Anyone who tries to tell you that humans have descended from apes is full of shit! Humans are still apes. We’re just slightly more evolves chimps who’ve domesticated themselves out of convenience. In fact, genetically people are closer to Chimpanzees/Bonobos than the Indian elephant is to an African elephant.
Our particular branch of evolution started about 85 million years ago when the first primates swung onto the scene. Then came the African Great Ape 14 million years ago, the Chimpanzee 8 million, and fashionably late, the first hominids (humanoids) about 7-and-a-half-million years ago. You and I though, Homo Sapiens didn’t show up until about 250,000 years ago.
All this becomes clear when you dissect a person’s brain – or so I’m told – you can actually see the very ancient ‘reptilian’ part in the deep center, the newer ‘mammalian’ layer that encapsulates it, and the brand spanking new bit that is exclusively human, crinkled around the whole think like meaty wrapping paper.
Most of what we are has been bread into us by our ancestor’s ancestor’s ancestors. And a lot of it doesn’t exactly mesh well with the world we’ve created for ourselves today. Think about it; 85 million years of being monkeys, 250,000 of being human. (If I was better at math, or cared enough to do it, I’d say that in percentage.) Fortunately though, thanks to that crinkly outermost layer of our brain, we can think about our thinking, and realize when our anachronistic impulses are causing us to fuck-up our lives, or the lives of people who’re silly enough to get too close. We don’t always have to be who we’ve always been.
It may sound like I’m some body-despising, self-loathing ape, but I’m really not. I love this meat that I’m not only wrapped in, but am. It’s hormones, and impulses, and instincts, and evolution are what makes me, me. But I’ve also got admit that we’re just born with some pretty fucked-up shit rattling around in our (pink) gray-matter. It’s in our nature to eat the highest amount of calories while putting in the least amount of work to get them, but that doesn’t make it healthy. Figuring out these ghosts in the machine and exorcising them is only as unnatural as eating better, exercising, or yoga. Just trying to improve the densest part of our souls, our bodies.
When I talk about moving forward, improving, or growing, I try not to use the word ‘evolve,’ after all, evolution is what got us into this mess in the first place. The word evolution has been coopted and is constantly thrown around by new-age hippies to give their philosophies a scientific ring. The thing they seem to miss though, is that evolution is not a good thing. Not always anyway. It only means becoming better suited to one particular environment, at one particular time. And life can always change in an instant leaving us ill-suited to our newest conditions.
Did you know that our bodies used to produce their own Vitamin C? We still contain the genes to do it, they’re just switched off. Apparently, we used to live in, and around, so many fruit trees, and it was such a staple of our diets, that evolution thought it more efficient to quit making it on our own. So now we have to get our Vitamin C from screwdrivers, mimosas, and Harvey Wallbangers.
Thanks a lot evolution. Because of you my eyes can hardly focus after being up all night, and staring into another Tequila SunRise.
It’s tempting, even for me, to think that everything that we’ve evolved to do must be natural, and therefore good. But the natural world is full of examples that prove this wrong. Animals wage war and engage in infanticide, they rape and torture even the children of their own species. And we can say that’s ok, because they’re not like us, not human.
Well, I suspect that at least some of my readers are human, and as such choose not to be (total) victims to their animalistic impulses. I know some that choose to be vegetarian and vegan even though it’s more difficult than being an omnivore. Hell, some readers are even monogamous! And more and more science is telling us how unnatural that is. (Sure is for me.) Point being, not everything that is natural, is right. Like that pesky tribalism thing I was talking about before.
Tribalism may be an archaic hand-me-down from our ancients. I think tribalism, nationalism, sexism, racism, and homophobia are the worst things we can do, not just to others, but to ourselves and society. In-group/out-group thinking is feeble minded shorthand, an excuse not to get to know a complex person because you convince yourself that you already know all the important things about them without having to even meet them. It’s a lazy trap that we all slip into from time to time.
Part of what’s so comforting about ‘Us’ against ‘Them’ is that it allows us to blame everyone else for what’s wrong with the world, (“It’s the politicians, the immigrants, the rich people, the Americans, Muslims, conservatives, women, or those blasted kids today.”) and lets us take credit for all the good things our group has done, even if we’ve never actually done anything with our own lives. (“I’m proud to be Italian, or Jewish, or Greek, or white, or whatever, and look at all the amazing things we’ve have done over the centuries. Go us! And go me for being born on a winning team!”)
Since the middle of the twentieth century we’ve had the The Price Equation which explains away our propensity to sacrifice our own well-bing to help others. My oversimplification of it is, our Selfish Genes are just more willing to help those who are more like us. This way more of our genetic material makes it to the next generation. And all growing up I heard it said that, “Nobody is born racist” as a way of blaming bigoted parents, (unfortunately?) new studies might suggest otherwise.
At this moment there’s a debate as to whether or not racism can have a genetic component. And as you can imagine it’s a volatile one. People seem to believe that if they find that discrimination is a congenital defect that that somehow excuses it! For more than half a century scientists have been comparing us to our chimpanzee cousins and saying that our violent nature is so similar to theirs, that it must be innate. No one ever said that excused it. So why is this so different? Because race is taboo. But not being able to earnestly discuss a topic has never made anything better. The people who are afraid to seriously think and talk about these questions remind me of that old truism about the things we hate in other people really just being the things we can’t come to terms with in ourselves.
And lastly, if you think evolution is so great and invaluable, than tell me why it turned the raptor into the fucking chicken! Think about it, we could all be going out for Kentucky Fried Raptor now, but nooooo. So again I say, fuck you evolution. Seriously.