I may have some of the details wrong,
But this is what I recall:
I once saw a PBS nature show
About a tribe of baboons
Ruthlessly ruled over by dominant males
Who bullied the lesser males
Into submission
And claimed the females as their property,
Bullying them as well.
It was a depressing show,
Showcasing the brutality
Of nature, red in tooth and claw,
The survival of the fittest,
And all that.
Depressingly, it made me wonder,
How far have we evolved?
But then, those ruling baboons
Went looking for food,
Scavenging near city,
They dumpster dived.
They devoured tainted meat.
They all died.
The hierarchy disappeared.
In its place, a new baboon tribe emerged:
Less violent, more egalitarian,
More... if such a term can be applied to primates
So primitive compared to us...
Civilized.
If interlopers appeared
Who tried to bully their way to the top again,
They were, I believe, ignored,
Or possibly
Showed to the figurative door.
The tribe's new message:
We don't run our tribe that way.
I'm not sure what our solution might be,
But it seems to me we might need to find our own
Dumpster full of tainted meat.
Or maybe we just need to start saying,
Loud and clear,
We don't run our tribe that way.
