All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey - full transcript

This programme contains scenes which
some viewers may find disturbing

# When I see you alone

# I see what's in your mind

# You love me, yes, you do

# You don't need to tell me

# I know you love me most

# No-one else take my place

# You need me, yes, you do

# Forever and ever

# We are in love, baby love child

# I take you so high,
groovy love child



# Give me a kiss, baby love child

# Do it again. #

At the beginning of 2000, one of
the world's most famous scientists

flew from London to the Congo.

He was a British biologist
called Bill Hamilton.

Hamilton went to Kisangani.

Once upon a time,
it had been called Stanleyville.

Now it was one of the most
dangerous places on Earth.

GUNFIRE

It was full of armed militias,
all killing each other

to get their hands on precious
minerals in mines around Kisangani.

One of the most precious was a
mineral called Columbite Tantalite,

otherwise known as Coltan.
It was an essential component

in all new digital machines -
mobiles, laptops and games consoles.



And its price around
the world was soaring.

Part of this was due to the coming
launch of Sony's PlayStation 2.

PlayStation 2. Because of demand
in the United States and Japan,

it's thought some of our kids
could miss out this Christmas.

But Hamilton didn't care
about any of this.

He ignored the war going on around
him because he was convinced that

human beings were killing each other
in a completely different way.

He believed that AIDS
had been caused 50 years before

by experiments carried out
by American scientists

in the jungle around Kisangani.

And to prove this, he had come
to collect chimpanzee faeces.

Surrounded by the fighting, Hamilton
doggedly collected the chimp
excrement from the forest floor.

But then, one day,
he caught malaria.

He refused to take anti-malaria
pills and instead took an aspirin.

But the aspirin lodged in his gut
and caused a haemorrhage...

..that killed him.

But even as he died,
Hamilton knew he would live forever.

Because he had shown that
human beings are really just
self-replicating machines,

like computers, whose function is
to transmit a vital code across time

that will live throughout eternity.

Meanwhile, the chimp faeces
waited at Nairobi airport for
someone to come and claim it.

And everyone got
their mobile upgrades,

their new laptops
and their PlayStation 2.

CHEERING

# I close my eyes

# Then I drift away

# Into the magic night

# I softly say

# A silent prayer

# Like dreamers do

# Then I fall asleep to dream

# My dreams of you

# In dreams

# I walk

# With you

# In dreams

# I talk to you

# In dreams you're mine

# All of the time

# We're together in dreams... #

And here in the lower house
of the Congo Parliament,

the Members of Parliament
here are discussing,

have met to discuss whether Mr
Kasavubu or Mr Lumumba's government

is the authority in the Congo.

Their procedure is extremely chaotic.

Over probably about
two thirds of them are here.

And they're waiting, I think,
to hear Mr Lumumba speak.

And that's Mr Lumumba, sitting second
from the left, among his ministers.

For almost 80 years,
the Congo had been ruled by Belgium.

But in 1960, it became independent.

Its first Prime Minister
was Patrice Lumumba.

He held out an heroic vision
of a new independent Africa.

But the country was completely
unprepared for self-government.

Within weeks
it collapsed into chaos.

The Congo was central
to the modern world

because hidden in its forests were
an extraordinary range of minerals.

The uranium for the atom bombs
exploded over Japan

came from the Congo, while
its vast reserves of copper were

crucial for the new electronic
systems and computers

that ran the Cold War.

And the old colonial towns now
became battlegrounds where rebels

and soldiers loyal to Lumumba fought
for control of the precious mines.

It's an incredible atmosphere here
at night in Elisabethville.

It's the atmosphere
of a wartime air-raid, in some ways.

Yet there's no blackout.

The aerial attacks by the canons of
the Canberras are done in daylight.

Some of the shops,
most of them no longer operating,

keep their window lights on.

Another mortar bomb falls nearby.

The Americans were worried
that Lumumba would ally
with the Soviet Union.

So they and the Belgians
helped to organise a coup.

Lumumba was kidnapped
by rebels from the mining areas.

