Humans are apes, but what kind of apes?

Found interesting discussion at Antipope:

Helplessly dominant
Interesting possibilities/ideas
comment #45

From what I've read ("Sex At Dawn" - if you haven't read it, you should) humans seem to have a bit of a mental toggle switch between chimp-like (force hierarchy, dominance/submission, winner-take-all) and bonobo-like (respect hierarchy, conciliation/sharing, selfishness is punished) models of organization. Roughly, the chimp wins under conditions of zero-sum competition and resource guarding (the norm for post agricultural humanity) but our most natural mode (pre agricultural humanity, characterized by collaboration and resource discovery) seems to be closer to bonobo. It doesn't surprise me that in conditions of societal breakdown and calamity, we go bonobo. Societal structure was all that was keeping the chimp in charge.
As for direct democracy, it looks to me like an attempt to extend Bonobo mode to the evolutionary novel case of humans who want to affiliate but don't know each other. I welcome it, but it still a very human way of organizing and not something as alien to our history as you've suggested.

comment #46

As far as alien governance models, I wonder how much different biological sensitivities would shape their cultures. A people who innately saw and consciously manipulated quantum entanglement or had an organ that sensed other dimensions might have radically different ways of communicating and understanding interrelationships with others including and beyond their own species, planets, etc. Governance, for them, might involve changing others subtly to make them fit harmoniously. Right functioning might be an aesthetic act. Wars representing punctuated equilibrium events leading to new species of ecosystemic stewards, etc. How these critters would have evolved would be another matter. How might the rat equivalent use these powers?

So, may be there is some interesting way out of current situation....