Planet of the Apes and Philosophy (20 page)

           
More plentiful and better-quality goods are more easily produced if each person does one thing for which he is naturally suited . . . and is released from having to do any of the others. (lines 370c3–6)

Ruling the state, by this reasoning, should be a job performed by those who specialize in ruling, chosen from those who are best fit to rule. People who perform any other job, like farmers, craft workers, and doctors, should have no say. They should keep their noses
out
of government and simply obey. Since they don't specialize in the art of governing, they aren't qualified to make political judgments and should stick to their own trade.

For this reason, the city will be divided into two social classes, a ruling class to run the city and a producing class to do all of the other jobs in accordance with the rulers' instructions. The function of Plato's ruling class is not to benefit themselves by stocking up wealth and power, but to use their superior reasoning abilities to run society justly for the benefit of all citizens. To ensure that a manual worker “is ruled by something similar to what rules the best person, we say that he ought to be the slave of that best person. . . . It isn't to harm the slave that we say he must be ruled . . . but because it is better for everyone to be ruled by divine reason” (lines 590c7–d3). Because we can't expect the producing classes to always do as they are told by the rulers, the ideal state must also include a class of professional warriors to keep order among the producers and to protect the city from outside threats.

The three classes of citizen in Plato's
Republic
are mirrored by the three classes of citizen on the Planet of the Apes. At the top of the tree, we find the orangutans. Functioning much like Plato's ruling class, the orangutans serve as legislators and administrators and have responsibility for education, censorship, and propaganda. Why the orangutans ended up in this role is unclear, since wild orangs are no more religious than any other species of ape, nor any more drawn to administration.

Perhaps the orangutans assumed that as the most spectacularly beautiful of all primates, God clearly marked them out as leaders, bestowing on them a flamboyant orange splendor that surpasses even the athletic grace of the chimpanzee and the stately majesty of the gorilla, let alone the disease-ridden appearance of the human, afflicted as humans are with ugly bald patches over most of the body.

Enforcing the power of the orangutans are the gorillas, endowed by nature with the physical strength to impose their will. Like Plato's warrior class, the gorillas use their muscle to maintain order in ape society and to protect it from outside
threats like invading humans. Right at the bottom of the barrel are the chimpanzees. Corresponding to Plato's producing class, the chimps are the ones who actually make things, grow things, and otherwise take on every job in society that does not boil down to telling people what to do or enforcing the law. Given that wild chimpanzees may use sticks and rocks as simple tools, it is unsurprising that it is the chimps who are assigned to perform the manual and technical labor. The fact that chimpanzees are smaller and weaker than orangutans and gorillas, and thus easier to push around, makes it all the less surprising to find that they are saddled with the hard work. Their function is to get on with their professional duties and do whatever the orangutans say. How can it be that the best possible city so closely resembles this simian tyranny? Let's take a closer look at the parallels and differences.

Plato thought that the most important task of government was to educate the ruling and warrior classes for their social roles. Nobody is born into the ruling class. At the age of thirty, new members of the ruling class are chosen from members of the warrior class who show most aptitude for the intellectual and moral demands of ruling. All young warriors are subjected to an arduous physical training, in addition to which they must master uplifting music and poetry to strengthen their moral character. In order to join the ruling class, the student must also excel in mathematics and philosophy, to ensure that they love truth and are equipped to understand it. They must also demonstrate that they are “the most stable, the most courageous, and as far as possible the most graceful . . . a noble and tough character” (lines 535a10–b1), “someone who has got a good memory, is persistent, and is in every way a lover of hard work” (lines 535c1–2). Above all, a member of the ruling class must be a philosopher, since it's the philosopher who loves truth and can best understand it.

Ape society is as hierarchical as Plato's, though there is less mobility. Plato recognized that the talents of a child often differ from those of the parents and so allowed that some children from the producing classes who show exceptional promise will
be brought up as warriors and might even become rulers. On the other hand, if you aren't born to orangutan parents, you just aren't going to get a job in the administration or the church on the Planet of the Apes, regardless of your aptitude. Your species determines what you will be doing for a living. Unlike Plato's elite, the orangutans are hereditary rulers, born to power rather than chosen for their abilities.

