Jane Goodall - Don't argue, tell stories.

Jane Goodall traf ich vor ich glaube mittlerweile über fünfzehn Jahren. Ich moderierte für sie eine große Benefizgala in Wien und leider kam ich am Abend garnicht so sehr in den Austausch mit ihr. Ich übernachtete in der britischen Botschaft in der die Gala stattgefunden hatte, und am nächsten Morgen machte ich mich und ich seh das heute noch vor mir. Barfüßig und im Pyjama auf die Suche nach der Küche in der Hoffnung auf eine gute Tasse Kaffee. Ich fand die Küche und der sogenannte Majordomus der Botschaft machte mir ein wundervolles Frühstuck. So saß ich an einem großen Küchentisch in der Botschaft als Jane erschien sympatischerweise even auch im Pyjama. Dann saßen wir den ganzen Vormittag zusammen und sie erzähle mir aus ihrem Leben. Und noch heute bin ich voller Ehrfurcht vor diesem konsequenten, leidenschaftlichen Leben einer Vollblutforscherin und unermüdlichen Kämpferin für Tier- und Artenschutz. Sie ist wahrlich ein Vorbild darin, am Schrecken nicht zu verzweifeln oder zu verbittern. Mit ihrer einzigartigen, überwältigenden Sanftheit setzt sie sich unermüdlich dafür ein, dass wir begreifen, dass jeder von uns Einfluss darauf ausübt, wie wir miteinander leben. Heute haben wir uns wieder getroffen, und es war wieder Wien, und es war wieder die britische Botschaft. Jane, you are a very inspiring human being with an immense amount of experience from your past, I'd be very grateful to learn about your perspective and get to know your motives better. What do you think about the fact that in our world, all people are passionate and deeply emotional in their core, but they seem to behave in such an indifferent, unempathetic manner?

54

Well, I think it's, you know, sometimes it literally is ignorance, just the way they've been taught the way they've been brought up. And it seems to be becoming more apparent that children who are terribly abused, turn out to be abusive, and then carry on from that it turns out that children who are very cruel to animals tend to grow up to be cruel to people with domestic violence. So it's a kind of cycles of violence leading to violence. Apathy leading to apathy.

31

Exactly. It's a feedback loop, which magnifies every negative action, as long as it stays unaddressed. I'd say the only way to break this kind of vicious cycle is by taking micro actions. Doing tiny acts of selflessness can have a huge positive impact. Once it gets into the very same feedback loop. Many times though, I see people moving towards the negative spiral, falling into apathy, not even realising it consciously and honestly.

03

Sometimes they want power by dominating. But anyway, I think far more important, is what we epitomise in the Jane Goodall Institute programme for young people, which I began in 1991. In Tanzania, with 12 high school students, it's now got members, kindergarten, university, everything in between adult groups forming in about 60 countries and the main message, every single individual matters. Every single individual has a role to play, even if you don't know what it is. Or tragically, in some situations, you don't have a chance to follow it through. But every single one of us makes some impact on the planet every single day. You know, I sometimes ask children, do you think you could live through a day without making any impact at all? And so one little boy said, Yes, I can stay in bed. I said all day. He said, Yes. I said, you won't have to get up to pee. And if you do, will you flush the loo? Well, yes. Could you stop breathing for a day? Well, you're breathing in, you know, oxygen and giving out co2. So you make an impact, even if you stay in bed, ah their eyes get wide, and they start thinking differently. But of course, that's not quite what we mean. What we really mean is, you know, taking these small steps. What can I do? Well, I could pick up I could pick up trash. Well, what's the point? If I pick up trash? There's lots more trash? Yeah, but if, if millions of people pick up trash, collectively They'll make a big difference. And again, it was a little boy in Burundi seven years old. And he'd been to my talk. And he came up to me with these big eyes. And he said, If I pick up a piece of trash every day, it will make a difference. I said, Yes. And he said, If I get 10 of my friends to pick up trash every day, that'll make a bigger difference. I said, Yeah. He said, If all of them get 10 of their friends, to pick up bits of trash it will make a huge difference and his eyes were shining.

35

It's very exciting to see how receptive people are, especially children to simple universal truths.

42

People listen, I talk to kids, I talk to businesses, I talk to politicians. I talk to scientists.

50

Yeah, talking about scientists. I think it's a group of people who get the chance to explore new terrains, and sometimes even forget about humanity, because they are so deeply focused on the research field.

