The Mirror Moment
To begin, we need to look again at what it means to be human. Step away from the idea that we are the divine summit in God’s effort to bring something wonderful to the universe, or evolution’s finished masterpiece we’ve so often been told. The truth may be something less grand, more akin to the nature we used to see all around us. We may be very much more a part of nature than we like to feel… and not above it.
Diverging alongside other primates over millennia, enduring relentless survival pressure, the ancient body and brain remain largely untouched. As apes we embody those same deep instincts, impelled by insistent animal hunger, fear, dominance, lust, alongside an auspicious new enlarged prefrontal cortex. This crowns us with the sensation that we exist differently to the animals around us. Heaven’s gift of transcendence? No! A hacked deviation, enabled to invent deceptions that cloak the same old primate drives in narratives. Narratives that also intertwine us in a very deep and profound way to the others in our tribe. Stories that whisper we are above it all. Civilised. Set apart from the wild things. The herd needs those stories. They bind us tight.
Did your awareness bump against something here? It is not often we recognise this graft did not erase our ape. It put us in clothes with an obligatory large mirror to hide behind.
This realisation sours the taste of every story we tell about ourselves. Every triumph. Every moral certainty. Every quiet unease.
Sit with it. Feel how ordinary you suddenly are…
Primate Roots – Chimps and the Raw Roar
Let’s take a closer look at our closet cousins the chimpanzees. They survive in troops with unstable alliances, relentless politics, raw hierarchy. If any member dares show weakness, illness, injury, low status, the group does not simply ignore it. It often attacks. Lower-ranking chimps bite, chase, beat the faltering one toward the edges of the community. Former grooming partners join the pile-on. Alphas exploit the moment to remind everyone who is on top. Anyone who survives this push becomes the first to be picked off by rival tribes. Weakness is targeted. Opportunity is seized. The loud conformity of the troop, the Roar, rises to enforce it. Hierarchical status advances. Weak spots eradicated. The group stays fast and dominant. These manoeuvres are primal, ferocious, blind. No malice in the human sense. Just the ape instinct administering the congregation.
We are not so different in our herded workplaces, families, friend groups, national identities. Dare show hints of weakness through infirmity, doubt, difference, failure, and the Roar intensifies. Alphas above exploit it. Peers below betray it. The whole pack circles. The throng is not always violent. Usually, it swarms in silence and exclusion. Gossip and allegation amass to annihilate the member. The Roar dresses it up. “They weren’t pulling their weight.” “They brought it on themselves.” “We have to think of the team.” This is our shared blind ape instinct. Attrition disguised as necessity.
Think what happens when weakness presents as disease. A cough that lingers. A limp that slows the pace. A mind that fogs and falters. The herd feels it before it thinks it. Disgust rises. Quick. Instinctive. Sour in the gut. Not reasoned hatred. That comes later, cloaked in the appropriate compassionate narrative. For now, it is just the old primate signal. This one carries risk. Disease. Delay. Death encroaches closer to the pack. The loud Roar of the group, the zeitgeist of the moment, dresses it up in modern veils of concern, boundaries, self-care, quiet exclusion. Underneath the ape is still twisting away. Stepping back. Pushing harder. Malicious gossip. Shunning. Subtle sabotage. All so the group can keep moving faster.
Can you be honest with yourself about that disgust that rose in you toward someone slower, sicker, different? Was it aimed at you, even when the words were kind? Did you catch the quick flip where compassion curdled into suspicion over a deception in the congregation? Sit with it. It’s the ape under the mirror, hungry, wild, and afraid. Just following orders.
The Brain’s Clever Graft – Augmentation and Illusion Layer
Let’s think more about this brain upgrade as another of evolution’s sneaky little tricks.
On one side it unlocks fascinations no other beast interacts with. Think about how awe-inspiring language is. So much more complex than the grunts, barks, and unlikely songs of our ancient ape ancestors. Words that weave stories that become animated in our minds. Mythologies reaching across generations, cultures, and long-conquered territories. Chronicles that turn a handful of humble hunters into proud nations.
Imagine if you can anything at all outside of a story narrative. Raw sensational existence without a thread providing continuity of meaning. Imagine a list, isolated from any meaningful context, slipping away from memory on the tide of unendurable boredom. See how quickly the mind drifts back to story. It cannot help itself. Only a compelling narrative can lay down the one-dimensional path that collects and holds all the facts you store.
These narratives are the only bridge between unconnected minds. Picture the alien visceral sensation of encountering an uncontacted tribe. These strangers could become familiar acquaintances with nothing more than a few shared sentences or gestures—if you shared any common internal narrative. In reality, without that bridge, one would likely kill the other. That is the double-edged sword of the graft at work.
These adaptations let humans flood the world and lay waste to all the large mammals. Thrive in ice wastes and burning deserts. Build towers that scrape the sky.
But the other side cuts deep. The same clever graft that makes all this possible also makes us exceptionally good at lying. Mostly to ourselves. The Ape is not erased, it is amplified with the same old ape drives—hunger for status, sex, safety in the herd. Cloaked in beautiful words like “success, love, justice, progress.” Existing perpetually on the right side of history.
These stories are the illusion layer that hides the ape. They dress up our ancient drives in moral garments. They convince us we are different. Better. Above it all.
Take a moment to reflect on your own life. Can you see the grafts at work? The stories you tell yourself to hide the ape beneath? The narratives that justify your place in the herd? Sit with that.