Why Chimpanzees don't work for money

Animals can communicate. They communicate to share information. But they share information about things that exist in reality. A monkey can share information on the availability of bananas. Animals can alert their group about a looming predator waiting to prey on them. Food, danger, obstacles like river or mountains on their path are things that exist in nature. These are objective reality.

Humans are animals and can communicate about objective realities too. But humans are one level up. We can talk about things that don’t exist. We can share stories, ideas that don’t exist at all but are cooked up by our brain. Such stories, ideas, abstract concepts form subjective reality or fictional reality. These exist only in our brain. They are the product of our imagination. Humans experience and communicate both objective and subjective reality.

When the imagined ideas, stories, concepts are shared and accepted by enough people, intersubjective reality occurs. And this makes us special. For example, take a good look at this piece of paper.

Photo by rupixen.com on Unsplash

The paper in the picture is the Indian currency note. It holds value because you know people around you value and believe in this piece of paper. More currency paper you have more food you can buy. A promise of more piece of such currency can motivate you to put in extra hours at work. Try asking a chimpanzee to give up its food in exchange for money! For a chimpanzee, it is just a piece of paper. It means nothing for the chimpanzee. I guess that answers the question, “Why chimpanzees don’t work for money”.

Religion, countries, currency, legal system are examples of intersubjective reality too.

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