Alpha fails

re: "War on heritage" (BP, PostBag, March 31, 2022) 

Dear editor,

Despite repeating the common misunderstanding that the chimpanzees and apes are our ancestors, Kuldeep Nagi makes a good point: it is human nature to engage in violence and destructive war. In fact, our near relatives in the primate family, the chimpanzees and apes, teach us that, with the possible exception of the even wholesomely more sex-obsessed bonobos, violence and warmongering comes very naturally to all of us.

What is needed is to defeat what nature has evolved that we may better live flourishing lives in peace. Allowing alpha males to get away with literal murder and war is not likely to prove an effective means to peace: appeasement very naturally fuels demands for more, as Vladimir Putin's history illustrates. Again, our primate relatives, as much as human history, have some useful lessons: strong alliances between individually weaker members, even females, can pragmatically keep stronger alphas from rutting and ruining everything as is their wont. Being furthest from what nature made us, it is no surprise that liberal democracies became widespread only most recently in human history, and that they remain fragile, often unpopular with those who lust to be, or to be dominated by, a powerful alpha, an authoritarian strong man who thinks it butch to the max to slap down real or imagined threats to his dominion.

What liberal democracy founded on tolerance for different ways and dissenting opinion has also demonstrated over the past 200 years or so is that alliances based on mutual respect and aid lead to trade and science that increases wealth and human flourishing beyond what any primitive religion founded on the worship of alpha males representing even more potent beings in the skies could proclaim to be heaven.

The alliance of the more or less liberal democracies of the world to oppose Russia's assault on decidedly not so liberal Ukraine is, therefore, encouraging. NATO's commitment to peace for the benefit of its member nations and others should not preclude the judicious use of serious force to swiftly hand a bullying alpha and his besotted devotees a swift, unequivocal defeat. The threat of such force being used is the best the free world can oppose to humanity's traditional habit of waging the destructive war that has characterized our species of primate at least since the time of the agricultural revolution some 12,000 years ago, a story of repeated destruction of great cities and civilizations. 

Whether by way of serious genetic modification thanks to our scientific progress, or, thanks to our socio-political and moral progress, by strong alliances that leverage force to protect peace and the sovereign independence for all, it is well past time humankind united to defeat our all too natural human nature. 

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on April 2, 2022, under the title "Alpha fails" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2289442/short-term-cover