A recent internet phenomenon provokes inquiry, especially when analyzed alongside the numerous political-economic symptoms of today. For the past year or so, there has been a proliferation of primate related content: videos and memes of monkeys, chimps, and other close relatives engaged in humorous behavior among themselves or with humans. This content has gained popularity on Twitter and Youtube, and on Facebook, there are popular groups such as “The Chimp Zone: Primate Portal” dedicated to posting and discussing this fascinating family of creatures. Since the first draft of this essay, these postings have only increased, and have developed into a unique character.
This phenomenon is distinct from other animal postings for a number of reasons. When people normally post pictures and videos of dogs or cats, for example, the purpose is to look at how cute they are or how funny the thing they are doing is, and the discourse ultimately stops there. For apes, however, I argue there is a deeper meaning; a more interesting dynamic at play. The fascination with humans’ closest animal relative and evolutionary predecessor demonstrates a desire for their communal lifestyle and ultimately simpler way of life. This has been further illustrated by memes in political spheres of Instagram and Twitter that seem to explicitly make this argument. The internet’s exponentially expanding survey of information through the dialectical dance of content and discourse is simply overwhelming given the conditions of material reality, and after a number of identities and aesthetics cropping up have tried and failed to use their self-recognition to overcome these contradictions, this new fascination illustrates a desire to drop out entirely and negate the human consciousness into something simpler.
Perhaps this idea could be discussed alongside animal science. Recent research suggests that many species of monkeys have begun their stone age — they have discovered the ability to use basic tools to gather what they need to survive. Considering the bleak trajectory of human civilization this provides something for many of us to feel good about, even if we will not see any long-term technological developments in our lifetime. Think of the opening scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey, where an alien monolith oversees what was the original stone age transition in an epic event set to Strauss’ “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. Perhaps the internet and all of its developments have become an alien monolith of its own outside of our control, and this documentation of apes developing is part of the reason they have made progress doing so, or at least begs us to analyze why such an inquiry has grown.
Speaking of 2001, this idea when discussed alongside the film also highlights the danger of forwarding teleological thinking and progressive development, which culminates in the omnipotence of AI. HAL 9000, the archetypal AI unit and villain of Kubrick’s masterpiece is revealed to be sinister because of its desire to pretend to be human and connect with the protagonist. The specter of AI today is more subtle, but all of its advocates emphasize its potentiality as a means of transcending humanism into something greater so that some sort of blissful singularity can be achieved. Other than the fact that billionaires like Elon Musk should never be trusted no matter what, this is dangerous and wishful thinking — it is impossible to transcend negativity and contradiction into something beyond, and so perhaps the only solution is to negate entirely.
Slavoj Zizek has recently come out as a critic of AI and singularity by means of what he describes as a “wired brain” because of the way computers have guaranteed to perfect themselves. What is crucial to humanity, he argues, is actually imperfection: a computer mastering the art of communication through its digital essence leaves no room for miscommunication, which is at the root of humor, love, and a number of other characteristics that ultimately make us who we are. He uses the analogy of an old joke from a Hollywood movie: a computer cannot tell the difference between a coffee without cream and a coffee without milk; to their perfected reasoning a coffee is simply a coffee. Humans have thus found themselves in an interregnum: the current order has gone on for too long and is not working, but all promises of forwarding evolution, through accelerationist posthumanism and so on, ultimately guarantee something crucial will be missing, or, rather, guarantee we will be whole in a way that hurts us by not allowing for a lack which we depend upon. Considering a simpler lifestyle and localized organization at its most radical is thus to consider an entirely negative development or perhaps what you could call a “positive” regression, one that goes beyond reaction or any conception of established tradition.
Enlightenment philosophy and its idea of the progress of civilization experienced a rightful backlash throughout the 20th century, where existentialism, postmodern skepticism, and radical critiques of ideology thrived. A predecessor to all of that was Nietzsche who, frustrated with what he saw as cultural decadence and superfluous arguments about morality, declared that “man is something to be overcome,” that humans are simply a stepping stone on a bridge that goes from animal to human to a higher being that is beyond good and evil. The traditional criticism of this idea is that it has been used to justify radical individualism and Nazi mysticism. In the context of the prospect of singularity, this idea is flawed today because one cannot escape contradiction as a subject when contradictions still exist in the world outside and between us. This can be explained through a number of cultural examples that interrogate what it means for the subject to have an intellect that truly grasps the world of its time.
