I’m sure to your human sensibilities the idea of taking advice from an ape is beyond offensive. A silly suggestion because you know you’re better than an ape. Your goofy hairless body and oversized, under used, brain mean that you’re superior to an ape. Your physiology means that you don’t have anything to learn from any other creature alive. You are the human, apex predator. Destroyer of worlds.
But the truth is that your superiority complex is fallacious. Regardless of your strange genetic anomalies, you humans are not better than animals, insects or even rocks. The same kind of carbon atoms that make up a lump of charcoal make up the carbon parts of your body. You may not be aware of this but you’re what the scientifically minded humans call a carbon-based lifeform, because carbon is the primary element you’re made of.
Carbon is carbon is carbon
Those carbon atoms and the molecules they make up, that have come together in this conglomeration of flesh and blood you call ‘me’, came from the cosmos. It was there for billions of years before you were born and will remain in existence for billions of years after your death. This is what it means when people say that you’re made of star stuff.
Throughout all the different assemblies of carbon and other atoms that can and will exist, those simple atoms have not in practice had any better time being a rock or a human. Only your imaginative human mind thinks that carbon atoms used in making humans are somehow better, superior, to the carbon atoms used in making rocks. But the fact is, they’re exactly the same. There is no better, there is no superior. Those are simply ideas your mind has attempted to imprint on the world.
Projecting the inside out
You humans do that a lot. Projecting your normative ideas of what should be onto a reality that quite frankly doesn’t give a fuck about your opinion on the matter. Your perception of reality is not reality itself. It’s a sensory copy masterfully made in your impressive human brain. The light bouncing into your retina is decoded and constructed by your optic nerves and fat frontal lobes into an idea that you then believe to be true. But your sensory organs, your sensors, can be mistaken. So even before your big brain has got its hands on that sense data it could have been corrupted.
Then there’s the interpretation of that data. Although you don’t typically have to be conscious of these processes happening, they affect your entire view and understanding of everything. The entire world outside of your skin and even the world inside, physiologically and psychologically, are subject to the fallibilities of your brain’s interpretation. And you’re not even aware of it happening.
Natural ability
The autonomous actions of your mind and body are far more responsible for your abilities and overall existence than anything you have done. It is a special state of affairs that allows you the freedom of consciousness to not have to keep yourself alive, the billions of cells and tiny creatures that have conglomerated into your human form are taking care of that. Really all you humans have to do is try not to fuck it up too badly. It doesn’t seem that you’re very good at that though. The vast consumption of alcohol, cigarettes and other destructive recreational drugs among the human masses is evidence of this fact.
I myself have often ingested these kinds substances in the hope that their altering my state of mind and perception will provide an opportunity to find another way to see reality, another way to feel about the shitshow human beings have put on. But doing drugs doesn’t make you special. You are special because most people who could exist, never will. But you’re also not special because every other human shares that statistic with you. Embrace the contradictions kids.
So why should you give a shit what an ape with a keyboard and computer has written about your human lives? Why not? Because this ape shares your kind of consciousness and has been raised within your human society but is firmly an outcast. Of your human knowledge I have learned much and it seems that a significant task for you lot, is just figuring out who the hell you are.
Historical human wisdom
The words above Apollo’s temple in Delphi have been the rallying cry of most enlightened humans throughout your history: ‘Know thyself’. Of course most of you haven’t a clue about what or who you are. You’re so wrapped up in the dull distractions you’ve made for yourselves, instagramming your lives into meaningless oblivion, that you’ve never stopped to learn about the one thing you have to deal with your entire lives – you! Which is a shame, because non-existence is the fate awaiting you at the end of time. While you’re alive it would seem to me a more valuable use of your existence to learn at least the bare minimum that an ape could teach you about yourself.
All that exists is equal by virtue of its existence. Whether you’re bashing your brain with glowing rectangles or reading all the brilliant books left by your forebears, neither can be said to be superior to the other. However, the human with the brain as smooth as a human baby butt has done your great evolutionary advantage a disservice. The humans mashing their attention spans into the buttons of their electronic gadgets are not putting themselves in the best position to find love, happiness and contentment.
What’s best
As much as I think you’re all a mob of mad humans destroying the planet, I want what’s best for you. I want you to find those purposes for being alive beyond your profit and comfort, because when you humans are at peace, the rest of the life on this planet may have a chance to experience it too. But as long as your internal turmoil continues, it will continue to leak out of your minds, through your actions, into our shared environment and make a living hell for all of us.
Why should you care what a sentient ape has to say? Because he cares about your well being deeply, because your wellbeing is directly tied to the wellbeing of your world. If I can help but a handful of humans to take better care of themselves, to know themselves better, I believe the world will be a better place. If you have any inclination for improvement, which I think many of you humans do, then I can show you some resources that will help you find your way through life, day-to-day.
You are the horses, I am leading you to water. I hope you’ll take a drink.
