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Beasts: What Animals Can Teach Us About the Origins of Good and Evil

af Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

MedlemmerAnmeldelserPopularitetGennemsnitlig vurderingOmtaler
724366,758 (3.56)1
"There are two supreme predators on the planet with the most complex brains in nature: humans and orcas. In the twentieth century alone, one of these animals killed 200 million members of its own species, the other has killed none. Jeffrey Masson's fascinating new book begins here: There is something different about us. In his previous bestsellers, Masson has showed that animals can teach us much about our own emotions--love (dogs), contentment (cats), grief (elephants), among others. But animals have much to teach us about negative emotions such as anger and aggression as well, and in unexpected ways. In Beasts he demonstrates that the violence we perceive in the "wild" is mostly a matter of projection. We link the basest human behavior to animals, to "beasts" ("he behaved no better than a beast"), and claim the high ground for our species. We are least human, we think, when we succumb to our primitive, animal ancestry. Nothing could be further from the truth. Animals, at least predators, kill to survive, but there is nothing in the annals of animal aggression remotely equivalent to the violence of mankind. Our burden is that humans, and in particular humans in our modern industrialized world, are the most violent animals to our own kind in existence, or possibly ever in existence on earth. We lack what all other animals have: a check on the aggression that would destroy the species rather than serve it. It is here, Masson says, that animals have something to teach us about our own history. In Beasts, he strips away our misconceptions of the creatures we fear, offering a powerful and compelling look at our uniquely human propensity toward aggression"--… (mere)
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Viser 4 af 4
Mushy headed. Didn't want to go past 50 pages or so.
  steve02476 | Jan 3, 2023 |
This nonfiction look at human as well as animal behavior starts with a sobering quote by Stephen Hawking:

“We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.”

Based on information in the book, it's easy to conclude it already has, but that is no surprise to anyone who watches nightly news or reads a newspaper.

I first became aware of this author when I read his eye-opening book When Elephants Weep. There is no question that the author is biased when it comes to animal and human behavior, but he shows us time and time again how humans are too often the beastly creatures while wild animals are not nearly as wild or beastly as assumed.

The author presents an interesting premise that violence and war entered our world when we shifted from hunters/gathers to an agricultural/domesticated animals society. He also presents information about animals' behavior being affected by stress. It is really not surprising that tame elephants occasionally attack and kill their trainers. What is surprising is that animals in captivity don't kill more often than they do.

Parts of this book are hard to read. Details about what humans do to cocks and dogs used for fighting is painful to know, and that is only one small example. Factory farming is under the covers, something most people never think about. It all seems so hopeless, but the author does have hope for change.

I didn't agree with everything in this book. For instance, the author writes of the altruism of vampire bats giving food to other bats in need of nourishment. He says, “Bats are as susceptible to paralytic rabies as humans, and sharing blood from the mouth is a perfect way to transmit the virus, so this unselfish act is even more astonishing.” I really can't buy into the idea that bats know they are subjecting themselves to a virus when they exhibit this behavior.

There are also some odd lists about human traits, human universals, and more. To me, it seems that some of the items on these lists are making a fairly large leap of assumptions, and again, I don't buy all of them.

Still, this is quite an interesting look at both human and animal behavior, and why both sometimes act they way they do. ( )
  TooBusyReading | May 22, 2014 |
The cruelest animal
Beasts: What Animals Can Teach Us About the Origins of Good and Evil

By Kel Munger

Sacramento News & Review
This article was published on 03.20.14.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson continues his study of the emotional life of animals by examining the nature of conflict among animals in Beasts: What Animals Can Teach Us About the Origins of Good and Evil (Bloomsbury, $26). He's especially concerned here with apex predators and their—undeserved, he argues—reputation for cruelty. Masson argues that predators kill only to feed and never make torture a part of the process; in defense and mating, other animals are sometimes killed, but it's not an intentional act. He suggests that cruelty seems to be a uniquely human attribute. He's an interesting writer, but there's a tendency toward didacticism. What comes through loud and clear, though, is that humans are easily the cruelest of animals. ( )
  KelMunger | May 8, 2014 |
We humans are just one of many apex predators, many of whom we compare our bad behaviour to – wolves, great cats, apes. Yet, none of these other animals come anywhere close to our level of violence. Just in the 20th century alone, we humans slaughtered more than 200 million of our own species. And this is nothing compared to the number of other species we have killed even to the point of extinction sometimes for food, sometimes for utility and/or profit, sometimes for fun and even, occasionally sometimes for revenge. When it comes to violence, we are in a class all our own.

We often hear that this urge to kill is written in our genes, that we have always shown this disposition for violence right back to our hunter gatherer forebears. Author and animal behaviourist Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson disagrees. In this book, he suggests that, in fact, we haven’t always been the violent creatures we are today and that we have the ability to change if we choose to do so. As he points out, if it were true that we are predisposed to violence, then how to account for the many examples of people risking their own lives to help others, even people they don’t know eg the people of Denmark during WWII who, almost as a whole, refused to hand over their Jewish citizens to the Nazis resulting in a survival rate of more than 90% of the 8000 Danish Jews. He suggests that we can learn a lot about empathy and compassion by observing the behaviour of other apex predators.

Beasts is a fairly fast easy read but an interesting one. Masson avoids science speak to explain our behaviour and that of other species. At times, his descriptions become somewhat emotional as he describes for example what is done to bulls to make them behave as they do in bull fights. On the other hand, this did have the effect of making me, at least, feel shocked which I suspect was his intent. He also tends to anthropomorphize animals: cats are confused about why they play with their prey before killing it; a tiger deliberately stalks the man who injured it.

However, he also does a good job of showing how we demonize animals with very little evidence, but for our own purposes. We portray wolves and bears as mankillers when, in fact, there have been very few documented wolf or bear attacks on humans, certainly nowhere near the level of human attacks on wolves and bears. It is his contention that, if we learn to see other species as having the same sense of pain and the same desire to live as us, then perhaps we can learn, not only to coexist peacefully with them, but with each other.

I enjoyed this book. My guess, though, is that it will appeal to people who already share many of Masson’s beliefs: vegans, Progressives, animal rights activists while those who disagree, hunters, farmers, etc will dislike it intensely. Personally, I’m not sure that it will, for example, change my eating habits but it certainly gave me food for thought. ( )
  lostinalibrary | Feb 9, 2014 |
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"There are two supreme predators on the planet with the most complex brains in nature: humans and orcas. In the twentieth century alone, one of these animals killed 200 million members of its own species, the other has killed none. Jeffrey Masson's fascinating new book begins here: There is something different about us. In his previous bestsellers, Masson has showed that animals can teach us much about our own emotions--love (dogs), contentment (cats), grief (elephants), among others. But animals have much to teach us about negative emotions such as anger and aggression as well, and in unexpected ways. In Beasts he demonstrates that the violence we perceive in the "wild" is mostly a matter of projection. We link the basest human behavior to animals, to "beasts" ("he behaved no better than a beast"), and claim the high ground for our species. We are least human, we think, when we succumb to our primitive, animal ancestry. Nothing could be further from the truth. Animals, at least predators, kill to survive, but there is nothing in the annals of animal aggression remotely equivalent to the violence of mankind. Our burden is that humans, and in particular humans in our modern industrialized world, are the most violent animals to our own kind in existence, or possibly ever in existence on earth. We lack what all other animals have: a check on the aggression that would destroy the species rather than serve it. It is here, Masson says, that animals have something to teach us about our own history. In Beasts, he strips away our misconceptions of the creatures we fear, offering a powerful and compelling look at our uniquely human propensity toward aggression"--

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