By Eric Le Roy
Content 18+ There is a long and bloody cord that connects the slaughterhouse to the restaurant table. And no, this is not an appeal to carnivores to become herbivores. I confess: I will eat the cow that I do not have to kill. What fascinates me is the subtle brain stream, the invisible pipeline that connects the civilized to the savage, the corporate facade to the primordial froth underneath. 
Recently, a number of things have inspired me to think on this subject. First, I began reading a fascinating book now familiar to many called simply Sapiens. As in homo -- the prefix, not of gay people in a now derogatory sense – but rather of the different versions of the human species that went about the earth before the Sapiens conquered all and began the long descent into what we are today. In other words, if we didn’t just appear as the ‘Creator’s’ brushstroke in the Garden of Eden, neither did we spill headlong and intact out of a gorilla’s belly. In short, there were different kinds of humans just as there are different kinds of birds and snakes.
The sapiens were the conquerors not the culmination.
Moreover, there is powerful evidence that the brain of the hunter-gatherer 500,000 years ago was essentially the one we have today. The only thing different was the lack of information flushing through the thoughts. But some of the original recipe embedded itself; it remains there today. This is because those early human beings shared one trait that all of us fiercely cling to and will possess in the future unless further evolution alters us beyond recognition: the will to survive. At any cost. I have heard the spongy mechanism suffused with electric darts that we have between our ears referred to as ‘the Lizard Brain’. I like that: as with most things I believe, it is a triumph of intuition over scientific certainty.. In a sense, therefore, the brain of the modern human is like a padded cell. Or, to put it another way, we have mountains of tranquilizing software as cushions over the lizard-brain hardware at the essence. The software works.
Until it doesn’t.
Prehistoric men and women understood the immediacy of deadly danger. All you need to know to prove this is to look at your family dog or cat while it is sleeping, and then make a sudden invasive noise. The dog snaps to attention; the cat bolts from its dream. It is the instant response of the survival mechanism – a trait which increasingly fails humans at the level of preparation. Many of the victims of 9/11, for example, might have survived if they had reacted like a dog or cat (or even a cockroach) instead of panicking, lapsing into stunned inertia, or wasting precious seconds gathering up their phones and laptops.
When a tsunami presses toward the shore, the elephants head for the hills. The humans keep throwing the frisbee on the beach. “Where the hell are they going?” the fun-seekers mutter among themselves. When there is a rumble underground born of an earthquake with an upset stomach, the first human reaction is to balance the teacup on the saucer; then they start looking worried. Today many Pompeiians live contentedly in the shadow of Vesuvius. They are confident that they will have the ‘volcano index predictor’ report in their hands long before the lid blows off again.
In situations like 9/11, modern human disbelief cost them everything because they automatically registered the assumption that ‘this cannot be happening’. And why did they feel that way? It’s because they were certain that the impregnable dome of civilization would protect them; the algorithms would kick in and order be restored. Nature had no chance against their arsenal based on centuries of profound erudition, technological sophistication. and, alas, hubris.
A current line of thought has it that extreme sport is a response to the fact that, in this era of electronic lassitude and air-conditioned somnolence, there is never anything at stake. Nothing worth fighting for in our daily lives (as long as the wars unfold elsewhere). And the truth is that most people in the industrialized nations will drift through life without ever having to go tooth-and-nail, fang-and-claw with a hungry predator. There will be no saber-toothed tigers waiting in the elevators, nor spitting cobras in the glove compartment of their sleek, swift cars.. 
Of course there are rapists and pedophiles. But these freaks hide in the bushes; they are opportunists, not revolutionaries. Besides, they are driven by the same primordial urge, a craving for dominance, In dominance there is sexual conquest, in sexual conquest the passing on of genes, in the passing on of genes, the survival of the fittest. The difference is that – true to the human machine – the rapists, etc, entertain and take to heart a bleak perversity that it would never occur to any animal in nature to embrace. Narcissism and the lust for power is one thing; sado-masochism, strap-ons, and golden showers quite another. There are no ‘felchers’ on record among the lower forms.