He was taken into the forests of the
Eastern Congo where he was killed

and his body dissolved in acid.

The country collapsed
into violence and terror.

It would lead to the rise of one
of Africa's most corrupt dictators,

Mobutu Sese Seko.

But, amidst the chaos,
the western mining companies carried
on their operations unhindered.

Above all, the giant Union Miniere.

A spokesman for Union Miniere is at
this moment presenting his report
to the shareholders.

We have seen more than
500,000 people butchered,

mutilated, raped
and torn limb from limb.

Only this week we've read
of massacres in Stanleyville,

of mass shooting down and of unarmed
women and children being murdered.

Of the burning alive of 60 men, tied
together and soaked in petroleum.

Through all these events,
your directors and I

have asked ourselves
only one question -

to what extent will the operations
of YOUR company be affected?

We are pleased to record that
the events of this particular week,

taking place as they did in
Stanleyville province, over 1,000
miles from the main seat

of OUR mining operations, need not
in any way directly concern us.

Bill Hamilton was a solitary man.

In the early '60s
he lived alone in London,

obsessively studying
Darwin's theory of evolution.

Hamilton saw the world
through the prism of Darwin's ideas.

He believed that everything
could be explained by the desperate

struggle of all living things
to survive and pass on their genes
to the next generation.

But as he watched the behaviour
of teeming masses of ants,

he realised that
there was a problem.

Why did some of them
offer themselves up

to the jaws of predators
in an apparently selfless sacrifice

to protect the rest of the group?

And why did some humans
behave in the same way?

What was in it for them?

Hamilton was convinced
that human behaviour

could be explained genetically.

But to prove this, he knew he had
to explain the puzzle of altruism.

He went to Waterloo Station.
He sat for hours on the platforms,

staring at other human beings
and thinking.

Hamilton would sit there
'in Waterloo Station in the evenings,
a lonely man, looking at people.'

What this was enabling him to do

was, at some level, look at humans
as though they were another species.

As though they were ants
and he was not part of this.

So, although his concern
very much is with humans,

at some level he's able to take
the emotion out, if you like.

He's looking for patterns,
he's looking for ways

to make sense of all these people
that he sees around him.

The lovers that he sees
kissing and then parting,

the person he sees
dashing to the train.

Even the person who approaches him
to go off to the public lavatory.

These are all different individuals.

He is of their species,
but he's not of their species.

Then, at the end of 1963,

Hamilton suddenly realised
what he was actually looking at.

He looked through the skin and bone
and saw something inside that was

much more powerful and important
than our individual identities -

our coded genes.

And when he looked at the world
from the genes' point of view

he saw that human beings
were just temporary carriers

that allowed the genes
to pass on copies of themselves
and live forever.

Hamilton was no longer
thinking like a human being.

He was thinking like a gene.

And genes were not like people.

They were like machines,
tiny, calculating engines

that could work out
the mathematically best outcome.

And that explained altruism.
A gene would destroy itself if,

by doing that, it would let more
related copies of itself survive.

I think that he really felt
that he was seeing a pattern

to the way the world works
that others weren't seeing.

This is how he really
truly functioned as a man,

almost from a different planet,
looking at humankind.

Absolutely convinced
that there was some force,

hidden from the rest of us, which
motivated them, which drove them.

We are now on our way
to the country of the giants.

Behind this tremendous barrier
of volcanic mountains, there lived

a most mysterious people,
a race of seven-foot giants.

Climbing again towards
the mysterious summit,
now hidden in the clouds.

Well above the great trees,
a region seldom touched by sunshine.

Enchanted woods
full of ferns and moss.

It looks like the home
of fairies and goblins.
But there is no life here.

Through these woods, an icy wind,
laden with fog and sleet,

ever blows.

The hills of Rwanda.

In the 1930s an intrepid Belgian,
Armand Denis, made films that told
the western world about Africa.

But in Rwanda,
he helped to create a myth that
would have terrifying consequences.

It said that the Tutsis
were a noble and intelligent race
who had originally come from Egypt.

And that the Hutus were a separate
race of ignorant peasants.