03

Oh, absolutely. Like, you know, when I'd been with the chimpanzees for two years, Louis Leakey told me, I had to get a degree. Because I would have to find my own money. And I would need a degree if I wanted to carry on. So I became the eighth person in Cambridge history to do a PhD, without an undergraduate degree, because Louis said, there isn't time, he managed to get enough people to purchase themselves to say how brilliant that was. But anyway, when I got there, I was really nervous, you can imagine I'd never been to college. And to be told by the professors that I'd done everything wrong. I shouldn't have given the chimpanzees names that you should have had numbers that was scientific. And I couldn't show any empathy for them, I had to be objective. I couldn't talk about them having personality, mind or emotion, because those were unique to us. And fortunately, I had this teacher, as a child, who taught me that however, learned these professors were in this respect, they were totally absolutely utterly wrong. And that was my dog. You can't share your life in a meaningful way with a dog or rat, a cat, a cow, a pig, a bird and not know. Of course, we're not the only beings on the planet, with personalities, minds, and emotions. So you know, these are the stories that I weave into my talks. And I had an amazing mother. And I loved animals from birth, apparently. And she supported me even when she found masses of earthworms and earth in my bed. I was wandering off and I don't remember it. She said, Jane, you were looking at them. So you wondered, how do they walk without legs. So instead of getting mad at me for messing up my bed, she just said, I think we better put them back in the garden, or they'll die because they need the earth. That's the kind of mother she was.

05

It's so important to have role models, just like your mother was to you. But you are also one to many children, and even grownups all over the world. I could imagine nevertheless, it must have been tough back then having aspirations in science, it's still a long way from earthworms in your bed to chimpanzees in the wild. Was this a dream you followed from early days on?

28

My dream was to go to Africa live with wild animals and write books about them. No aspiration of being a scientist, because girls weren't back then, you know, we're going back to when I was 10. And so Jane, how will you get to Africa, you don't have money, we have very little money. I mean, clothes for secondhand and books. And Africa is far away. And you're just a girl, why don't you dream about something you can achieve. But mum said, if you really want this, you're going to have to work awfully hard. Take advantage of every opportunity, but don't give up. So that's the message I take around the world, particularly in disadvantaged communities. And I just wish mum was alive to know how many people grown ups have come up to me and said, I have to thank you because you taught me that because you did it, I can do it. So.

26

So Jane, was Africa the ideal place for you to explore it and deep dive into its rich nature?

33

Well, when I first went to Africa, pretty well matched up to my dream, there were animals everywhere. And if I couldn't go to Africa, I thought about the green hell of the Amazon jungle.

45

So it seems for you it has a lot to do with this feeling of freely being outside merging with a surrounding nature and its animals. Did you have the vision to be part of it?

55

A vision to be part of nature, but more like Dr. Dolittle so that I was quite sure the animals wouldn't hurt me. And people have said, well, that was silly. He went to Gambia, and they were buffalo and they were leopards. And I said, Well, you say I was stupid, but they didn't hurt me.

15

And what do you think? Why did they not hurt you?

19

I don't know. I think I have an aura, which is, which animals feel? Because I've had some very strange experiences with animals. You know, I mean, you've seen the video where Wounda embraces me. That was the first day I met her. She didn't know me. So she must have felt something. And then one of the strangest experiences, I was giving a talk in South Africa, rich people's house. And it was a strange it was a white carpet. And then a very small space about the size of this chair, which is a slightly raised podium, also covered in the white carpet. I can see it now. And when I arrived, they had two dogs. And they said, you know, these are the ?, the African hunting dog. And it's not that they're aggressive. But they just aren't interested in people. So I'm giving my talk. And I get to the bit where I talk about my dog, Rusty who taught me and I was thinking, Gosh, I wished one of these dogs would appear because it makes a different feeling in the room, the male walked from somewhere, he walked across, he climbed onto this tiny podium, he stood touching my leg, looking out over the people. The owner started to call him, I said, No. And then he laid down, just touching me. Looking at the moment I stopped talking about Rusty, he got down and walked away. And the owners were gobsmacked. They said, We've never seen anything like this, he never goes up to strangers.

56

So what is in your opinion, the main lesson we can learn from the way animals interact with each other. But although as humans?

