The Ape and the Dolphin

Once upon a time there were some apes who were ever slightly smarter than all the other apes. They knew they were smarter because they built tall buildings and invented things and because if they ever got into a fight with the dumber apes, they would win hands down, in about 30 seconds. And not only could the smart apes kill every other ape if they wanted to, they could extinct every species they had ever known to exist in the universe. In fact, the dumb apes were so dumb they didn’t even know about surrendering before they got massacred. The smart apes had invented that too. So there.

So there was what the smartest of the smart apes liked to say. Of course, they would never say “So there” unless they were drunk, or exceptionally unsure of themselves, or caught in a rare moment of honesty they would later regret. Instead they would invent long-winded rationalizations that dressed up those fatal words in some more palatable tone, so that the dumber apes wouldn’t have to feel so bad. And so that they could do what they wanted and not have to feel bad about it either. So there.

The smart apes had also invented feelings and love and creativity and abstract thinking too. It made them all feel warm inside, probably the way the dumb apes feel most of the time (when they aren’t busy trying to forage for food or swing on branches or whatever stupid ways dumb apes waste their time). But the smart apes were busy with far more important things than swinging from branches. They were selling their bodies or building machines or digging really deep holes or doing science projects that might blow up the whole universe.

None of those things really had to do with love or creativity, though it came in handy now and again. Really, most of the smart apes weren’t even that smart. They just did some job and had a bunch of baby apes. And they watched apes pretend to be different apes than they were on an electrical contraption. Or they watched apes play games or have sex with each other. Mostly they wished they weren’t just apes and were something far greater, or at a minimum that if they had to be apes, they might have a little more money, which the smart apes had also invented.

It turns out that smart apes aren’t the only ones with big brains though. And so there were some dolphins, who also have really big brains, but can’t possibly be as smart as the smart apes since they don’t have any buildings or weapons or money either. Anyway, these dolphins were watching the smart apes (though because of their geographical limitations, they saw only a small sample size. Despite having big brains, the dolphins did not know about statistics). When they watched all these smart apes, they laughed.

They laughed because the apes had invented all these great things: like freedom, but most of them were slaves. And like justice, but most of their world was unjust. And like love, but they loved most to betray each other. And they had learned that generalizing about apes is usually a bad idea, but they did it all the time anyway, and believed their generalizations more than anything else. They laughed because the apes thought so highly of their ideas but felt so poorly about themselves.

And then, after the dolphins had a good laugh, they swam back out into the ocean and jumped around and played with each other. They squeaked to each other in their primitive dolphin language, and then swam as a pack to meet their next destiny and live perfectly in harmony with nature.

So there.