The Lucifer Principle - - by Howard BLOOM

MOTHER NATURE, THE BLOODY BI TCH

In 1580 Michel de Montaigne, inspired by the discovery of New World tribes untouched by Europe's latest complexities, initiated the idea of the "noble savage". Nearly two hundred years later, Jean-Jacques Rousseau popularised the concept when he published four works proclaiming that man is born an innocent wonder, filled with love and generosity, but that a Luciferian force ensnares him: modern civilisation. Rousseau claimed that without civilisation, humans would never Know hatred, prejudice, or cruelty.

Today, the Rousseauesque doctrine seems stronger than ever. Twentieth-century writers and scientists like Ashley Montagu, Claude Levi-Strauss (who hailed Rousseau as the "father of anthropology"), Erich Jantsch, David Barash, Richard Leakey, and Susan Sontag have reworked the notion to condemn current industrial civilisation. They have been joined by numerous feminist, environmentalist, and minority rights extremists. Even such August scientific bodies as the American Anthropological Association, the American Psychological Association, and the Peace and War Section of the American Sociological Association have joined the cause, absolving "natural man" of malevolence by endorsing "The Seville Statement," an international manifesto which declares that "violence is neither in our evolutionary legacy nor in our genes."

As a result, we are told almost daily that modern Western culture with its consumerism, its capitalism, its violent television shows, its blood-soaked films, and its nature-mangling technologies "programs" violence into the wide-eyed human mind. Our society is supposedly an incubator for everything that appals us. However, culture alone is not responsible for violence, cruelty, murder and war. Despite the Seville Statement's contentions, our biological legacy weaves evil into the substrate of even the most "unspoiled" society. What's more, organised battle is not restricted to humans. Ants make war and either massacre or enslave a rival swarm. Cichlid fish gang up and attack outsiders." Myxobacteria form "wolf packs" that corner and dismember prey. Groups of lizards pick on a formerly regal member of the clan who has become disfigured by the loss of his tail. Female bees chase an overage Queen through the corridors of the hive and lunge, biting over and over until she is dead. And even rival "super coalitions" of a half dozen male dolphins fight like street gangs, often inflicting serious injuries. Ants do not watch television. Fish seldom go to the movies. Myxobacteria, lizards, dolphins, and bees have not been "programmed" by Western culture.

.....By the early seventies, Jane Goodall had lived fourteen years among the wild chimpanzees of Tanzania's Gombe Reserve. She loved the chimps for their gentle ways, so different from the violence back home among humans. Yes, there were simian muggings, beatings, and rage, but the ultimate horror war was absent. Goodall published a landmark book on chimpanzee behaviour "In the Shadow of Man" a work that to some proved unequivocally that war was a human creation. After all, the creatures shown by genetic and immunological research to be our nearest cousins in the animal kingdom knew nothing of organised, wholesale violence.

Then, three years after Goodall's book was printed, a series of incidents occurred that horrified her. The tribe of chimps Goodall had been watching became quite large. Food was harder to find. Quarrels broke out. To relieve the pressure, the unit finally split into two separate tribes. One band stayed in the old home territory. The other left to carve out a new life in the forest to the south.

At first, the two groups lived in relative peace. Then the males from the larger band began to make trips south to the patch of land occupied by the splinter unit. The marauders' purpose was simple: to harass and ultimately kill the separatists. They beat their former friends mercilessly, breaking bones, opening massive wounds, and leaving the resultant cripples to die a slow and lingering death. When the raids were over, five males and one elderly female had been murdered. The separatist group had been destroyed; and its sexually active females and part of its territory had been annexed by the males of the band from the home turf. Goodall had discovered war among the chimpanzees, a discovery she had hoped she would never make.