The modern man/woman, failing the test of the typical dog or cat – or hyena and coyote – thus needs to manufacture artificial situations in which to live out their fantasies. Hence, roller coaster rides, bungee jumps, and increasingly more exotic methods that the entrepreneurs have of coaxing ‘thrills’ out of the customers. The fabled ‘adrenaline rush.” For those who feel it most, there is always roofing (60 floors up), right rope walking without a net, and flashing through crowded, oily cities at 200 kilometers per hour on a souped up motorbike. The idea, it seems, is for the housebound human dog to be allowed to play the wolf and for the office goldfish in his cubicle tank, to become a shark. On borrowed company time, of course, because the real ocean and jungle are far away. Only the smart watch remains. And the fitness center with its moving ‘carpet’ to burn up the calories while the ‘athlete’ is busy texting other ghosts.
Of course there are the ‘big game hunters’, who shoot their prey from the distance of a football field and then have their photos taken standing triumphantly over the sagging shambles of the murdered beast, pride swelling their bosom, arrogance glittering in their eyes. Remove the gun and put the hunter and the beast in a single room and the human coward will have his guts ripped out in five seconds.
But there is a dark dark side of modern geeks who crave to swim in primeval rivers. And let me begin as follows: One of the more ingenious ways in which humankind has expressed its shadow has occurred inside the Torture Chamber. – the rooms and public squares where miscreants, real or imagined, have been subjected to jaw-dropping monuments to human savagery.
I once picked up a book on the subject after first reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which is the only book I found utterly fascinating but was unable to finish… because eventually it reached a point where the brutality became too much – even for a guy like me who likes reading about famous psychopaths like Ted Bundy. Having put the Third Reich aside, I guess I needed therapy, and what did I find? I settled for the History of Torture because, after the Germans, it seemed like a step forward. But mostly because I needed to know what people are really like.
They are diabolical. Shakespeare declared repeatedly that “All the World’s a Stage, and All its Men and Women merely Players.” I wonder if he knew the extent of it? When no one is watching; when the lights go out, when dark fantasies can emerge like vampires from coffins at the stroke of night, the human race becomes a different species, or rather it reverts. It gets in touch with its inner jackal, and vultures fly in the skies above.
No psychopath becomes a saint while he is in the bathtub. But many saints have been proved to be monsters depending on who they could drag into the shower with them.
I believe that the real litmus test is this: how closely do one’s public and private selves merge? If it is 60-40, OK, that’s pretty good. But sometimes the proportion runs awry. It can be little things: the matronly wife with rape fantasies, the army colonel whose dreams long for gay orgies. Or it can get worse, darker and darker and darker.
Think of battlefields and marauding armies. Think of burnt villages, babies on bayonets, grandmothers raped, men castrated – all mutilated before being put to death. That, my friends, is what ARMIES are like. Without exception.
Then the murderers go home, marry their waiting sweethearts, father children whom they then walk in the park, pushing strollers and buying balloons, prior to visiting old Mom and Dad for Sunday dinner. Last month they were butchering civilians and burning their bodies or shoveling them into dark holes. Now it’s “Hi Mum, what’s for lunch?”
“MY son, the people of MY nation, would never do such things.” A mother’s anthem.
Of course they fucking would, Mom. Because that’s who we really are and that’s how we are hard-wired. All we need is enough of a prompt before the crazy-ecstatic jack-off face in the mirror becomes the last thing the butchered, perforated, ripped-up civilian sees before the knife gouges into his gut or eye. All thanks to Momma’s nice little boy in a darkness he believes to be as invincible as civilization itself.
So, comrades, imagine such unsavory realities the next time you sit down to that juicy ribeye, cooked to perfection. Dream for a moment about the screaming cows, their offal spilling out, the surge of blood, the primal ecstasy of the slaughter.
And if that doesn’t get your dick hard and your vagina moist, I’m afraid I don’t know what else to advise you to dream of. Except for a village in war time: the sobbing, the wailing, the screaming, the shrieking… And remember, without pretense of denial, that the dying beasts always knew you for who you really are. Their articulation was in their wild eyes of death. Wipe your fork with your napkin (or under your arm) and go buy Mom a ticket to the theater, you corporate caveman, Field Marshal executioner, closet-kook, hotdog hogging modern Asshole with more gadgets attached to you than blue ticks on a country hound. Then go fight it out with the gargoyles that wait in the computer games.