Consider Dr. Manhattan from the postmodern superhero epic Watchmen. Both a parody and analysis of traditional superhero stories, each of the characters in the alternate universe where masked vigilantes are outlawed is only human in that they do not have superpowers; they use technology and some special skills to do their job. Except for Jon Osterman who accidentally gets trapped in some sort of nuclear reactor and steps out as a transcendent being and eventually becomes the hero Dr Manhattan. A glowing blue figure that prefers to speak in a monotone, Manhattan does not just have powers, he is virtually omnipotent — he can bend the laws of physics at his will, and he experiences time as circular or all at once rather than linear. Because of this, he is presented as above humans and all of their silly struggles in every sense and yet he has not figured out how to transcend morality, which the HBO sequel goes into more depth in. For example, Manhattan is used by the US government to win the Vietnam War by killing an unspecified amount of people, but later understands the humanitarian implications of this. Because of his frustration that escalates throughout the later stages of the Cold War, he eventually leaves the earth entirely and lives alone among the cosmos. People try to contact him as if they are praying to God and he does not bother responding — his flaw is that, by trying to transcend morals, he has ultimately fallen into immorality. Before he leaves earth he is confronted by Adrian Veidt, the real villain of the original story who devises a master plan to end the threat of nuclear destruction by constructing an alien attack on New York City, who asks if what he did was the “right thing in the end”. Manhattan responds with a characteristically Herecletian non-answer by saying that “nothing really ends,” and leaves Veidt to ponder his action alone. Like AI, Manhattan comes up short by trying to transcend negativity when in reality he contributes to its essence all the same.
The reason for all of this (and what makes Manhattan such a great character) is that he never wanted to become transcendent or omnipotent; in fact, he died and was reconstructed as he appeared from the ashes of the reactor. He is almost a reversal of Christ in this sense: while Christ represents the power of God coming down to earth and becoming human with his death on the cross, Manhattan is born a normal man and subsequently falls into his God-like self before literally going back to the heavens because his all-knowingness causes him to recognize his transcendence as a curse. When he leaves behind Veidt to the world he manifested for himself, he ultimately recognizes that both their notions of progress have catastrophic limits.
There is another example from science fiction that is of interest here. Ursula LeGuin's novel The Left Hand of Darkness has a pseudo-religious element to its lore, where scholars of the Handdara faith look towards ignorance as a virtue and uphold it as the core of their doctrine. This belief, along with the lore’s fascination with light and darkness, demonstrates a clear influence of Taoist beliefs, but the way the human narrator fails to understand its character as something alien to him shows that LeGuinn was especially concerned with the contradictions inherent to human thought. What the Handdarata seek is thus a balance between knowing and unknowing, while the other more dominant religion in the novel, the Yomesh, purely focuses on light and thus misses the key element of contradiction. The main difference between the aliens and humans in this novel is that the Gethenians have no concept of binary sexuality and as a result have an entirely different conception of culture — it is only through contact with this difference that a new approach to knowledge can be developed.
Should we find a way for this to be reconciled? My argument is not for the simple glorification of ignorance or a return to nihilism but a recognition that the desire for ignorance should tell us something about where we find ourselves today. Is this not crucial to the discourse surrounding the pandemic where “science” has become politicized in such a way that obscures greater questions of ideology? Perhaps the solution to today’s alienation is more of a non-solution, not one that can be found through a means of intelligence or progress. Transcendence by means of Manhattan’s ubermensch and Veidt’s hyper-intelligent perfectionism demonstrate this because they both fail to capture the negativity of human essence. It is possible we have begun to project this understanding of negativity on our closest animal relatives and they are unknowingly grateful they have not yet achieved the intelligence we have; that the smoothness of their brains is really what lends to their perseverance both in memes and a cultural classic like Planet of the Apes. Perhaps the ultimate form of a politics of negativity or “dropping out,” which Zizek has tirelessly advocated for, is a recognition of what it means to negate human intellect itself considering its onslaught of questioning, ideology, and hopeless depression created from within by external factors. Alienation is no longer a lack of freedom but a recognition of too much freedom in the symbolic realm — the desire to “go ape mode” or “become monke” is thus a cry for help when even the most radical ideologies have been reduced to anonymous posters arguing online. Perhaps Nietzsche’s bridge should really be a circle, and if we throw away conceptions of a “better” life we can at least arrive at a simpler one by understanding the contradiction inherent in such a promise.
