Killer Apes and .....

Had a pack meeting last night. One dog, a newby, has been referring to humans as "the killer apes." He got it from a werewolf. He and I have argued about it several times, last night and at other meetings.

There is a theory called "The Killer Ape Theory" that claims that homo sapiens clawed their way to the top of the human pile by means of the superior ability to kill, both prey and competitors.

This theory claims that fighting and hunting, to survive, of course, is what caused the enormous intelligence leap in the human brain, that led to homo sapiens learning the make tools and weapons and to figure out how to control and make fire, amongst other things.

There are other theories, of course.

But it is true that all predator species have to learn how to kill to survive, to eat, to defend themselves and their territory, to contest competition. Mankind is not any different.

It is also true that humans learned to fear the world, and still carry that with them. Humans learned over many millennia to fear the dark, to fear the forrest, to fear the water, to fear the night. The world was, and still is, a very scary and dangerous place. People have that fear hard-coded into them.

We weres see the world as a scarier place now than 50,000, or even 100,000 years ago, given all the institutionalized barbarity and corruption, the rhetoric that we have a hard time following and understanding. The scarcity facing the world, in terms of food, water an energy, could very soon make for very interesting, even scarier times.

This hard-coded fear is at the heart of all human commerce, all government, all religion. Fear of lacking, of not having enough, or running out, is what drives human greed and, hence, most human behavior.

That is not to say that all human behavior is barbaric. No. Examples of human love and compassion and creativity are everywhere. These sorts of things are the counter-balance to the barbarity. Both exist in the hearts of all humans - compassion and barbarity.

I told this dog that calling humans apes is like calling a weredog a werewolf. He didn't laugh. That worried me.

Calls to make. Clothes to wash. Guns to clean. I miss Sven and Rick, and Sherry and Jack. I'm a sucker for punishment.