You are a monkey. And so am I.

And so is everyone else. Every human being, past, present, and future, is a monkey. Your parents are monkeys. Your children are, or will be, monkeys. Abraham Lincoln was a monkey, as was Ghandi, Pol Pot, and the Bay City Rollers.

In fact, if you are reading these words and you live on planet Earth, you are a monkey. ^[1]

Now being very clever monkeys, you and I, we do not like to think about what monkeys we are. After all, we have invented a lot of very impressive things, transforming the planet in the process, and to be fair, it is pretty clear who is running the place.

But being the head monkeys does not in any way free us of our monkey nature. The very drive to explore and create and innovate that has lead us to this heady place in such a relatively short period of time (10,000 years or so) is a fundamentally monkey thing. The difference between a monkey poking a stick into a termite hill to get termites and a human being poking around in a laboratory to get a new fuel additive is a matter of time and scale, not a matter of some transcendent quality that only we humans possess at all.

In fact, the very idea that we somehow think we have stopped being monkeys simply because we have gotten so good at this social and technological evolution is, in many ways, the most simian conceit of them all.

It is like a monkey who climbs to the top of a very tall tree, and looks down at all the other monkeys, and scoffs “Boy, am I glad I am not one of you monkeys any more!”.

A monkey you are, my friend, and a monkey you will always be.

The problem is that evolution is not revolution. It is impossible for evolution to produce something entirely new, except at the unicellular level. Everything else will be based on a previous model, and incorporate everything about that previous model along with the new features that make this year’s model better than the last.

So when we evolved into human beings, we kept being monkeys. A lion is still a cat, after all, and a tuna is still a fish. Specialization in evolution might modify things a little (a flipper becomes a paw, a tail becomes a stump) but all the basics remain the same.

We are special monkeys, with abilities no monkey has ever had before. But it does not stop us from being, basically, very clever monkeys.

And it is only through understanding and accepting our monkey nature that we can hope to ever overcome it and become something more.

For instance, as monkeys, we are inherently hierarchical. Despite all our progress in freedom, democracy, tolerance, and individualism, we are still a socially hierarchical species who is happiest when there is a strong alpha male leading us, assuring us that we will be protected from danger by a fierce and aggressive male who is scarier than all the threats of the world and who projects confidence and control.

We take our cues from our dominant alphas, and mirror their mood, for they are our link to the world outside our little local tribe. Just as a baby animal knows to be quiet when its mother is quiet and to run when its mother runs, so do we, as tribe building monkeys, instinctively adopt the same emotional stance as our leaders, whether they are the head of our office at work or the head of our nation on the news.

Also, as social monkeys, we are greatly influence by all the other monkeys around us. This also flies in the face of modern individualism and the notion of total individual autonomy, but study after study shows this to nevertheless remain true.

So, for example, it is very difficult to resist peer pressure. Our urge to conform to our tribe and blend in is very strong. Usually, the only ones who can do so with complete success are the monkeys on the periphery, who do not really belong to any one tribe.

In these and many other ways, we remain basically the same sort of monkey that we were when we first stumbled out onto the Serengeti.

So own your monkey nature. Be proud to be a simian and a monkey and an animal as well as a human being. Don’t consider it a demotion, think of it as an embracing of the full richness of what it means to be a human being.

We might still be monkeys, but we are special monkeys indeed.