In Plato's ideal city, the stories that young warriors hear are to be carefully screened. They must only be told inspiring tales of right moral conduct, especially in stories about the gods. There must never be stories about “gods warring, fighting, or plotting against one another, for they aren't true.” On the other hand, it's permissible to tell lies about the gods as part of education, provided that the stories do not misrepresent the
nature
of the gods. The point of the lie must be to convey some deeper truth, such as that the gods always act morally and always demand that we act morally too.

What goes for the education of young warriors goes for the entertainment of the citizenry in general—any stories told in the city should be of a morally uplifting nature, with state-approved lies being propagated if they convey good moral and religious messages. To make sure that no inappropriate messages get through, Plato goes so far as to ban poetry, with the exception of religious poems praising the gods and poems eulogizing famous men of exemplary character.

Like Plato's ruling class, the orangutans try to ensure that the only ideas that get spread are those that will support the harmonious running of society under their guiding hand, even if this means spreading lies and manipulating religion in the interests of social order. The first article of faith among the apes, as related by Dr. Honorius, justifies ape rule over the planet on divine grounds—“that the Almighty created the ape in his own image; that He gave him a soul and a mind; that He set him apart from the beasts of the jungle, and made him the lord of the planet.”

Plato likewise decided that the people of his city be told a myth about their own origins to make them accept the current political arrangement as the natural state of things and any
deviation from it a dangerous threat. The citizens will be told that they were born out of the ground and thus that they must regard their home-ground as their mother and their fellow citizens as brothers and sisters. In accordance with their earthly origins, each of the three classes of citizen is infused with a particular type of metal. Those fit to be rulers have gold in their soul, those fit to be warriors have silver, and those fit to be producers have bronze or iron. The citizens will be warned that an oracle has predicted the destruction of the city if it should ever be ruled by someone with the wrong metal in their soul.

One particularly important orangutan myth used for political control is that of reward in a future life. Taylor accidentally eavesdrops on a gorilla's funeral, at which an orangutan minister preaches to the bereaved before a massive statue in the form of an orangutan. “He lives again! Yes, he has found peace in Heaven!” Ancient philosophers and modern politicians alike have understood just how powerful myths of heaven and hell can be.

Plato thought that it was important that the warrior class in particular should only hear stories that would make them unafraid of death, while being kept from any tales that make death look unattractive. Heroes in the stories should never feel fear, and the afterlife should only be represented as somewhere welcoming, never as a depressing or terrifying prospect. That way, soldiers defending the city wouldn't be afraid to die. He wrote “We must supervise such stories and those who tell them, and ask them not to disparage the life in Hades in this unconditional way, but rather to praise it, since what they now say is neither true nor beneficial to future warriors” (lines 386b6–c1). Likewise, modern armies come equipped with chaplains and other officials who assure soldiers that death will only open the door to a wonderful afterlife if they are in good standing with God.

The towering orangutan statue behind the minister is of the great Lawgiver, the Moses-like orangutan out of distant ape history who presented the apes with their divine law and established their society. Plato likewise approved of turning political figures into holy figures in the interests of cementing the social order, recommending that in the case of particularly outstanding leaders “the city will give them public memorials and sacrifices and honor them as demigods, but if not, as in any case blessed and divine” (lines 540b6–c2).

In Ape City, any evidence that challenges scripture is suppressed. The orangutans even forbid the teaching of the theory of evolution, recognizing that it undercuts their claim to divine authority. When Dr. Cornelius finally admits in court to being an evolutionist, it is enough for the orangutan Dr. Honorius to charge both him and Dr. Zira with “contempt of this tribunal, malicious mischief, and scientific heresy.” Dr. Zaius, Minister of Science and Chief Defender of the Faith, later makes it clear that their conviction is a foregone conclusion. Likewise, the orangutans are outraged by Cornelius's announcement that he had “discovered evidence of a simian culture that existed long before the sacred scrolls were written.” His discovery undercuts the myth that ape society was set up in its present state by God, and the myth that the sacred scrolls convey an accurate account of history in general.

