Word: human
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...what this primate can reveal about man. The baboon's hierarchical society, commanded by dominant males, suggests the fundamental pattern to which man's ancestors may have subscribed, long before marriage was invented. So far no primate study has turned up a societal unit that duplicates the human family...
Murder and War. Probably the most controversial studies of man and animal -notably by Konrad Lorenz-have to do with the biology of aggression and its implication for modern society. Evolution indicates that the aggressive instinct tended to preserve order within a tribal structure. But most human aggregates have gone beyond the tribe. And perhaps as an inevitable result, aggression no longer keeps but strains the peace. In man's simpler and less crowded past, aggression was both useful and effective; in man's present, it can lead to such thoroughly unanimal behavior as murder...
This is partly because the human animal straddles the past and the present. "It is not only our bodies that are primitive, but also our customs," Washburn writes. "They are not adapted to the crowded, technical world, dominated by a fantastic acceleration of scientific knowledge. There is a fundamental difficulty in the fact that contemporary human groups are led by primates whose evolutionary history dictates a strong desire to dominate. Attempts to build personal or international relations on the wishful basis that people will not be aggressive is as futile as it would be to try to build the institution...
Those indefatigable human detergents, the censor and the prude, have utterly failed to launder, much less expunge, man's lowest literary form: the dirty joke. What accounts for its lusty and unabashed survival? Freud suggested that the smutty story verbalizes male aggressive instincts against the highly disturbing opposite sex. Somewhat embellished, this theory lies at the heart of Gershon Legman's Rationale of the Dirty Joke (Grove Press; $15), which beyond all doubt qualifies as the most bizarre book of research in recent years. Legman's study is an 811-page anthology of dirty jokes, complete with...
Before the joint session of Congress, Borman urged continued support of the space program beyond the moon landing. "Exploration is really the essence of human spirit," he said, "and I hope that we never forget that." In a lighter vein, he described the Christmas Eve reading from Genesis and a particularly "historic" accomplishment: "We got that good Roman Catholic Bill Anders to read from the King James version." Then, looking down at the Supreme Court Justices seated in the House chamber, Borman had an afterthought. "But now that I see the gentlemen in the front...