Dewall

Situations like this accident occur everyday in our world, but instead of being thankful for our fellow mans well fair, most of us would probably have a few more things to cover before we checked on the guilty party’s well being. Like maybe for instance, the large bleeding gash on our heads, or our $90,000 sports that’s now scrap because some old lady couldn’t read a stop light. Some would even wish that the old lady would be scrap and not the sports car. Are we really so far gone t

These are all extremely important questions that I thought of while reading selections from “The Ape and the Sushi Master” by Frans de Waal. In the article, de Waal makes the point that are basic ideas of how nature operates might not be totally accurate, and it starts with that crazy old idea of survival of the fittest. “The most absurd animal exhibit I have ever seen was at a small zoo in Lop Buri, Thailand. Two medium-sized dogs shared a cage with three full-grown tigers. While the tigers cooled their bodies in the dirty water the dogs moved around hopping unconcernedly over the huge striped heads that rested on the concrete rim of the pool. The dogs were walking snacks, but the tigers evidently failed to perceive them as such” (de Waal 647). This, de Waal believes, proves that animals are kind to one another and survive that way, not by killing one another for food. De Waal seemingly asks the question that “if there really was a natural instinct in the animals of only the strong survive, wouldn’t the mother dog kill the tiger cubs immediately, knowing that they would be a threat later on?” maybe you could also ask why the tigers don’t just kill the mother dog? They are bigger, stronger, faster, and more adapt to living in the wild then dogs are. If there is any type of survival of the fittest instinct, one of these two species has to eventually kill each other, right? Not if a cat becomes a dog.

Looking back at our history as a people in this world I see many examples of the evil of human nature. The holocaust, slavery, Stalin, Hitler, the Nazis, Caligula, and countless other events illustrate how dark are true nature can be. Yes there were many factors that contributed to these evils, but are nature so weak that just because we didn’t get admited into a Jewish art school, we murder 6 million Jews? Is that the great outside forces that de Waal was talking about? If we so easily flow towards good, then shouldn’t it be more difficult to push us towards evil? De Waal simply doesn’t want to answer these questions; he avoids them with stories about dogs and other animals. But what would happen if the Nazis were a peace loving group, or Stalin was a charismatic ecologist?

The world we live in today ha

Some topics in this essay:
De Waal, John Doe, Hitler Times, Buri Thailand, Nazis Caligula, Master” Frans, De Waals, de waal, survival fittest, tiger cub, sports car, mother dog, World War, bin laden kill, laden kill, idea survival, kindness fellow, bin laden, people world, idea survival fittest,