Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

In the first panel, a man wistfully says he wishes human beings were as peaceful and loving as bonobos. A woman responds enthusiastically: "Then find a way to make it happen! We are the greatest environmental modifiers in history! We can fashion our own happiness!" The man quietly agrees: "Yes. Yes, of course."

The punchline is a newspaper headline: "Man Found Arming Bonobos in Congo" with the subheadline "Uses primitive symbol language to promote racism." Rather than elevating humans to be more like the peaceful bonobos, the man has taken the opposite approach -- he interpreted "make it happen" as bringing the bonobos down to the human level by giving them weapons and teaching them racism. He has achieved parity between humans and bonobos, just in the worst possible direction.

The Humor

The humor comes from the darkly comic inversion of the original idealistic sentiment. The woman's inspirational speech about humanity's power to shape its environment is meant to encourage positive change, but the man finds the path of least resistance: instead of the monumental task of making humans more peaceful, he simply makes bonobos more violent and bigoted. It is a cynical commentary on human nature -- given the choice between self-improvement and corrupting something pure, we will reliably choose corruption. The newspaper format of the punchline adds to the comedy by presenting this absurd atrocity in the deadpan style of real news reporting, complete with a detail about using "primitive symbol language to promote racism," which is both horrifying and absurdly specific.

References

Bonobos (Pan paniscus) are one of humanity's closest living relatives, along with chimpanzees. They are frequently cited in popular science as being more peaceful, cooperative, and sexually liberated than chimpanzees, and are often held up as an example of what a more harmonious primate society could look like. However, some primatologists have argued that the "peaceful bonobo" image is somewhat idealized. The comic also references the Congo, where bonobos are found exclusively in the wild, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.