[Guide to the Market Economy] No One Can Live Alone

Belo, Who Was Raised by Chimpanzees, Could Not Adapt to Human Society…

“Humans Are Social Animals” … We Live by Interacting with Others

In 1996, a four-year-old child was found in a forest in Nigeria. The child’s name was Belo. Abandoned at six months old, he had been raised by chimpanzees for more than two and a half years. At the time he was found, Belo had virtually none of the characteristics we would consider recognizably human. His spine, which was presumably normal at birth, had become bent from the habit of walking on all fours like a chimpanzee, so he could not stand upright. Naturally, bipedal walking was also impossible.

In addition, his brain had not developed normally, so he could not speak any human language at all. He merely made sounds and behaved like a chimpanzee. Having lived among wild chimpanzees, watching and imitating them as he grew up, human society must have seemed unfamiliar and difficult for Belo to understand.

In fact, it was not until 2002, six years after he was first discovered, that Belo began living with other people at the Kanusi orphanage in Nigeria. But at age 10, Belo was clearly different from other children his age. He ran around for 12 hours a day, clapping his hands and screaming at all times. When he was not running around, he would grab and eat dirt or play with fruit. He disliked mixing with children his own age, and when shown pictures of chimpanzees, he would respond by making chimpanzee sounds. Why did this happen? Strictly speaking, Belo was never a chimpanzee. But could Belo really be called human when he could not get along with other people at all and faithfully followed the lifestyle and habits of chimpanzees?

From Belo’s case, poised awkwardly between chimpanzee and human, we can realize an important truth.

Even if one is born a human being, without the experience of living among others in human society, naturally developing intellectual abilities, and acquiring a human way of life, one can never lead a truly human life. Belo, who lived an animal’s life together with chimpanzees in the wild, ultimately could not belong to human society and was left resembling an ape from a million years ago. His case strongly suggests precisely this point.

Then what is necessary for humans to live as truly human beings? The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle defined the human being in this way: “Man is a social animal.” In other words, for humans to live as humans, society is necessary. Society is “every form of human group that carries on communal life,” and it consists of oneself and other people. Put differently, only when we live together with others can human beings truly live as humans. In this way, humans constantly need the presence of others, and through continual social interaction with others, they come to live a truly human life.

Then what happens in a case unlike Belo’s—someone who was not excluded from human society from the beginning and raised in isolation, but instead lived well within human society and then was left alone? Such a person would probably struggle to return to civilized society, trying to escape economic hardship and loneliness. Like Robinson Crusoe, the protagonist of Daniel Defoe’s novel.

Humanity has been able to achieve today’s high level of civilization thanks to an economy of exchange created by countless people coming together. By exchanging the goods and services each person produced with others, people brought about abundance and prosperity, and was it not on the foundation of this economic development that civilization itself advanced?

And as civilization developed and individuals’ productive capacities improved, the scale of the economy expanded further, and people’s lives also became more prosperous. In this way, the economy and civilization have advanced together, alternately leading and following one another, and at the foundation of it all was a society in which countless people gathered and lived together.

■ Please remember

Humanity has been able to achieve today’s high level of civilization thanks to an economy of exchange created by countless people coming together. By exchanging the goods and services each person produced with others, people brought about abundance and prosperity, and was it not on the foundation of this economic development that civilization itself advanced?

Sung-no Choi, President, Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

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Original title: [시장경제 길라잡이] 사람은 혼자서 살 수 없다

Author: Sung-no Choi

Date: 2020-06-22

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=column&pn=8&idx=22851