Why Are Monkeys Still Here?

And why are we peeing RoundUp?

“If we evolved from monkeys, why are they still here?”   Stephen Baldwin

There’s little we can do for Stephen Baldwin now. Once an actor starts questioning Darwinism, it’s bound to get weird. We’re all capable of weird thoughts and theories—including scientists and anthropologists. They get paid, of course, and they assure us they’re getting close to an answer, although one fossil can throw them off by about a million years.

Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist and frequent visitor on The Big Bang, claimed we haven’t reached the point where we can see eleven dimensions. “It’s probably no different than seeing two or three,” he admitted, which is all we can handle anyway. Some people have seen more, like Vincent Van Gogh, Salvador Dali and Dennis Rodman. Rodman’s seen more than anybody.

Hawking spent most of his life studying the complexity of the universe, even rewriting his first book “A Brief History of Time,” so more people could understand it. “A Briefer History of Time,” did simplify things, but not enough to make Stephen Baldwin stop wondering about monkeys.

The interesting thing about evolution is we’ve stopped wondering where we came from.

Graham Greene attempted to explain evolution, saying, “God created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed.” If we’re failing as a race, we may need those monkeys. They could be our only hope.

The interesting thing about evolution is we’ve stopped wondering where we came from. Whether it’s God, or monkeys or some primordial ooze, we don’t care. We’re just trying to get by. According to scientists, that makes us more like our ancestors back in the Pleistocene era.

This dates back some 1.8 million years, when survival wasn’t an easy thing. Any number of animals, reptiles — even fish — were bigger than humans. You needed your wits about you, not to mention a pointed stick or a sharp rock.

Scientists claim this is where we developed “the reptilian brain,” which interestingly still exists today. Essentially, it breaks down to two important thoughts: Who can we trust and who’s available sexually.

Like our primitive ancestors , we worry about trustworthiness and sexual availability all the time. Dating sites alone have an annual growth rate of 5.3 percent. This translates into a multi-billion dollar industry.

Complaints range from “He was so rude,” to “He looked like an ape.”

That’s a lot of people, and a lot of dating. Some dates, admittedly, prove more reptilian than others, while some haven’t evolved at all. Complaints range from “He was so rude,” to “He looked like an ape.” Dating does make us question Evolution, particularly when it’s drinking coffee in front of us.

That aside, the bigger issue we face as a society is trust. Whether its a president promising a New Deal, or our insurance agent telling us monkey bites are an “act of God,” we don’t know who’s telling the truth.

And we’ve got good reason not to put our faith in the powers that be. Given what we know now, the powers that be have been anything but truthful. The GOP, when they were in the White House, were considered the worst liars in history.

The EPA, for example, approved more poisons during the Trump Administration than any other presidency. We actually have a Monsanto law protecting them from prosecution, despite filling us with a host of carcinogens.

According to a UC San Diego research study, glyphosate levels in human urine are up 1200% since the introduction of Roundup-ready GMOs. As the researchers concluded in their report, Americans are peeing Roundup.

At this rate, 50 years from now, we’ll all be peeing estrogen, and dating sites will be a bunch of women smiling at each other.

Another study showed that the estrogen levels in our water are turning male fish into female. If we’re not peeing Roundup, we’re peeing estrogen (birth control pills, HRTs). At this rate, 50 years from now, we’ll all be peeing estrogen, and dating sites will simply be a bunch of women.

Many European, Asian and South American countries have banned, or are banning, GMOs, but North American politicians feel it’s okay peeing Roundup. Like guns and barbecues, it’s our God given right.

On the positive side, those weeds on our lawns could be gone just by peeing outside. Who knows? We could get paid to do our business on golf courses.

It’s still going to kill us. How that jibes with our “reptilian brains” isn’t so much logic as physiological. As evolutionary psychologist, Satoshi Kanazawa, at the London School of Economics explains: “The human brain does not have any special module for evaluating welfare policy, but it has modules for evaluating people on the basis of character. That’s why we have this gut reaction to affairs and marriages and lying. All those things existed in the ancestral environment 100,000 years ago.”

We’re character-driven, in other words, meaning we’re back to trust and who’s sexually available. Details like welfare and GMOs just aren’t part of our survival instincts.

Finding a sexually available mate wasn’t a problem, either. Based on what we know of the Neolithic period, they were probably under the same bearskin.

What’s evolutionary is how we’ve gone from judging good or bad to not-so-good or not-so-bad. Presidents are elected this way, but so are dictators and despots. Our survival instincts now decide the lesser of two evils.

It was certainly a lot easier back in Pleistocene era. A good person (or animal) didn’t kill you, a bad person did. Finding a sexually available mate wasn’t a problem, either. Based on what we know of the Neolithic period, everybody’s partner was probably under the same bearskin.

If there’s any good news here, it’s that we’re no worse off than our Pleistocene ancestors. In fact, we’re a lot warmer, we eat better, our grass is greener, and dating sites are popping up all over the place.

We may not be able to tell a good politician from a monkey, but neither can monkeys. Our bigger problem is peeing. We obviously can’t keep peeing Roundup. Even a monkey knows better, but we probably will, anyway.

Now we just have to decide whether we should do our business out on the lawn or not.

Rather than worry about all this, it might be best to listen to Germaine Greer who summarized everything in her usual, practical way: “Evolution is what it is. The upper classes have always died out. It’s one of the most charming things about them.”

That, hopefully, takes care of what’s left of the GOP and possibly Monsanto. Now we just have to decide whether we should do our business out on the lawn or not. The weeds aren’t going to kill themselves.

That’s strictly a human thing.

Robert Cormack is a novelist, journalist and blogger. His first novel “You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive)” is available online and at most major bookstores (now in paperback). Check out Robert’s other articles and stories at robertcormack.net