04

Well, we have to first of all, remember that we're animals too. And because chimps are more like us than any other living creature, in behavior, and biology, it enables you to stand back and say, Yeah, but we're different. What makes us most different was lots of little things, of course. But I think the main one is the explosive development of the intellect. So while we know animals are way, way, way, way more intelligent than we ever used to think, you know, not just the apes and the whales, and the dolphins, but the octopus, and so on. But we've designed a rocket that went up to Mars, and a little robot went around crawling, taking photographs. So how come the most intellectual being to ever live is destroying its only home? So that's not exactly answering your question. But going back to the chimp, we share qualities with them of brutality, aggression, violence, but also characteristics of love, and compassion and true altruism. But I think just as a person who commits some altruistic act, can think about, well, I'm going to do this, even though it means some harm to myself or losing money or something like that. We do it anyway. Whereas the chimps will just do it because it's a feeling of the moment. The same, the other way, I think only humans are capable of true cruelty. That's deliberate planning of torture, for example. So what do we learn from animals about how to treat each other? I always think of it the other way around, because so many animal rights people get completely, and quite rightly, but they get really upset about the way we treat animals. Humans, for example, I see Yeah, but look at the, the way humans treat humans.

21

This leads us back to the beginning of our conversation. It's all about power. And also what you just mentioned about the chimpanzees being in the now an acting accordingly, just like a Buddhistic way of perceiving the world as it is.

36

Yeah. And that may be part of the secret of why the animals feel this because when I'm with an animal, I'm in the now.

45

That could be the reason behind the aura of you, which you mentioned before. What is it what you are the most optimistic about in these times?

55

Well there's four main reasons. And number one is the young people when they understand the problems, when we listen to their voices, when we empower them to take action. They are so dedicated, enthusiastic, you know, everywhere I go in the world as these young people roots and shoots, all ages, wanting to tell Dr. Jane, what they're doing to make the world a better place, and they're so full of energy and commitment. So we just have to keep that spirit up, even if they're living in under a dictatorship, but hold true to your values, and wait for an opportunity when, you know, to rise up. My next reason for hope is the human brain, we are coming up with ways of living in greater harmony, we are beginning to think about our own ecological footprint. And then this nature is so forgiving, so resilient. So you can completely destroy a place like a quarry, where they've mined for, for sand for cement. And there's companies which, they give pri- well, Heidelberg, they give a prize each year, for the group that's made the best restoration. I can't believe this was ever an ugly gap. And then the next reason is the indomitable human spirit, the people who tackle what seems impossible, and somehow succeed, and don't give up.

41

Do you remember any particular moment in your life, regardless of it being positive or negative, which led you wanting to create an impact in this world?

50

This conference in 1986, when I learned about the plight of chimps in Africa, it was also a session on conditions in some captive situations. And there was secretly filmed video of chimpanzees and medical research and five foot by five foot cages, youngsters and 22 by 22 inch cages. And it was totally shocking. I couldn't sleep for ages, went to the conference, as a scientist, I left as an activist, I didn't even make a choice. It was like I would call it my Damascus moment, something changed. And I knew I had to do something. I didn't know what. But I knew I had to do something. And that began the long road of trying to get chimpanzees out of medical research which has finally come true.

47

It's a beautiful motive to stand and fight for. Thank you for doing that. I can really feel the emotional load of this moment. And I totally understand the emerging urge in you to take action.

00

It was awful. First time I went into a lab was probably one of the worst experiences of my life actually seeing it with my own eyes, which again, I felt I had to do.

12

Yeah, sometimes, you really have to see the truth through your own eyes to see that it's real.

18

I don't know why the lab let me in when I think back on it, I think they were rather stupid for letting me go in. And when I came out of that lab, it was a program run by NIH. And I found unknown to me all the top people of NIH were there, sitting around a table. And I sat down feeling utterly shattered. And they were all looking at me. And I thought, well, they want me to speak. What am I going to say? So you know, sometimes inspiration comes nice and well, I imagine that every compassionate person will feel the same as I do. After seeing these cages, well, they could hardly say, we're not compassionate people. So I had them. And then they expected me to point fingers at them. But instead, I talked to them about the chimps of Gumby and how they play and groom and rest and and so you have to get to the heart.

23

And you found a channel.

24

It's no good arguing with them, they would argue and they would have all these arguments about benefits to human health, which actually turned out not to be true, but nobody knew it back then. But now if you get to there, that's how you begin to make change. So I tell all the young people don't argue, don't fight. People won't listen to you. They'll be trying to win the argument. Tell stories.

53

A very powerful message, Jane. Thank you so much.

Und wie es eben so ist bei einer Liveaufzeichnung, manchmal schleichen sich technische Probleme ein, sodass ich im Nachhinein kurze Passagen von mir neu aufzeichnen musste.