Dr. Zaius is particularly active in destroying evidence. When Taylor writes in the dust to prove that he is intelligent, Zaius rubs it out again with his walking stick. Presented with a paper airplane made by Taylor, he crushes it in his paw rather than threaten the established doctrine that flight is impossible. When Cornelius shows him an archaeological site that proves the existence of an earlier human civilization, Zaius would rather obliterate it with explosives than admit that the sacred scrolls are wrong. The scientists may all be chimpanzees but the Ministry of Science is headed solely by orangutans, ready to make sure that the chimp scientists don't discover anything that the orangutans don't want them to.

The gorillas correspond to Plato's warrior class, keeping order in the city and defending it against outsiders. When human beings infest the ape's crops, or wild humans escape from the laboratories and run amok in town, climbing all over the buildings and knocking over fruit stalls, it is the gorillas who ride out with rifles and whips to kill or capture the beasts. Likewise, in the labs and stockyards where captured humans are kept, it is the gorillas, now armed with truncheons and hoses, who maintain order.

It's true, the gorillas don't seem to be particularly good at their jobs. The athletic abilities of gorillas have declined a long
way from those of their modern counterparts when ten of them have trouble out-running, out-climbing, out-jumping, and out-wrestling one skinny human with no shoes and a major wound. Still, their social role is to bring force to bear on behalf of the state. They also hose down and sweep up the lab, which is work more suited to Plato's producing class, but even a soldier must occasionally sweep a floor. Serving as police as well as military personnel, gorillas provide security in courtrooms and presumably other government buildings. There can be little doubt that the prison that Zira and Cornelius are due to be sent to at the end of the film is staffed by unsympathetic gorillas.

The gorillas may understand the orangutans' mission to suppress unwanted truths. Certainly, Taylor's gorilla keepers don't want to know that he can speak, let alone hear what he has to say—“Shut up you freak!” shouts one gorilla, spraying Taylor with the hose until he yells “It's a madhouse!” At the funeral gate-crashed by Taylor as he flees his cage, the deceased gorilla is praised as a model, the orangutan minister declaring him “hunter, warrior, defender of the faith.” emphasizing both his martial skill and his role as the enforcer of orangutan authority. Plato believed that in order to prevent the warriors and rulers from growing corrupt, “none of them should possess any private property beyond what is wholly necessary . . . whatever sustenance moderate and courageous warrior-athletes require . . . they'll receive by taxation on the other citizens . . . they'll have common messes and live together like soldiers in a camp” (lines 416d4–e4). Members of the warrior and guardian class were not even permitted to own money. There are no such limitations for gorillas on the Planet of the Apes, as the departed primate is ominously described as a “generous master.” From the sounds of it, the gorilla had many chimpanzee servants in life and the wealth to maintain them.

On the other hand, the virtue for which the late gorilla is praised most is not his dedication to honorably performing his civic duty, but his compassion: “He was a font of simian kindness. The dear departed once said to me, ‘I never met an ape I didn't like'.” On the face of it, this might seem like strange praise to offer at the funeral of a warrior, yet Plato regarded it as essential for members of the warrior class to balance their toughness with kindness. They must be ferocious enough to stand in battle or to apprehend criminals, but they will be useless
if they are thugs who brutalize the very population they are pledged to protect. Plato wrote “those who devote themselves exclusively to physical training turn out to be more savage than they should . . . the source of the savageness is the spirited part of one's nature. Rightly nurtured, it becomes courageous, but if it's overstrained, it's likely to become hard and harsh.” It's not enough for a warrior to be as strong as a gorilla and skillful in combat. A useful warrior must love truth and honor and must be driven by the desire to do what is right.