A rich land discovered no-one knows
how long ago by tall, majestic men

who came from the north - perhaps
all the way from ancient Egypt -

to preserve here the civilisation
and beauty of another age.

The court dancers.

When the giants arrived
in Rwanda, they found it
already thickly settled.

But so great was the superiority
of these tall people from the north
that, although outnumbered 1,000

to one, they established complete
domination over the mountain tribes
which inhabited the region.

The blacks became their slaves.

But how superior their flowing
rhythm, compared with the crude
shuffles of the forest tribes.

In reality, there was no evidence
for this at all.

The Tutsis were a ruling elite,
but the two groups had always shared

the same land and did not see
each other as separate races

and many Hutus shared equally
in government.

But the Belgians
who ran Rwanda took the myth

and used it ruthlessly.

They brought in scientists
to prove it biologically.

They measured skulls and said
that the Tutsis had larger brains

and so were the natural rulers.

They then made each group
carry racial identity cards

and created a segregated system
in which the Tutsis ruled

the Hutus with a brutal arrogance,

encouraged by their Belgian masters.

But then, at the end of the 1950s,
the Belgians decided

to give independence to Rwanda
and a terrible thing happened.

These are there few film fragments
that record the events.

They show hundreds
of Tutsis sheltering

from the onslaught
of a massacre by the Hutus.

But the massacres had begun
for the strangest of reasons.

As independence approached,

liberals high up in the Belgian
colonial administration

had encouraged the Hutus to rebel
against their Tutsi overlords.

They had done this because they felt
guilty about their imperial past.

They believed the right thing to do
now was to promote self-government,

to make amends and help the Hutus
become free individuals.

But because the Hutus
had been taught that the Tutsis

were an alien race,
the rebellion quickly turned

into an orgy of revenge
which the Belgians couldn't stop.

The myth that they had created
had run out of control.

Today, we received more news

and more evidence of the horrible
events going on in central Africa.

This time it concerns Rwanda.

It became independent
when Belgian control

was suddenly withdrawn in 1962.

For years, a minority tribe,
the Watutsi,

had been supported by the Belgians
as the local rulers,

although they represented
only 15% of the population.

In 1959, Belgium switched her support
to the majority tribe, the Bahutu,

who later seized
on the independence of the country

as a chance of revenge.

No-one knows how many Watutsi
they've slaughtered.

Now, this lady took part in getting
together this fragment of film

which is the only film record
of any of the horrors of which people

have been talking
from the Rwanda territory.

What we are looking at now
is a mission where a large number

of the Watutsi people took shelter.

Where all of these people,
at whom we're looking -

they look happy enough on your film
now - where they in fact all safe?

No, they weren't safe at all.

It doesn't matter if they were men,
women or children.

They killed everyone who was Tutsi.

6,000 of them fished out
of one of the rivers.

One department, 10,000.

That's like one county
in this country. 10,000 dead.

10,000 dead, yes.

Are you sure that these stories
are true of the massacre?

There's no doubt about this.
There's no doubt about this.

Have you any idea how many of the
Watutsi have been killed altogether?

Altogether,
it's very difficult to estimate

because all this was organised

and supposed to be unknown, you see.

In 1967, a strange and brilliant man
came to London from America.

He was called George Price.

By chance, in a library,

Price discovered a scientific paper
written by Bill Hamilton

It was full of equations that show
that human goodness and altruism

were really survival strategies
devised by our genes.

It had been ignored
by the scientific establishment.

As Price looked at the equations, he
had a sudden shock of recognition.

He realised that
what he was looking at

was a description of machines
he already understood -

computers.

Price had worked originally as
a chemist on the Manhattan Project,

but then in the 1950s, he had
gone to IBM, where he helped design

the graphics
for early mainframe computers.

Price was an obsessive rationalist

and in his spare time, he became
a freelance science journalist

and he specialised in attacking the
myths and superstitions in society.

Because he believed that rationality
could explain everything.

It was something that Daddy
would do. He would, um...

you know, take a subject...

