Go read the whole interview.Bill Moyers & Jane Goodall: What Chimps Reveal About Human Brutality, Violence, Compassion and Hope
A fascinating and wide-ranging discussion with Jane Goodall on what chimps tell us about human beings and what we must do to save these animals from extinction.The following is an adapted version of the transcript from Bill Moyers' recent interview with Jane Goodall from the most recent episode of the BIll Moyers Journal on PBS.
Bill Moyers: When Jane Goodall walked into our building this week, faces lit up. Our security chief told me she does animal rescue work after hours because of Jane Goodall. Our stage manager whispered into my ear, "She's been my hero for decades." And the nine-year-old daughter of our editor hurried to the studio because she's writing a school book report on Jane Goodall. Is there anyone who doesn't know who Jane Goodall is?
Her Jane Goodall Institute works for the worldwide protection of habitat. And her program "Roots and Shoots" is in 114 countries, teaching and training young people to create projects to improve and protect the environment. She travels more than 300 days a year, challenging audiences to see themselves as caretakers of the natural world. All is not yet lost, she says, and has a new book to prove it, written with Thane Maynard and Gail Hudson, entitled, "Hope for Animals and Their World." ...
This pioneering woman, acclaimed the world over, has spent much of her life negotiating an intense and intimate relationship with the chimpanzees of the Gombe National Park in East Africa. Her research produced landmark studies of chimpanzee life and society and how they relate to our own. And of course, there have been all those wonderful television specials for PBS and National Geographic. It's as if we all grew up with her and the chimps. ... In closing the gap between the animal world and us, Jane Goodall helped us understand more clearly our own past. She inspired us to a deeper appreciation of our responsibility to the planet. In the course of her career, she herself evolved, from a youthful enthusiast of animals, to an observer of primates, to scientist and global activist for all of life on earth. ...
[Jane Goodall,] the life you're living now is such a contrast between the life of the Jane Goodall we first met living virtually alone in the forest, in the company of chimpanzees, sitting for hours quietly taking notes, observing. And now, 300 days a year, you're on the road. You're speaking. You're lobbying. You're organizing. Why? What's driving you?
Goodall: It actually all began in 1986. You know, in 1986 in the beginning of the year, I was in a dream world. I was out there with these amazing chimpanzees. I was in the forests I dreamed about as a child. I was doing some writing and a little bit of teaching once a year. And then at this conference it brought together the people who were studying chimpanzees across Africa and a few who were working with captive chimps, non-invasively. It was in Chicago. And we were together for four days. And we had one session on conservation. And it was so shocking to see right across their range in Africa, forests were going, human populations growing, the beginning of the bush meat trade, the commercial hunting of wild animals for food, chimpanzees caught in snares, population plummeted from somewhere between one and two million at the turn of the last century to at that time about 400,000. So, I came out, well I couldn't go back to that old, beautiful wonderful life.
Moyers: My team and I were just looking the other day about that old great classic, National Geographic Special, which shows you meeting the chimps for the first time. Do you remember that?
Goodall: "Among the Wild Chimpanzees."
Moyers: Yes.
Goodall: That's still one of the best films. Hugo shot it, my first husband. I love that film. ...
Moyers: Were the animals not affected by the presence of a camera crew?
Goodall: Well, once they've got used to you, they seem to pay very little attention. It's something which has surprised visiting scientists, who felt that the chimps' behavior must be compromised by our presence. But they accept you. And they by and large ignore you.
Moyers: Do you miss them?
Goodall: I miss being out there. I miss being out in the forest. I do go back twice a year, not for very long. But a lot of my old friends or nearly all are gone. The very original ones have all gone. But they, you know, they lived over 60 years, but still. And, you know, we're now getting onto the great-grandchildren. And there's a research team following them. Learning about them.
Moyers: I've long wanted to ask you about the chimpanzee you loved best, David Greybeard. What was there about David Greybeard?
Goodall: Well, first of all, he was the very first chimpanzee who let me come close. Who lost his fear. And he helped to introduce me to this magic world out in the forest. With the other chimps would see David sitting there not running away, and so gradually they'd think, "Well, she can't be so scary, after all."
But he had a wonderful gentle disposition. He was really loved by other chimps, the low-ranking ones would go to him for protection. He wasn't terribly high-ranking. But he had a very high-ranking friend, Goliath. And there was just something about him. He has a very handsome face. His eyes wide apart. And this beautiful gray beard.
