1- SIGNIFICANT MAMMAL

The first big step into Dad Hacked covers how the self-deception began with the smartest monkey on the planet (us), our insistence on our own significance as a race and how ignoring our membership in the animal kingdom sends us further and further from the truth.

 

Transcript

 

00:24

Humans are the only species who have developed complex language and story. And because of this, we're the only living organism on the planet that raises its children with lies. That's quite the talent. The first and greatest trick humanity ever played on itself was to think itself separate from nature and above all other beasts. And from that lie was spawned the second trick in the form of another lie: that our sex and sexuality is actually about us as individuals.

 

01:00   

Welcome to Dad Hacked the Sex Matrix 

 

01:08

Human beings are animals. You’re animals! Does that basic principle offend you? I can understand why it might. Many people don't appreciate this association, thinking ourselves so much more than our pets for example, or our dinner. Others dismiss it as an obvious biological fact,  ‘Yeah, yeah, we all know that we're animals. Yeah, get on with it. What's your point? You think this is a discovery?’ And then give it lip service from a faux-scientific vantage without ever truly understanding the actual depth of it. Because I'm telling you now, you likely have no idea the critical impact that your animal behaviors will have on your life. If you're not careful, they will literally shape your life for you. And our failure to recognize this in ourselves is directly connected to one of our greatest failings as a species and especially as parents preparing children for the world ahead. 

 

02:02

We have one crucial difference that sets us apart from every other living creature, and it's our minds. these large brains of ours that have developed the capacity for story. Our lives, our ideas of ourselves and others of events, good and bad are understood within the framework of narratives. Created by us and fed to us by other humans. They get passed down from generation to generation. 

 

02:28

To us, the story is everything. We are animals who tell stories, and nothing can mislead you like a story. Story is what stands between us and a full grasp of what this world really is. 

 

02:42

So can you imagine what these story-loving monkeys came up with to explain sex? Because we're going to talk about all of them…

 

02:55

Welcome to another episode of Upright Monkeys Breeding on a Murderous Round Planet.

This week: ‘The Significant Mammal’

 

03:07

Humans are mammals gifted the capacity for complex thought. And with that level of brain function came an awareness of self and the ability to ponder something that to our knowledge, no other living thing can: our significance in the universe. What this means is while other animals prioritize and busy themselves with survival and the needs of the day, we humans have developed a compulsion to see ourselves as significant members of a highly significant race, living significant lives filled with significant events on a very significant planet floating in a universe made significant by our presence in it. In fact, a prominent fear among us is that we might not be significant at all. So stories of significance bring us great comfort. For thousands of years, no matter where we were situated, we have believed that everything was put here just for us, and that if there are gods above all other creatures, we were made in their image, or at the very least, were a race of great significance to them. The scope of the human ego is simply astonishing. Many belief systems still hold on to this with characteristic ferocity. Humans shaped stories about our very plain mammalian habits, compulsions and events.  As our weapons technologie