He was always attacking sacred cows
in society and he would take

a subject and just explore it
in a very rational way.

And things other scientists,
you know, wouldn't deal with,

he would just explore,

and was quite fearless
in his scientific endeavours.

He would go where
most people wouldn't.

Above all, Price loved the cold
logic of mathematics and computers.

He believed that computers
gave scientists like him

a new power to analyse the world
in a completely rational way.

He wrote an article proposing
that America could mathematically

measure unhappiness levels
among populations in the world.

This would allow them to spot
where communism might take root

and so prevent it.

Price's ideas were
part of a powerful belief

that had grown up in the electronic
laboratories of the Cold War -

that computers could be
the salvation of humanity.

The godfather of this belief
was the man who had done more

than anyone to create
the modern digital computer,

the mathematician John Von Neumann,
who had also built the H-bomb.

Johnny von Neumann
enjoyed thinking...

..in the clear and complete manner
of mathematicians,

in every field.

This also explains his effectiveness

in connection
with computing machines.

Because computing machines
apply logical processes to fields,

not only mathematics, but to others
as yet untouched by the logical part.

And it is very significant
that this revolution,

the revolution
of the electronic brains,

was practically initiated
by Jonny Von Neumann.

And when, in 1967, Price found
William Hamilton's paper,

he realised that what Hamilton had
discovered was a new rational way

of looking at human beings
and their behaviour.

They were simply soft machines,
controlled by on-board computers.

Price took Hamilton's mathematics
and developed it.

But as he did so,

he realised that the equations
also worked in reverse.

That it was not just logical
to be good,

it was also logical to be spiteful.

It made sense to kill yourself,

if in the process you also killed
people distantly related to you

and allowed those
closely related to survive.

Price's mathematics explained
murder, warfare and even genocide

as possibly rational strategies

for the genes
controlling your behaviour.

Well, because it meant that you could
have genes that were...

evolved that were coded for...

murdering people.

Such a gene, even if it was bad
for the possessor of the gene,

as long as it was worse for distantly
related people, it could evolve

and we might be genetically
programmed to be murderers.

This was actually
what George had been wondering

and he sort of proved that in
a mathematical sense, it could exist.

It grew out of Hamilton's theory
because Hamilton had seen

that you could harm yourself
as long as you helped your relatives.

But this was different, you could
harm yourself as long as it harmed

distantly-related people
that we had...genetic ways

of recognising our closer relatives
and our more distant relatives

and we were programmed to hate
and kill our more distant relatives.

These are the implications
of the theory.

Then who would that help?

The gene, only the gene.

It's the gene's-eye point of view,
it would really only help the genes.

The genes would grow
in the population.
That's what this was all about.

Price showed his equations
to Hamilton.

Hamilton was fascinated and together
they developed their theory.

It would become known
as the Selfish Gene.

They also became close friends.

What Price had done was
an incredible piece of mathematics.

As Von Neumann had predicted,
what Price has also done

was bring rationality
and a clear logic of mathematics

into a new field,
into the heart of being human.

But with the strangest
of consequences.

20 years before,
as computers were being developed,

Von Neumann had dreamt of the future
where machines would be able

to replicate themselves.

He had written out a description
of what would be needed

for what he called self-reproducing
automata to be invented.

The extraordinary breakthrough
that Price and Hamilton had made

was to discover
that self-reproducing automata

didn't have to be invented.

They were already here,
they were us.

The equation has had
enormous implications

because if everything we did,
whether good or bad,

was actually a rational strategy
computed by the codes inside us,

then religion with
its moral guidance was irrelevant.

And it demolished the Enlightenment
idea that human beings

were above the rest of nature.

In reality, we were no different
from all the other animals.

All this had a very strange effect
on George Price,

the convinced rationalist.

He decided that the discovery
was so powerful,

it must have been a gift from God.

But he feels that this breakthrough
could only have been given

to him by...

..God.

What breakthrough?

Well, discovering, like,
what he quantified altruism.

He felt that he was...
when he looked at something

and he was able to see it
in such a simple way...

He felt that...

