Deep down, under all the intellect, civilization, kindness, gentleness, and good intentions, lies The Beast.

We all have one. An id. The animal inside. The creature that lives both figuratively and literally deep within our brains. In the West, we like to pretend like that part of us is optional, that we can suppress and ignore it all we want in order to prove to one another and ourselves that we are humans, not “mere animals”.

But brain science 101 teaches that brains evolve by adding, not subtracting. Ours were built from the most primitive animals outward. Our brain stem is just like what passes for a brain in a fish. Around that is wrapped the exact same kind of brain a reptile (or bird) has. Around that is wrapped a mammalian brain, the same kind of brain a cat or dog or wildebeest has.

And around that, o course, is the absurdly large add-on that is the human brain. It’s what makes us so much more intelligent than any other animal on Earth, but that is more a function of quantity than quality.

Basically, we are animals with upgrades.

Without these upgrades, we would be chimpanzees. Bonobos. With them, we are human beings. But we are still animals. The massive brain mass upgrade added extraordinary capacity, but it’s the monkey within us who is in charge.

The monkey just has a human sized brain to use.

Myself, I am an intellectual. This is a sub-breed of human who is more intelligent than the average human. This gives us extraordinary powers of thought. It also makes us, in a sense, moral leaders, because we can see more of the picture than the average person and thus see the possibilities in humanity. We can see the better path, And to a certain extent, higher intelligence makes it easier for us to live primarily by reason and not merely “going with our guts”.

But the thing is, we’re still monkeys too. It’s easy to lose track of this fact when we look at the rest of humanity, who lack our advantages, and conclude that they are, compared to us, mere monkeys. Our frustration with them often leads us to lash out like that. It’s entirely natural.

For a monkey, that is.

And what happens when one forgets one is just another monkey on the human family tree is that one begins to lose touch with one’s monkey self. The intellectual force of our brains makes our egos arrogant and we end up pretending like we are all reason now, without any of that other stuff holding us back.

This is not, can never be, and has never been possible. And a life of denial never leads anywhere good.

And then we wonder why we seem to lack motivation. Why we’re scared all the time. Why we’re so confused by human things. Why the world seems so damned cold.

It’s because we haven’t acknowledged and incorporated our monkey selves. We have instead moved into the chilly upper branches of our powerful abstract reasoning skill tree, and you can’t have a healthy tree when you don’t just neglect the roots, you pretend they don’t even exist.

This is where we get our image of angels on clouds. There they are, enjoying the land of high intellect without having to be connected with anything lower.

Angels aren’t real, though. And there’s no point in trying to be one. You would have a better chance of trying to walk without legs. It’s just as realistic a proposition.

My own beast has been long neglected. I thought I had only neglected my inner child, but it turns out my inner monkey has been getting the short shrift too. I have followed the path of the mind so far that I got lost, and all those suppressed emotions frozen within me turned the land within into nothing but frozen tundra as far as the eye can see.

Recovery, therefore, means waking the beast. He’s a very, very angry beast, and that anger terrifies me because sometimes it seems so vast and powerful that it could destroy the person I think I am and drive what is left of me after to do some seriously crazy things just to force people to pay attention to and remember us.

But I can’t let that stop me. Somewhere between soul starvation and stark raving lunacy lies the person I want to be : integrated, whole, healthy, hearty, and happy in his own skin.

It’s a work in progress.

And what I realized today is that this beast wants everyone to just fuck right off. Leave it alone. It wants to growl the deepest of growls from the very core of my being in order to warn the world to back the fuck off… or else.

Deep down, I know it just wants to be safe, and that it is fear and suspicion that make it so hostile. It is the fear that drives the rage and urge to destroy. The beast does not and perhaps cannot understand the futility of seeking peace through violence.

Humans are at their most dangerous when scared. Scare them enough, and the minute your back is turned, they will kill you.

The real solution is, of course, somewhere in between.

There’s a line in a Green Day song called Have A Blast that goes like this :

Do you ever want to lead a long trail of destruction and mow down any BULLSHIT that confronts you

And the answer for me is a resounding yes. But it’s not about hurting anyone. It’s about cutting loose on all the hypocrisy, cruelty, ignorance, immorality, and other BULLSHIT in life, and doing it in a way that people will never forget.

And if I hope to get better, I am going to have to be willing to bring those kind of thoughts to the surface and release and acknowledge and “own” them before my lies disappear and the truth sets me free.

I’m a lot of things – poet, storyteller, jester, sage, and so on – and amongst all that, I am also a very angry monster.

But where is the Androcles to pluck the thorn from my paw?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.