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We Are To Put It Mildly, In A Mess, And There Is A Strong Chance That We Shall Have Exterminated Ourselves By The End Of The Century. Our Only Consolation Will Be That As A Species, We Have Had An Exciting Term Of Office.

-Desmond Morris

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We Are To Put

Desmond Morris

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We Are To Put It Mildly, In A Mess, And There Is A Strong Chance That We Shall Have Exterminated Ourselves By The End Of The Century. Our Only Consolation Will Be That As A Species, We Have Had An Exciting Term Of Office.

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We Are To Put It Mildly, In A Mess, And There Is A Strong Chance That We Shall Have Exterminated Ourselves By The End Of The Century. Our Only Consolation Will Be That As A Species, We Have Had An Exciting Term Of Office.

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This Gives The Agents Of The Gods A Powerful Area Of Support. All They Need To Do Is To Remind Their Followers Constantly Of Their Mortality And To Convince Them That The Afterlife Itself Is Under The Personal Management Of The Particular Gods They Are Promoting. The Self-protective Urges Of Their Worshippers Will Do The Rest.

Aquatic Animals Suffer From The Disadvantage That They Cannot Scream When In Pain, So We Find It Hard To Gauge The Degree Of Their Agony. If Fish Could Scream, Angling Purely For Sport Would Be Outlawed Without Delay.

I Think Like The Species I Am Studying, Whatever It Is. If I Am Watching A Lizard, I Become The Lizard. Gazing Ath The Water At A Pike, I Become The Pike.

Biologically Speaking, If Something Bites You It's More Likely To Be Female.

The Idea That It Is Funny To See Wild Animals Coerced Into Acting Like Clumsy Humans, Or Thrilling To See Powerful Beasts Reduced To Cringing Cowards By A Whip-cracking Trainer, Is Primitive And Medieval. It Stems From The Old Idea That We Are Superior To Other Species And Have The Right To Hold Dominion Over Them.

In A Social Environment That Is Ever Crowded And Impersonal, It Is Becoming Increasingly Important To Reconsider The Value Of Close Personal Relationships Before We Are Driven To Ask The Forlorn Question, 'whatever Happened To Love?'

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Monks, Nuns, Long-term Spinsters And Bachelors And Permanent Homosexuals Are All, In A Reproductive Sense, Aberrant. Society Has Bred Them, But They Have Failed To Return The Compliment.

It Must Be Stressed That There Is Nothing Insulting About Looking At People As Animals. We Are Animals, After All. Homo Sapiens Is A Species Of Primate, A Biological Phenomenon Dominated By Biological Rules, Like Any Other Species. Human Nature Is No More Than One Particular Kind Of Animal Nature. Agreed, The Human Species Is An Extraordinary Animal; But All Other Species Are Also Extraordinary Animals, Each In Their Own Way, And The Scientific Man-watcher Can Bring Many Fresh Insights To The Study Of Human Affairs If He Can Retain This Basic Attitude Of Evolutionary Humility.

We May Prefer To Think Of Ourselves As Fallen Angels, But In Reality We Are Rising Apes.

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This Unusual And Highly Successful Species Spends A Great Deal Of Time Examining His Higher Motives And An Equal Amount Of Time Ignoring His Fundamental Ones.

A True Bond Of Friendship Is Usually Only Possible Between People Of Roughly Equal Status. This Equality Is Demonstrated In Many Indirect Ways, But It Is Reinforced In Face-to-face Encounters By A Matching Of The Posture Of Relaxation Or Alertness.

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No Matter How Old We Become, We Can Still Call Them 'holy Mother' And 'father' And Put A Child-like Trust In Them.

The Response Of Teenagers To Their Idols Is Relevant. As An Audience, They Enjoy Themselves, Not By Screaming With Laughter, But Screaming With Screams.

There Are One Hundred And Ninety-three Living Species Of Monkeys And Apes. One Hundred And Ninety-two Of Them Are Covered With Hair. The Exception Is A Naked Ape Self-named Homo Sapiens. The Zoologist Now Has To Start Making Comparisons. Where Else Is Nudity At A Premium.

The Female Covers Her Breasts, And Then Proceeds To Redefine Their Shape With A Brassiere. This Sexual Signaling Device May Be Padded Or Inflatable, So That It Not Only Reinstates The Concealed Shape, But Also Enlarges It, Imitating In This Way The Breast Swelling That Occurs During Sexual Arousal.

Looking Back Now On The Whole Sexual Scene We Can See That Our Species Has Remained Much More Loyal To Its Basic Biological Urges Than We Might At First Imagine. Its Primate Sexual System With Carnivore Modifications Has Survived All The Fantastic Technological Advances Remarkably Well.

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