Two Monkeys Were Paid Unequally: Excerpt from Frans de Waal's TED Talk

This is the video that explains the best how the "morality" is natural even in the capuchin monkeys: [VIDEO] So, no to those that claim that, humans aren't special, and no, the good sides of morality don't come from religion, especially not from the modern ones with a "jealous" god (killing homosexuals, or punishing women when not wearsing something, however, if that is considered "morality", indeed provably does come from religion). The whole talk: [LINK]

There's a nice video from a psychological experiment that illustrates it: [VIDEO] I think evolution hardwired our primate brains against inequality. We go out of our way to punish those who don't play nice and share with the broader group. Otherwise complex societies would have never emerged, because assholes exploiting and taking advantage of peers would ruin and doom any group larger than a few individuals.

There's proof and proof. No one has managed to prove other humans experience emotions, or even exist. Given a hypothetical model of a continually manipulated memory and consciousness you could even argue that you can't prove that you yourself have emotions (you might merely have the mistaken belief that you experience them). To take a more pragmatic approach to proof (good enough but not absolute) Humans and some animals experience emotions. At the very least most Mammals. Probably not all animals. A trickier proposition would be whether all vertebrates do, that's a different level of debate entirely. If you can't take things like the Monkey fairness tests as a sign of emotions [VIDEO] then you have a standard of proof that a lot of humans wouldn't meet.

Wouldn't be happy, I think you mean in your last sentence. You're almost certainly right. Resentment is built into our DNA: [VIDEO] Of course, it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to be better people than shitty, jealous little monkeys.

Happiness is relative. Humans (and animals) value "fairness" even if they are objectively better off. There is a famous experiment where two monkeys are given a cucumber every day. They are both happy. Then one of them starts getting grapes (sweeter than cucumber). The monkey that doesn't get the grapes rejects the cucumber in protest. [VIDEO]

This is not unique to humans. Check out: [VIDEO] It takes a lot of effort to learn not to resent accomplishments of people you’re “competing” with even if they’re friends and you’re not directly competing with them. It’s a learned behavior to feel good for them instead. There’s probably a selected reason for this, but it’s possible to overcome it (or at least be aware of its affect). It’s better to frame life success on something else - like what you want to learn or the type of person you want to be.

A lot of people in the US right now are experiencing long-term financial strain. Those on the political right typically follow media streams which have convinced them that this is the result of regulations and taxes; those on the left follow media streams which have convinced them that it's the result of too much wealth being concentrated in the hands of too few people (and implicitly, that it's a result of policies from the political right). Corporations have the resources to navigate tax loopholes that allow them to avoid paying their fair share of social responsibility, and any number of free market worshippers will regularly appear to say, "but of course, they have a responsibility to their shareholders to do so." As a result of those two things together, corporate tax cuts are not popular on the left. If there were any evidence that high corporate tax rates were the root cause of financial strain for the average family in the US, or corporations weren't putting so much effort into dodging taxes, I suspect the left would care a lot less about whether they received tax cuts or not. As it is, the situation has turned into monkeys and cucumbers ( [VIDEO] -- skip to 1:23 if you're in a hurry), and the left keeps seeing gifts laid at the feet of corporations in the name of trickle-down economics while social programs keep struggling for funding and more people keep needing social programs.

Somewhat interesting: Bananas contain the ingredients necessary to produce dopamine. I can see how this all plays out as a way for some apes to get some bananas. Even social structures, fairness and other things (I love this video - two monkeys getting unequal pay [VIDEO] ) can be explained by a dopamine system that just likes to give us bananas and sex. And it's incentivized to conserve energy because this is better for survival (also called lazy) - interesting is that humans have some tendency to do stuff that don't necessarily is conserving energy. Maybe this is what makes us successful: Sometimes we invest excessive energy to try new things which happens to let us survive better through innovation (which leads to genetics that encode this behavior). I like it, although it isn't necessarily what I call my meaning of life (I'm a dualist, because materialism is too damn dry). I like bananas, though (and yes, the role of bananas may be exaggerated here). Thought long about it. From a materialistic standpoint there are only quantitative differences between a organism which has a sensor, some type of memory and an actuator and human beings, although they sure look different. Still following the same principles. When I further simplify, we are all just energy (and matter, which is just a form of it) following some first principles hallucinating our consciousnesses trying to evade the eventual entropy that we'll reach nevertheless because this is how the universe works. - - - Coo