Is grumpiness a sign of advanced civilisation?
Victor Meldrew (Richard Wilson) of One Foot in the Grave (now on WNED) is the latest English anti-hero, the successor to Scrooge , Alf in Till Death Do Us Part, , Soames in The (original) Forsyte Saga. Although One Foot has been off the air for a decade, Victor, a pensioner irate at the world is going, reacts with the same indignant comment over and over again “I don’t believe it”. It still resonates…
Now, writes Richard Alleyne of the Daily Telegraph, “The Victor Meldrews of this world should take heart – their grumpiness could be down to being higher up the evolutionary ladder than people who are easygoing. ”
Presumably that goes for famous American grumps like Walter Matthau, Maude and Archie Bunker – although they’re more genial . North Americans don’t on the whole cotton to the bleakness of the English sitcom — Till Death do us Part was considerably cheered up for American audiences as All In the Family. Researchers at Harvard University for the online journal Current Biology” now believe that being aggressive, intolerant and short-tempered could be a sign of a more advanced nature. Serena Williams? Gordon Ramsey?
A more childlike attitude to behaviour such as tolerance and sharing, could, in contrast, be an indication of not being as developed, the new study suggests.” Yes We Can.
Looks like George Bernard Shaw may have been right when he said ”all progress depends on the unreasonable man”.
Researchers looked at two different kinds of monkey – the familiar chimpanzee and the less evolved but much more easy going bonobo, two of the closest living relatives to human beings.
Chimpanzees are accepted as more evolved than bonobos in terms of physical appearance, behaviour and social structure.But chimps are also much more aggressive, particularly as they get older, when they become less tolerant of each other, share less and show more signs of violence to others.
Adult bonobos, on the other hand, are more Peter Pan-like. They retain the same levels of playfulness and behaviour they showed as juveniles.
