<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # And if this feels like falling through the bottom... > And if this feels like falling through the bottom of disappointment with humanity, keep falling. {{The first floor below optimism is selfishness. Beneath selfishness is dominance. Beneath dominance is fear. Beneath fear is competition. Beneath competition is selection. Beneath selection are bodies fighting for continuance in a world that never promised justice to anything that lived in it.}} {{Beneath every flattering autobiography waits an organism whose ancestors survived an ecological furnace of hunger, predation, mating, displacement, coalition, abandonment, cannibalism, infanticide and death, and survived it not by being good but by being there the next morning.}} {{You thought you had reached the bottom because somebody betrayed you. You thought you had reached the bottom because somebody abused you. You thought you had reached the bottom because somebody killed. You had not reached the bottom. You had reached civilization.}} {{Beneath civilization is not hell. Hell is a human invention. Beneath civilization is something much older, and it is still hungry: nature.}} **Source:** [[books/Chimping Out|Chimping Out]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “And if this feels like falling through the bottom of disappointment with humanity, keep falling. The first floor below optimism is selfishness. Beneath selfishness is dominance. Beneath dominance is fear. Beneath fear is competition. Beneath competition is selection. Beneath selection are bodies fighting for continuance in a world that never promised justice to anything that lived in it. Beneath every flattering autobiography waits an organism whose ancestors survived an ecological furnace of hunger, predation, mating, displacement, coalition, abandonment, cannibalism, infanticide and death, and survived it not by being good but by being there the next morning. You thought you had reached the bottom because somebody betrayed you. You thought you had reached the bottom because somebody abused you. You thought you had reached the bottom because somebody killed. You had not reached the bottom. You had reached civilization. Beneath civilization is not hell. Hell is a human invention. Beneath civilization is something much older, and it is still hungry: nature.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-feels-falling-bottom-still-hungry-nature ``` <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->