In We’re All Machiavellians, Frans B.M. de Waal explains his groundbreaking work with chimpanzees:
It’s refreshing to work with chimpanzees: They are the honest politicians we all long for. When the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes postulated an insuppressible power drive, he was right on target for both humans and apes. Observing how blatantly chimpanzees jockey for position, one will look in vain for ulterior motives and expedient promises.I was not prepared for this when, as a young student, I began to follow the dramas among the Arnhem Zoo chimpanzees from an observation window overlooking their island. In those days students were supposed to be antiestablishment, and my shoulder-long hair proved it. We considered power evil and ambition ridiculous. Yet my observations of the apes forced me to open my mind to seeing power relations not as something bad but as something ingrained.
Perhaps inequality was not to be dismissed as simply the product of capitalism. It seemed to go deeper than that. Nowadays this may seem banal, but in the 1970s human behavior was seen as totally flexible; not natural but cultural. If we really wanted to, people believed, we could rid ourselves of archaic tendencies like sexual jealousy, gender roles, material ownership, and yes, the desire to dominate.
Unaware of this revolutionary call, my chimpanzees demonstrated the same archaic tendencies, but without a trace of cognitive dissonance. They were jealous, sexist, and possessive, plain and simple.