Songs of the Gorilla Nation
Dawn Prince-Hughes - Songs of the Gorilla Nation
Dawn Prince-Hughes is an anthropologist with the Asperger's syndrome. And a specific fondness and identification with gorillas.
After a disastrous spell in the school, where she was always pestered for being different, Prince-Hughes quit and began to live in the street. Eventually she began to make a living as an exotic dancer and working in a zoo and wrote poetry as an outlet. Having a sex life without understanding anything about human relationships lead to more than one problem. At the time her Asperger remained undiagnosed.
When she was working in the zoo, she began to identify with gorillas, adopting at least a semblance of their point of view. Finally she received a degree in anthropology in Switzerland. And had to push her own Asperger diagnosis through.
The gorillas in the zoo probably consider her part of the strange, allied troop of the hairless tribe around them. And unlike those of that tribe who behave in aggressive manner on the other side of the dividing glass, she came to socialize with them. Gorillas are very unlikely to make any value judgements based on prejudicial principles (like many animals in general).
Prince-Hughes feels safer in the dark (familiar feeling to me; I've never been afraid of dark, enclosed spaces). She has to use her reason to try to understand things others understand intuitively. And she says she learned many of the physical expressions from the gorillas…
(No, I'm not autistic - even if I may be as big as a gorilla :-))
Like Temple Grandin, she decided to try to understand the animal point of view. Unlike her, she has a love life, her own partner and a son.
Her point of view may be idealistic, maybe a bit sentimental, but it is definite improvement from the view that gorillas - and animals in general - are mere generalized biological automatons. Especially by those people who'd rather forget that humans are an animal species…
Gorillas have their own personalities and food preferences but so do many others - horses, canines, cats. That behavior is not limited to great apes. Ask anyone with a pet.
Even if her point of view may be humanocentric, it's still an interesting improvement. And not so far-fetched in my opinion; human social systems are based of simian troop behavior.
Interesting thing is that she specifically states that she's not a postmodernist but an essentialist. Commendable.
Dawn Prince-Hughes is an anthropologist with the Asperger's syndrome. And a specific fondness and identification with gorillas.
After a disastrous spell in the school, where she was always pestered for being different, Prince-Hughes quit and began to live in the street. Eventually she began to make a living as an exotic dancer and working in a zoo and wrote poetry as an outlet. Having a sex life without understanding anything about human relationships lead to more than one problem. At the time her Asperger remained undiagnosed.
When she was working in the zoo, she began to identify with gorillas, adopting at least a semblance of their point of view. Finally she received a degree in anthropology in Switzerland. And had to push her own Asperger diagnosis through.
The gorillas in the zoo probably consider her part of the strange, allied troop of the hairless tribe around them. And unlike those of that tribe who behave in aggressive manner on the other side of the dividing glass, she came to socialize with them. Gorillas are very unlikely to make any value judgements based on prejudicial principles (like many animals in general).
Prince-Hughes feels safer in the dark (familiar feeling to me; I've never been afraid of dark, enclosed spaces). She has to use her reason to try to understand things others understand intuitively. And she says she learned many of the physical expressions from the gorillas…
(No, I'm not autistic - even if I may be as big as a gorilla :-))
Like Temple Grandin, she decided to try to understand the animal point of view. Unlike her, she has a love life, her own partner and a son.
Her point of view may be idealistic, maybe a bit sentimental, but it is definite improvement from the view that gorillas - and animals in general - are mere generalized biological automatons. Especially by those people who'd rather forget that humans are an animal species…
Gorillas have their own personalities and food preferences but so do many others - horses, canines, cats. That behavior is not limited to great apes. Ask anyone with a pet.
Even if her point of view may be humanocentric, it's still an interesting improvement. And not so far-fetched in my opinion; human social systems are based of simian troop behavior.
Interesting thing is that she specifically states that she's not a postmodernist but an essentialist. Commendable.