A chimp
Language is the defining characteristic of human beings because, mainly through language, we create our representation of the world and act on it: history, art, film making, science, maths, literature, architecture, electronics, and so on, all require us to be capable of modelling the world.
Modelling the world is closely linked to our feelings about the world.We develop empathy and compassion because one human can represent how another feels in their mind. I feel your pain - I really do - and I share in your hopes and wishes.
In literature we live vicariously and intensely, and some of our strongest feelings may derive, not from our own experience, but from vicarious experience.
This does not entitle us to greater freedom from pain and want than an animal. But humans have to be given the opportunity to fully inhabit the world of representation and imagination. People do not live by bread alone. An essential human right is a universal education, not simply the education of a worker bee. To deny any human the right to a universal education is great cruelty. Cruelty that would be lost on an ape.
If we are fully human then we can imagine what it is like to be a chimp, but the chimp can never imagine accurately what it like to be us. Perhaps this also is how creatures that we may encounter in future that are more complex and interesting than we are may view us. That difference would be inconceivable to us, by definition.
Nevertheless, you have to be wary of arguments that make us feel too special. These arguments eat themselves: the Nazis – 'Little Men', Reich called them – used Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' to demonstrate Aryan superiority. As more advanced 'Nordics', they argued, the Germans deserved more.
The death of 3 thousand westerners is a world tragedy because they are more human. They are more like us. The death of 655 thousand Iraqis is subordinate because they are less like us. We see the Vietnam war from the perspective of suffering US soldiers, not the suffering Vietnamese, 2 million of whom died.
To the supporter of Apartheid in South Africa, the needs of the civilised white man were much greater, and the rest of the population could content itself with the second rate and count themselves lucky. The rest of the population didn't need an education. They didn't and couldn't live in the same complex world. They were less than fully human. This is the way humans treat other humans when they fail to see their reflection, when they play on difference.
If we have the capacity to imagine that we are Chimpanzees, and we do, and certainly people like the animal rights activists and Peter Singer think they do, then we should be kind and respectful towards them. The same should be true of our treatment of all animals. We should have stewardship over them, which is not the same as the right to exploit animals. This our nature. The imagination inspires more kindness than rationalism. Failures of the imagination lead to cruelty.
We also need to make clear distinctions between Apes and other animals. The similarity of these apes to us, for all our civilization, means that it is disturbing to keep them as pets or use them as workers. We prefer dumber animals like dogs and cats. We didn't domesticate apes, though they might have been useful, we domesticated horses instead - and enslaved other humans.
The planet of the Apes films are good because they explore the ambiguous relationship humans have with apes. Apes are too human. Apes are not human enough. In rejecting apes as symbiotes we destroy them in evolutionary terms. They do not symbiotically share the biosphere with us. Apes are relegated. Had they been used as symbiotes apes would be in a far better position.
