rationality or linguistic skills. Also think of how many people advocate for the human rights of those who are born mentally impaired. But the species view is anthropocentric in that it takes membership of the biological species as something that confers a special dignity and value on people, and so takes human beings as special in this regard. For this kind of species anthropocentrist, it may be that Taylor does no wrong in wiping out the apes, for they are not biologically human. But Nova’s people, and arguably the mutants too, would clearly count as human on biological criteria. So yet again, Taylor is wrong to commit the final destructive act.
In short, Taylor’s last action is morally wrong from both the anthropocentric and the non-anthropocentric perspectives. He seems to behave rather like one of the ancient emperors in China who would have his household, concubines and slaves entombed alive with him after he dies, hence condemning all of them to death. Is Taylor taking an imperial attitude to the whole planet, as if once he is dead it matters little if anything else remains alive? This would be an evil stance indeed.
Perhaps a kinder view is to regard him as becoming unhinged with grief at the death of Nova. As he and Brent fight in the cell in which the mutants had confined them, he is reunited suddenly with Nova when she calls his name. That single utterance from the previously mute girl, breaks the telepathic control by a mutant that is locking the two men in conflict, and
they are able to break free. Yet within moments of being reunited with Nova, Taylor loses her when a gorilla warrior shoots her. Just seconds before that happens, Taylor learns from Brent that the mutants worship a missile which Taylor recognizes as a doomsday device. He describes it with irony as “a lovely souvenir from the twentieth century.”
While Brent is openly horrified at the thought of the cobalt bomb burning the planet to a cinder, the cynical Taylor, with a smirk, comments: “How’s that for your ultimate weapon?” Once Nova has been killed, Taylor’s irony is replaced by something else, a self-centered anger and grief that overcomes any awareness of the moral significance of others:
TAYLOR: Oh God . . . should let them all die, the gorillas and every damned . . . what it comes to. It’s time it was finished…. finished . . .
BRENT: Taylor, come on, come on. The Bomb . . .
TAYLOR: Yeah. . . . Why not?
Here there is a clear failure of communication between the two men. Brent is driven by the horror of the impending catastrophe, doing all he can to avoid it. In fact, he is killed while trying to distract the gorillas from interfering with the bomb. Taylor goes to the final confrontation with quite different intentions. “It’s doomsday,” he says just as Brent is killed, “end of the world.” Despite being severely wounded, he determinedly uses his failing power to reach the trigger (“Yeah. . . . Why not?” as he said to Brent moments earlier), while cursing Dr. Zaius for failing to help him along.
In the first Planet of the Apes film, Taylor seems inspired by a vision of dignity and nobility, of “something better” than humankind. By the end of the second film, it’s evident that he sees no value or dignity in the other kinds of creatures he has encountered. He is intensely critical and judgmental, even of those who would be his friends, such as Zira and Cornelius. Finding the wrecked world that is now the Planet of the Apes, and losing the one being with whom he had managed to build a close and intimate relationship, his own disappointment, frustration, and despair is given vent in a final utterly destructive act. He who dreamed of something better now carries to its logical conclusion the very politics of mutually assured destruction that was at the heart of military strategy during the Cold War.
Had Taylor been less of an idealist about himself and humanity in general, he might have done less damage. If he had been less self-centered, he might have cared more about the other lives around him. The human-centered theory of value is a parallel, at the species level, to a self-centered worldview. So in our present attempts to tackle the challenges of global warming, ever-increasing species loss, world poverty, the displacement of humans and animals from their homes, the loss of intrinsic value on a tremendous scale—what can we learn from Taylor and the Apes movies? Just this: to be too self-interested is not only a personal moral failing but also a danger to ourselves and others. Taylor’s fate reminds us of the importance of expanding our moral horizons and extending our care beyond ourselves, our communities and our species. Holmes Rolston, one of the fathers of modern environmental philosophy, puts it like this:
We worried throughout most of the last century, the first century of great world wars, that humans would destroy themselves in interhuman conflict. . . . The worry for the next century is that humans may destroy their planet and themselves with it. . . . Today and for the century hence, the call is to see Earth as a planet with promise, destined for abundant life.
The Planet of the Apes movies, taken overall, show how the promise of the planet is easily lost, squandered through human greed and self-interest. After viewing them, we have to hope that it is not already too late to fulfill the Earth’s promise rather than to betray it.
22
Planet of the Degenerate Monkeys
EUGENE HALTON
I can’t get rid of the idea that somewhere in the Universe there must be a creature superior to man.
—GEORGE TAYLOR, Planet of the Apes
Philosophic Prequel: Fable of the Degenerate Monkey
Once upon a time there was a degenerate monkey, degenerate in the sense of not maturing as quickly as the wild Others, in being newborn-like much longer, something the biologists call neoteny.
