passages-reader-reached-level-something-teeth-own

# If the reader has reached a level of... > If the reader has reached a level of disappointment in people they once believed impossible, this book does not offer a ladder. It hands them a flashlight and says, **look lower**. Look beneath personality, beneath ideology, beneath morality, beneath etiquette, beneath the flattering autobiography every human carries around explaining why its own behavior was justified. There, moving through the dark, is the ancient social animal: frightened, horny, territorial, affectionate, murderous, loyal, deceptive, cooperative, tribal, ingenious, nurturing, status-conscious, playful, vindictive, compassionate, and capable of both extraordinary tenderness and almost incomprehensible cruelty, sometimes in the same afternoon, sometimes toward the same person. That animal is not somebody else. **That animal is us.** And the reason a book this offensive is also, in the end, the most uplifting thing on the shelf is that an animal which finally knows what it is, and what everything around it is, and what everything costs, can stop apologizing, stop waiting for people to become what they were never going to become, and begin at last to move through the enclosure like something with teeth of its own. **Source:** [[books/Chimping Out|Chimping Out]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “If the reader has reached a level of disappointment in people they once believed impossible, this book does not offer a ladder. It hands them a flashlight and says, look lower. Look beneath personality, beneath ideology, beneath morality, beneath etiquette, beneath the flattering autobiography every human carries around explaining why its own behavior was justified. There, moving through the dark, is the ancient social animal: frightened, horny, territorial, affectionate, murderous, loyal, deceptive, cooperative, tribal, ingenious, nurturing, status-conscious, playful, vindictive, compassionate, and capable of both extraordinary tenderness and almost incomprehensible cruelty, sometimes in the same afternoon, sometimes toward the same person. That animal is not somebody else. That animal is us. And the reason a book this offensive is also, in the end, the most uplifting thing on the shelf is that an animal which finally knows what it is, and what everything around it is, and what everything costs, can stop apologizing, stop waiting for people to become what they were never going to become, and begin at last to move through the enclosure like something with teeth of its own.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-reader-reached-level-something-teeth-own ```