..he felt it had been a gift

and the only way he could interpret
that was because of a gift of God.

But the equations actually
showed God did not exist.

Hmm, that is a dichotomy.

At the same time on the top
of a mountain in the eastern Congo,

another American was setting out
to prove that human beings

were far closer to other animals
than they imagined.

She was Diane Fossey and she spent
her days alone, watching gorillas.

Fossey's aim was to show how
connected we were to the gorillas.

She was part of a movement
among biologists to prove

Darwin's theory of evolution,
not just through fossils,

but by observing
the behaviour of the primates.

They wanted to show
that gorillas and chimps

were not just blind brutes
but complex animals,

intimately connected to us.

But just as Fossey began her work,
the human world below

began to descend into chaos, driven
by the forces of politics and power.

INDISTINCT CONVERSATION

This is the Congo.

This is the hottest place
in the capital of the Congo,

Kinshasa, tonight,
the nightclub St Helier.

I'm able to report that the jungle
bunnies at least are friendly.

MUSIC PLAYS

But this also is the Congo today.

Yet once more, the terrified
and injured men and women,

white and black,
are brought back in distress

by plane to the Congolese capital,
from the centre of the northeast,

Kisangani, the former Stanleyville.

In 1967,
a new war broke out in the Congo.

White mercenaries who supported
a rival of President Mobutu

were leading a rebellion.

Their aim was to create a separate
state out of the mineral-rich area

in the eastern part of the country.

Behind the scenes, they were
being supported by the
western mining conglomerates.

But the rebellion
turned into horror.

As the mercenaries
fought their way into the town

of Bukavu on the Rwandan border,

they tortured and killed their
prisoners with extreme brutality.

You say you wanted to make them
suffer, how did you make them suffer?

Well, in the company we were
in, we took no prisoners.

If they did take one,

I had the pleasure of handling him.

And it was my pleasure.

What sort of things did you do?

I used to make them
torture stick a...

Stick a hot bayonet through him.

Stick him on
hot coals and cover him with mud.

Make the mud cake around it.

And just crack the mud off and stick
a red hot bandit into a human body

and make him walk with that.

Did you feel differently because
you were doing this to black men?

Could you have done it
as easily to a white man?

No, I don't think so.

Why? I just never had the
experience of killing a white man.

A black man is like an animal to me.

But then Mobutu's
forces counterattacked

and destroyed the rebellion.

The mercenaries either fled or
were captured, and then disappeared.

The mercenaries behaviour had
enraged the Congolese soldiers,

and they unleashed their
hatred on the Europeans.

And then in a raging temper with
all things and people European,

they went back into the town,

and they started smashing up
the European houses,

pillaging, looting and killing.

And then the Congolese
soldiers found Dian Fossey

watching the gorillas
on the mountain.

The soldiers detained her and took
her down to a military camp where
she was imprisoned for two weeks.

What happened during
that time is uncertain.

Fossey told some people
that she gang-raped by the soldiers.

But to others she denied this.

But then she tricked the
soldiers and managed to escape.

And fled across the border.

But Fossey was still determined to
live with the gorillas, and within

weeks she created another camp
high up on another mountain.

"It is," she wrote, "as if I have
finally discovered paradise."

It was in Rwanda.

Fossey now retreated
from almost al human company.

She spent all her
time with the gorillas.

And to get closer to them,
she tried to behave like them.

To make the gorilla feel more
at ease, I imitated their feeding

activities by making the same type
of noise that they make

when they obtain a leaf or a stalk.

And since they've heard a sound like
this all their lives, to hear it from

a human couldn't help but
pacify them in some ways.

Fossey became obsessed by
protecting the gorillas.

She tried to create a world
where they would be perfectly safe,

not just from poachers,
but all human beings.

She patrolled the forest,
destroying the snares

that the local people
had set to catch small antelopes

because they might
hurt the gorillas.

And she began to
terrorise the local people.

She kidnapped them,
spat on them and hit them.

And sprayed them with tear gas.

She also put on a mask
and told them

that she was
casting black magic spells.