Moyers: When you and David Greybeard were communing, what language were you speaking?
Goodall: Well, we didn't. I tried always not to use chimp language in the wild because we really do try and look through a window. And now we know how dangerous it is to, you know, transmit disease from us to them. So we keep further away, which is sad for me.
Moyers: But I ask the question, because it seemed to me, watching the documentary, watching the films, is that there was some language being spoken, some prehistory language. Means of communication without words that communicated even feelings.
Goodall: This was this wonderful situation when right in the early days, I was following David Greybeard. And I thought I'd lost him in a tangle of undergrowth. And I found him sitting as though he was waiting, maybe he was. He was on his own. I don't know. And I picked up this red palm nut and held it out on my palm. And he turned his face away. So, I held my palm closer, and then he turned; he looked directly into my eyes. He reached out -- hold out your hand with a nut on it. He took it. He didn't want it. He dropped it. But at the same time, he very gently squeezed my fingers, which is how a chimp reassures. So, there was this communication. He understood that I was acting in good faith. He didn't want it, but he wanted me to reassure me that he understood. So, we understood each other without the use of words.
Moyers: And where in the long journey that we have made do you think this empathy comes from? Where does it come?
Goodall: It's the bond between mother and child, which is really for us and for chimps and other primates, it's the root of all the expressions of social behavior you can sort of see mirrored in the mother-child relationship.
Moyers: I know that you consider cruelty the worst human sin, right? I mean, you wrote, "Once we accept that a living creature has feelings and suffers pain. Then if we knowingly and deliberately inflict suffering on that creature, we are equally guilty. Whether it be human or animal, we brutalize ourselves." But you learn from the chimpanzees that animals can be cruel, too.
Goodall: Yes, but I think a chimpanzee doesn't have the intellectual ability, or I don't think it does, to deliberately inflict pain. You know, we can plan a torture, whether it's physical or mental. We plan it. And in cold blood we can execute it. The chimpanzee's brutality is always -- you know the spur of the moment. It's some trigger in the environment that causes this craze, almost, of violence.
Moyers: You saw gangs of males attacking single females.
Goodall: Yes. Yes.
Moyers: You saw cannibalism among--
Goodall: We've seen cannibalism.
Moyers: -- the chimps. I mean, including females who eat the newborn females of members of their own community although there's other food available. You describe primal warfare among the chimps. What do we take from that? Since you're looking at them to see what we can learn about us, and about our evolution, what conclusion do you reach about their aggression?
Goodall: Well, some people have reached the conclusion that war and violence is inevitable in ourselves. I reach the conclusion that I do believe we have brought aggressive tendencies with us through our long human evolutionary path. I mean, you can't look around the world and not realize that we can be, and often are, extremely brutal and aggressive. And equally, we have inherited tendencies of love, compassion, and altruism, because they're there in the chimp. So, we've brought those with us. So, it's like each one of us has this dark side and a more noble side. And I guess it's up to each one of us to push one down and develop the other.
Moyers: You even wrote once that it was your study of chimpanzees that crystallized your own belief in the ultimate destiny toward which humans are still evolving. What is that? What is that ultimate destiny? And how did the chimps contribute to your understanding?
Goodall: Because, when you have the thing that's more like us than any other living thing on the planet that helps you to realize the differences. You know, how are we different. And so, we have this kind of language. So, that's led to our intellectual development. That's led to refining of morals. And, you know, the questions about meaning and life and everything. So I think we've moving or should be moving towards some kind of spiritual evolution. Where we understand without having to ask why.
Moyers: But "why" is the fundamental question, isn't it? I mean, isn't that what one of the things that makes us human is we can ask why?
Goodall: Yeah, but maybe we ask too often. Maybe we should sometimes be content with just a knowing and being satisfied with the knowing, without saying, "Why do I know?"
Moyers: Where does your own composure come from?
Goodall: Possibly from months and months on my own in the wilderness. But I think I had it before.
Moyers: As a little girl? I have an image of you in my mind from reading about you, a little girl in Bournemouth, England reading relentlessly from "Doctor Dolittle" and "Tarzan" and those are true stories? That's what you did?
Goodall: Absolutely. I've still got all the books. They're still there in my room.
Moyers: Is that where the imagination was formed about Africa?
Goodall: Yes.
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