The Douchebag Bible (71 page)

wherever.

But that's only my personal choice, because I

find that such feelings are useless within me. They

will not cultivate properly. Hope doesn't uplift me,

because I cannot truly believe it. Trying to hope only

makes me more dismal and withdrawn. But if I give

up on hope—if I abandon it—then I am happy. And

the world is no worse because I abandoned hope.

Dante was wrong. If those in Hell truly

abandoned hope, Hell would cease to be Hell! No

inferno is hot enough to hurt those who don't care

whether or not they are burned.

POLITICS AND

OTHER

DISGUSTING

HUMAN

BEHAVIORS

1. THE EMERGENCE OF POLITICS

My friend, scientist and philosopher Howard Bloom,

author of '
The Lucifer Principle,' 'The Global Brain'

and '
The Genius Of The Beast,'
is fond of saying that

no bacterium is an island.

What does he mean by that? If you put a

bacterium alone in a petri dish, it will begin to self-

replicate until it has built its own society. It’s not an

exaggeration to call what the lone bacterium creates

a society. It has all of the hallmarks of a society—it

has communication, it has resource-distribution, it

has division of labor. Do I have a point here? Let’s

fast-forward and find out.

We, human beings, are great apes. We are most

closely related to chimps, bonobos, orangutans and

baboons. And what social structure do these

creatures adhere to? Do they live in anarchy; a

lawless state of total freedom? Are they, as comedian

and former libertarian presidential candidate Doug

Stanhope claims, unrestricted by any laws but the

laws of physics? I’ll break the tension immediately

by feeding you a spoiler: No.

According

to

Jane

Goodall’s website

http://www.janegoodall.ca chimps organize into a

highly regimented social structure:

Within the community a male hierarchy,

ordered more or less in linear fashion, establishes

social standing, with one male at the top or “alpha”

position. Females have their own hierarchy, albeit

much less straightforward. All adult males

dominate all females. Most disputes within a

community can, therefore, be solved by threats

rather than actual attacks.

Bonobo social structure according to science

journalist Natalie Angier:

Males form a distinct social hierarchy with

high levels of both competition and association.

Given the need to stick together against males of

neighboring communities, their bonding is not

surprising: failure to form a united front might

result in the loss of lives and territory. The danger

of being male is reflected in the adult sex ratio of

chimpanzee populations, with considerably fewer

males than females.

Baboons also live in highly regimented

societies with clear dominance hierarchies, as

elucidated by studies by Princeton University.

Orangutans may be the odd ape out, as they can be

fairly solitary, but it’s been suggested that females of

the species do form loose social groups—they are,

however, not a species wherein dominance

hierarchies play a very clear part—though certain

males do wind up as preferred breeding stock at the

expense of the less desirable males. This means that

while a regimented social structure isn’t in place,

competition is still very much a part of life for

Orangutans.

Dominance hierarchies are with us from the

ground floor of evolution—from the most primitive

lifeforms we know of to the closest of our great ape

cousins.

Homo Sapiens
. We’re actually a much more

baffling creature in terms of our social evolution

than in terms of our biological evolution.

Anatomically modern human beings emerged in

Africa 200,000 years ago, but we’ve only been

industrialized for the last 250-300 years. We’ve only

had the internet for about half a century—and it’s

only been popular among consumers for 20 years or

so.

Let’s think about this. We’re a 200,000 year

old species who just figured out the steam-powered

locomotive 210 years ago. We’re a species who once

hunted wooly mammoth, and now we walk around

with gigabytes of information in the pockets of our

jeans. How did this happen? Where did this sudden

boom of genius come from? How did it spark into

being?

The earliest human beings were hunter-

gatherers (like their
Homo Erectus
ancestors before

them) who traveled in communities that lived much

the same way that the other great apes do—foraging

for food: mostly fruit, sometimes meat. The

agricultural revolution of about 10,000 years ago

changed all that. Human beings no longer had to

move from place to place. They could set up

permanent residence in some ideal location. They