Fossey would never have
called the Africans animals

because she loved animals.

But she was following the tradition
of so many westerners in Africa.

Maltreating Africans in the
interest of a higher western ideal.

And the local people
began to hate her.

In 1973, George Price
decided to devote his life

to helping the homeless of London.

As a result of the equations he had
developed, Price had been given a

job in the genetics laboratory
of the University of London.

But he had also
converted to Christianity.

And he had done so
in an extreme way.

Price decided that he was going
to follow the teachings of Christ

as if they were an exact code.

He set out to help the
poor and destitute
to give them all his worldly goods.

He also walked the streets,
offering the homeless a place to
stay in his flat near Oxford Circus.

He was extraordinary.
He was like a saint, really.

He would give anyone
who needed anything anything he had.

I mean, at the end,
he would be in the park
and if someone needed his shoes

he literally took off his
shoes and gave them his shoes.

He was barefoot in the park.

Give me a hand when I've crossed the
way. Give me a shoulder to cry on.

And then he started to take them
into his flat, which was very nice,

but they started stealing
from him like crazy.

I don't even think at one point
he had a warm coat,

that he'd given it
away to an alcoholic.

There was no artifice.

If he was going to be a Christian,

then he was
going to be a complete Christian

and he was going to give away all
his possessions to the needy.

And really help people.

William Hamilton became
desperately worried about Price.

He was convinced that his religious
belief was a mad superstition,
and pleaded with Price to give up

trying to help the homeless
and do more work on genetics.

But others believed that Price had
been so shocked by the implication

of his and Hamilton's theory

that he was in some desperate
personal way trying to disprove it.

I think it's too easy to dismiss him
as insane, which many people want to.

He was taking control of

his genetic destiny.

He was sort of transcending his
genetic destiny in those actions.

In what way? Well, he was just
proving the theory because

he was giving everything to genetic
strangers and helping those by...

By helping them, he was in
no way serving the interests

of his genes.

He wasn't looking
for genetic relatives.

It was anyone at all he would help.

Of course, he was right.
This is the way we should be,
but that's another point.

It's an important point.

What do you mean?

Well, I mean this theory that
we only help our relatives has
a sort of bankruptcy in it.

You know, it's like we're all
going to go down unless we sort of

realise there's a larger community.

It really shouldn't rely
on the extent to which we
share genes with others,

and yet we may be programmed
to feel that it does.

There is more meaning
and mutual understanding

in exchanging a glance with a gorilla

than any other animal I know.

We're so similar.

Their sight, their hearing, their
sense of smell are so similar to ours

that we see the world in the same way
as they do.

And so if ever
there was a possibility of

escaping the human condition
and living imaginatively...

..in another

creatures' world, it must

be with the gorilla.

David Attenborough's encounter

with the gorillas had been
filmed at Dian Fossey's camp.

But what the film did not
reveal was that a few days

before the local people had killed
Digit, Fossey's favourite gorilla.

It was a part of their
ongoing struggle with her.

This was November 5th.

"I've come to realise
that the direction I took
in April of 1973 was quite wrong.

"I persistently, time and again,

"rejected attractive young
women I might have come to love

"to make myself the servant
or slave of down-and-outs

"and old people whom I did not love.

"The money and help that I
gave probably did mostly
harm rather than good.

"I believe that the Hound
of Heaven right now

"is starting to close in on me.

"Daddy."

It's like...

What is the Hound of Heaven?

The Hound of Heaven is a poem
written in 1893 by Francis Thomson.

He had been an opium addict
and a vagrant in London.

The poem says that however much
we think we are free individuals,

we are, in reality,
always running from God

and he will pursue us till
the end, and possess our souls.

It is a powerful assertion
of the limits of free will.

He cut his carotid artery
with nail scissors.

It was in this... this deserted
tenement, a squatters' tenement.

He was all alone,
and he bled to death.

And yet there's a sort of purity
to it that's very... George.

I mean, you know,
he didn't take pills

and there was a sort of full
consciousness of it as he went out.

We're talking about free agency, he
really - who kills himself that way?

