Chimpanzee Politics
by Frans de Waal · first published 1982
40% recommend60% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Shows how primate status, alliances and power play out in a group, and readers say the parallels to human office and social behavior are eye-opening; suits anyone wanting to understand power dynamics.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"This extraordinary account of schmoozing, scheming, and consensus building among the chimpanzees of a large zoo colony in Arnhem, The Netherlands, attracted attention.". "Throughout this revised edition - which features a new gallery of color photographs along with a new introduction and epilogue - de Waal expands and updates his story of the Arnhem colony and its continuing political upheavals. We learn the fate of many memorable characters and meet the colony's current leaders and their allies. The new edition remains a detailed and thoroughly engrossing account - of sexual rivalries
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Why Nations Fail (amazing!) Chimpanzee Politics (interesting) Corporate Confidential (paranoid, but worth a read) Developer Hegemony (red pill for developers!!!) Bargaining For Advantage (reasonable) Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗…72 euros I paid for it) • Behave and Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers by Sapolsky (I wrote my "why" for Behave here[1]) • Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene • The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod • Chimpanzee Politics by Frans de Waal • Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture by Johan Huizinga • Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson • Becoming Human by Michael Tomasello • For Stoicism,…
on “Revisiting “The 4-Hour Workweek”” ↗…performance of being highly placed that chimps are. I read this sort of behavior as the driver asserting his "superiority", putting "lesser" people in "their place". If you're interested, de Waal's "Chimpanzee Politics" was a real eye-opener for me. There was a big chunk of human behavior that went from "what is wrong with him" to "ah, ok, primates gonna prime".
on “Things people blamed on bicycles” ↗The two aren't totally separable. Status calculations are a fundamental human behavior, and social systems tend to move in directions of class and hierarchy. (For more on this, the books Chimpanzee Politics by DeWaal and Impro by Johnstone are readable and very compelling. Consider also that absolute salary differences matter less for happiness than relative salary differences, which is economically insane…
on “Ask Valve employees: How well does the flat organization work?” ↗…all in how you do it. Humans are fundamentally social animals, hardwired for status. As a nerd that was mainly invisible to me early on. Two books that really helped me see how it works in humans are Chimpanzee Politics by deWaal and Impro by Johnstone (in particular the section on status transactions). If you correct somebody in a way that costs them face, they will trust you less. E.g., publicly demonstrating that…
on “Top Things Every Software Engineer Should Know” ↗Because arguments often end up being proxy battles for social status, and we're hardwired for those. The book that really opened my eyes on this was de Waal's Chimpanzee Politics. And, perhaps just as importantly, a book about acting: Johnstone's Impro.
on “Want to Win a Political Debate? Try Making a Weaker Argument” ↗For those who would like to know more about this, I can't recommend De Waal's Chimpanzee Politics enough. I read this as a young nerd and suddenly people made a lot more sense to me. First things about society (especially companies). Then things about individual people. And, most recently, things…
on “The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)” ↗…it is for people to even recognize power dynamics. It's so deeply baked in to our culture (and probably our brains) that it's easy to miss. For my fellow nerds who have trouble spotting it, de Waal's "Chimpanzee Politics" is a good book showing power in our near relatives. For understanding it in humans, various books on body language were useful to me, as were some theater books, including the status transactions section…
on “A Critique of “Don’t Fuck Up The Culture”” ↗Franz de Waal's "Chimpanzee Politics". It's nominally about the social relationships of a chimp colony in a Dutch zoo. But it made me see the extent to which humans are just another great ape, and a lot of human dynamics are really primate…
on “Ask HN: Books on specific topics that have applied to many areas of your life?” ↗Agreed. It's high on the list of books that changed the way I think. Between his analysis of status transactions and reading de Waal's "Chimpanzee Politics" so much of human behavior suddenly became explicable to me.
on “Book Review: Impro by Keith Johnstone” ↗It also conveys a benefit to those of low status. High-status individuals' job is to produce stability. Read Chimpanzee Politics; it will completely change the way you see human interaction and power.
on “Choose your status game wisely” ↗HN produces better book recommendations than any other place I know of. People at HN have recommended such books like Chimpanzee Politics, which are so basic yet eye-opening that everyone would benefit from reading them. If you would get to recommend a single book for everyone to read, what would it be?
on “Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?” ↗…Origins of Political Order Sapiens Guns, Germs & Steel Psychology: Thinking Fast and Slow The Elephant In The Brain Predictably Irrational Poltics: The Righteous Mind The Political Mind Chimpanzee Politics In Defense of Troublemakers A General Theory of Bureaucracy Communications: Words That Work Shortcut Surfaces & Essences Metaphors We Live By On Controversy Tempo: Timing, Tactics and…
on “Empathy and Failures of Democracies” ↗If you ever get the chance or make time to read Chimpanzee Politics it is uncanny just how closely the behaviors match that of humans. Except you get to see it without any of the rationalizations that we make. You get the raw distillation of this behavior. It'll never…
on “Undergraduate Math Student Pushes Frontier of Graph Theory” ↗…of them are neurotypical, and neurotypical people are deeply invested in social primate dynamics. I understand that this is hard for neurotypical people to see, but you might read things like DeWaal's "Chimpanzee Politics" or Johnson's "Impro" [1]. Plus there's my personal experience, where psychologists are very inclined to talk about self-worth in the social sense. And I think that's fine; I'm sure it works well for…
on “The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age” ↗