passages-keep-pretending-bright-hunting-ice-came

# We keep pretending there is a bright biological... > We keep pretending there is a bright biological border called civilization, with the animals herded onto one side and human beings standing on the other, freshly showered, morally deodorized, congratulating one another on having escaped the jungle. There is no border.{There is no biological border between the animals and human beings.{ There is an ape in pants, carrying a telephone, signing a thirty-year mortgage, buckling its offspring into a government-approved restraint device, checking its rank on a glowing rectangle every eleven minutes and navigating dominance hierarchies with a nervous system assembled long before there were courts, scriptures, psychiatrists, marriage licenses, police departments or commandments against murder.}} {{The costume is new. The organism is ancient.}} {{Everything you call your personality is upholstery on something that was already hunting when the ice came.}} **Source:** [[books/Chimping Out|Chimping Out]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “We keep pretending there is a bright biological border called civilization, with the animals herded onto one side and human beings standing on the other, freshly showered, morally deodorized, congratulating one another on having escaped the jungle. There is no border. There is an ape in pants, carrying a telephone, signing a thirty-year mortgage, buckling its offspring into a government-approved restraint device, checking its rank on a glowing rectangle every eleven minutes and navigating dominance hierarchies with a nervous system assembled long before there were courts, scriptures, psychiatrists, marriage licenses, police departments or commandments against murder. The costume is new. The organism is ancient. Everything you call your personality is upholstery on something that was already hunting when the ice came.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-keep-pretending-bright-hunting-ice-came ```