The Others were blessed with robust instincts, which seldom led them into blunders. What they knew instinctively the degenerate monkey could only get from guessing, with a good amount of blundering thrown in. But the degenerate monkey was blessed with good guessing, sensing with awareness, even if not yet knowing. The very “weakness” of its plastic and flexible brain, proved, under the right conditions, to be its greatest strength.
The degenerate monkey found that by closely observing the Others, it could guess the right things to do more often than not. The living instinctive truths embodied in the diverse creatures and living habitat surrounding it were its great teachers. It discovered that it was a true child of the Earth, literally, in its genetic, physiological constitution.
Its beliefs allowed for the fact that the newest portion of its brain, its prefrontal cortex, through which it learned to make art and speak, was also the most immature part of its brain, precisely because it was the latest to evolve. It may not have even known this consciously, but it lived the fact through beliefs which allowed that the mind of nature, the spirit living in and through all things, was a great teacher, and of a higher order of intelligence. It found that in attuning to and marveling at the instinctive maturity of the Others, it could find its own maturity.
It learned that by hunting like a bear, it could catch the seal. It learned that by acting like a seal, it could attract the bear and hunt it. Immersed in the intelligence of the Others, it learned the sacred game of life, which included the taking of life, the game of predator and game. In revering the sacred game and its rules of sustainable sustenance, it became a harbinger of life. Its attunements to a wide range of habitats and life, not only through observation, but also through ritual, artistic, and practical communicative and cooperative activities among its own kind, allowed it to spread around the globe, creating a planet of degenerate monkeys, but not for degenerate monkeys. Its relation to the community of life was one of networking with the Earth.
It learned so well that eventually it thought itself mature enough to change the rules of the game: instead of finding its maturity in attuning to and marveling in the instinctive intelligence of the Others, it reversed the process. It began living in settled ape-clusters, which were artificial neoteny environments. It began to turn the Others into degenerate forms like itself, that is, no longer wild, but selectively dematured, domesticated.
The ape reshaped The Others, turning them into mirrors of its newborn-like, dematured self, genetically as well as behaviorally. It domesticated itself with and through them, fixing partial aspects of their full instinctive intelligence. It turned them from wild wolves into domesticated dogs, from aurochs—oxen—into cows, from mouflon into sheep, from wild independent grasses into dematured grasses—wheat, barley, rice—codependent on human cultivation for survival. Even though domesticated, it remained a wild body itself, albeit a degenerate monkey, new-born like, neotenous.
All the while the neotenous or newborn-like ape neotenized its world, living from its domesticated food and walling itself into its cities. It changed its relation to its habitat, physically and spiritually, also walling in its reverence for life, for the game of life it participated in, as predator and prey. It walled that reverence into self-mirroring gods and human-centered (or anthropocentric) consciousness.
It became a spectator at creation, networking with its progressively human-centered reflections of itself, its gods and goddesses of fertility, its domesticates, losing in the process the direct interplay with the wild Earth. It fell prey to the mirror of Narcissus. In moving away from direct participation, it narrowed circumambient creation to the human focus, elevating the dematured human to an object of worship, devaluing the wild other to a slave, devaluing the bulk of its own population into slaves and functionaries of its exalted ego, personified in
the form of a divine king.
Degenerate monkey became proud of itself, losing its sense that, as a dematured, newborn-like primate, it required the relationship to the wild others in order to find its maturity. But with its self-mirroring environment as an illusory matrix, effectively walling it off from the instinctive intelligence of the wild others, the shut-up monkey went mad. It went mad within its self-created house of mirrors, its Gods, kings, saviors, prophets, science, machines, its agriculturally created population explosion, its transformation of the “fertile crescent” and other habitats originally teeming with life into desert, and the entire ant-farm it had made of itself. It went mad with itself and called its madness progress.
It went from being a child of the Earth, engaged in communicative attunement, to a civilized infant, wanting ever more. Yet it thought itself the be-all and end-all of evolution and the creation’s purpose. And in its civilized infantilism, its unlimited expansionism, it raged against its true mother, the earth, Gaia, the living ecological intelligence on which it depended to find its maturity.
Its homicidal rage was a murderous suicidal call for help, one might say, the rage of a two-year old backpedaling in its mind to the womb. But it found itself murdering that which was its own source, and so it was in reality backpedaling to nothingness, backpedaling, until. . . .
Once upon a time there was a degenerate monkey.
Beware the Beast Man
Near the end of 1968’s Planet of the Apes, Cornelius, the ape archaeologist and historian, reads from the sacred scrolls: “Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil’s pawn. Alone among God’s primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother’s land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.”