Honestly - wouldn't we all take
pills if we were going to do it?

He decided to cut his carotid artery
with scissors.

To me, that's very striking
and horrifying but graphic.

It was just an act of... of pure,
free will, wasn't it?

That really was what it was.

So genes or no genes, God or no God,
this was certainly...

his genes wouldn't have
told him to kill himself,

and God didn't, he just did it.

The only people at George Price's
funeral were Bill Hamilton,

one other biologist and a few
of the homeless Price had helped.

But his and Hamilton's theory
was about to be taken up

and transformed into one of the most
defining concepts of our age.

A young biologist called
Richard Dawkins -

who had himself been
a computer programmer -

took their equations

and, through vivid language,
captured the public imagination

with a new way of looking at humans.

Our old romantic idea of free will,
he said, is grossly exaggerated.

And most of our actions are actually
controlled by the logic

of the onboard computers
buried deep within us.

We are simply machines playing
tiny roles in a vast strategic game

played by competing computer codes
over centuries.

I was wanting to conjure up
in the mind of the reader

the image of the organism,
including ourselves,

as a machine for passing on genes.
I wanted to shift the focus

away from the idea of the organism
as being the agent in life

to the immortal replicator,
which is the gene.

Cos that was the logic
of natural selection -

that is the logic of
natural selection.

It's the selfish gene,
but not the selfish individual.

DNA. Exactly analagous to the
binary digits of some computer code,

unravelling like a reel of magnetic
tape on some giant computer.

But at the heart of this supremely
rational mathematical theory,

there was a paradox.

William Hamilton, George Price

and Richard Dawkins had
reinvented the immortal soul -

a part within us
that would survive our own death,

and whose eternal life was
far more significant

than our own temporary
and limited existence.

But the soul was now a computer code
that made no distinction

between good and evil.

The DNA in you is a coded description
of ancient worlds

in which your ancestors lived.

DNA is the wisdom
out of the old days.

And I mean very old days indeed.

We are the descendents
of a tiny elite

of successful ancestors.

We are walking archives
of the African Pliocene.

Walking repositories of wisdom
out of the old days.

In 1994, the ruling Hutu
government in Rwanda set out

to exterminate the Tutsi minority.

Most western reports described it

as the sudden re-emergence
of incomprehensible tribal hatreds.

The New York Times said it was
"an uncontrollable spasm

"of lawlessness and terror,
in a failed African state

"with a centuries' old
history of tribal warfare".

But this wasn't true.

The Germans were just repeating
the old imperial fantasy

which said that the Tutsis and Hutus
were ancient rival races.

In reality, the massacres
were the horrifying result

of the Belgians' policy
of divide and rule

that they had begun less than 100
years before in Rwanda.

It was this policy that had led
to the vicious modern civil war

that began the moment
the Belgians left in 1959,

and had now culminated in genocide.

In the colonial era, the Belgians
had deliberately exaggerated

and distorted the divisions
between the Hutus and the Tutsis.

And the identity cards that
the Belgians had created,

that divided the two groups
biologically,

now became passports
to life or death.

TRANSLATION:

But then the west
got involved again.

And, as it would turn out,

with equally devastating
consequences.

The Tutsis fought back,

and the country descended
into violent chaos.

Thousands of Rwandans
fled across the border into Zaire.

Huge refugee camps were set up.

Western aid agencies flooded in
to help the innocent victims.

But almost immediately,
they found what they were also doing

was protecting the perpetrators
of the genocide.

The Hutu assasins were hiding
amongst the civilians in the camps.

When people crossed the border,
we knew very well among them

there were murderers, people we were
helping every time we give out food,

every time we give health services.

We know that among the people
we're helping there are murderers.

So the Tutsis invaded the camps
to take their revenge.

In response,
President Mobutu sent his troops
to try and stop the fighting.

But they just
joined in the looting,

and Mobutu fell from power.

At the same time,
the consumer boom in the west

was fuelling commodity
prices throughout the world.

And the Congo's minerals become
even more valuable.

