Tuesday 2 March 2010

All Descended From Monkeys

Vladimir Solovyov's quip 'man is descended from monkeys therefore let us love one another!' (which has, incidentally, definitely gained something in the translation) isn't really a quip at all. We should take it seriously. Not because we revere ancestors so much that the scientific demonstration of a common ancestor to all humankind makes us all brothers and sisters -- on the contrary, precisely because we want to put distance between ourselves and our ancestors. To stop, in a phrase, throwing our own shit at one another, screeching and baring our teeth. Because we want to live differently to the way we used to; to live like human beings.

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