The Ape of Sorrows - From Stranger to Destroyer: The Inside Story of Humans

A book of extraordinary originality by a writer who was both a historian and philosopher, and who died earlier this year. It examines human behaviour through the lens of animal intelligence, making the point that the measure of any animal's intelligence is whether it leaves its habitat enhanced or depleted. By this criterion, humans are singularly unintelligent, even if in a subtle way. The author argues that the very nature of civilisation has been defined by separating out the human mind from animal minds, and pretending that we are not animals at all. Combined with apocalyptic and enlightenment ideas that a better future can be attained implicitly through withdrawing from the habitat in order to create this new world, 'civilised' humans have cut themselves off and gone about destroying their habitat along with other living things. We now face the dark side of the brain or the shadow and along with it the greatest challenge to civilisation, what Thomas Berry called The Great Work of formulating a constructive human presence on the earth.