Everyone piled in.
Troops arrived from Zimbabwe...

from Angola...

from Uganda, Chad, Namibia
and Libya.

They all said they had come
to stop the fighting,

but actually they were all trying to

get their hands on
the precious treasure.

And behind them were
western companies,

and us, all demanding
our new consumer goods and toys.

In all, four and a half million
people died in this war

between 1998 and 2003.

And into the midst of all this
came Bill Hamilton.

Hamilton was by now one of the most
famous scientists in the world.

He was given the highest honours
by the scientific establishment.

But his theories had led him
into a very dark place.

He had written a series of books
called Narrow Roads Of Gene Land.

In them, Hamilton followed
the logic of natural selection

to its extreme conclusion.

The idea that we should use
western science and medicine to

prolong the lives of those who would
otherwise die, he said, was wrong.

It would allow the genetically
inferior to survive,

and so would weaken society.

Nothing should be allowed to
interfere with

the strategy of the genes.

He believed that some people are
genetically inferior to others,

that it's certainly possible,
thanks to modern medicine,

thanks to modern social policies,
not only to keep these people alive,

but to help them to flourish and,
more importantly,

to help them reproduce, and
he thought that this is a bad thing.

And he thought that we should stand
against this slide into degeneration.

Because if you didn't stand
against it, what would happen?

Because he felt
if we don't stand against it,

the human species is
going to degenerate.

Then, Hamilton heard a story
from a journalist.

The journalist believed that
the AIDS virus had been

accidentally created by American
scientists in the Congo in the 1950s

when they were testing
a polio vaccine.

The Americans had set up
a laboratory to make the vaccine

by growing it in the cells
of chimpanzees.

And the journalist's theory said
that by doing this,

the vaccine had become mixed with
the chimp version of HIV,

which then entered human beings
when they took the vaccine.

Hamilton was fascinated.

He was convinced that the scientific
establishment were trying to

suppress the evidence because
it was a challenge to the idea that

modern medicine was
always beneficial.

The medical profession
and the scientific background to it

doesn't like the idea that
this might have been a human mistake.

My fear is that it's going to become
harder and harder to investigate

this type of hypothesis
that has big implications

for what I would call big science,
because people are going to be

afraid of it
for reasons of litigation,

for reasons of losing their grant.

Hamilton decided to break
the conspiracy of silence.

So he set out for the Congo.

He was going to track down the local
chimpanzees, study their viruses

and prove that modern medicine,
in trying to save lives,

had inadvertently caused the death
of over 20 million people.

Hamilton's journey was a vivid
expression of what had happened

at the end of the 20th century
to the western dream

of transforming the world
for the better.

The logic of his scientific theory
had led him to a small ruined town

in the eastern Congo.

He walked through the chaos,
murder and looting,

looking for evidence that

western medicine was
dangerous and misguided.

While all around him,
the horrific consequences

of the Rwanda massacres were
being played out.

Consequences created not just
by western imperialism and greed,

but also by the best
and noblest of liberal ideals.

Because it was liberals in
the Belgian administration who had

first encouraged the Hutus to
rise up against the Tutsi elites.

And it was the aid camps set up
in the wake of the massacres

that had complicated the conflict

and helped to spread
the violence into the Congo.

Then, Hamilton died,
by the freak accident

of the aspirin lodged in his gut,
that then caused a haemorrhage.

His theory about the origin of AIDS
in the vaccination programmes

of the 1950s turned out
to be completely untrue.

Subsequent research has shown that
it had no factual foundation.

But Hamilton's ideas remain
powerfully influential

in our society. Above all,
the idea that human beings are

helpless chunks of hardware
controlled by software programmes

written in their genetic codes.

And the question is,
have we embraced that idea

because it is a comfort in a world
where everything we do,

either good or bad, seems to have
terrible unforeseen consequences?

We know that it was our actions
that have helped to cause the horror

still unfolding in the Congo.

Yet we have no idea
what to do about it.

So instead, we have embraced
a fatalistic philosophy of us

as helpless computing machines
to both excuse and explain

our political failure
to change the world.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd