First of all, if you’re one of those people that don’t believe in evolution, you need to leave. I don’t understand you, and you don’t understand me. I mean, fuck, you don’t believe in dinosaurs, how is that reasonable? Off you go.

Next, if you love carrot cake please go away. Carrots have no place in a cake; that’s not what cakes are for. To me it’s about as appetising as cabbage ice cream or onion muffins*.

We are the product of a crap load of millions of years of evolution. We are machines designed to propagate, and not much else**. Males want to spread their seed to hundreds of females. Females can only produce a few dozen offspring so want to pick only the best males (naturally fat chicks take what they can get). Everyone wants to survive, which means sticking with your tribe, and being wary of anything or anyone you don’t know. This is the meat of us; this is the undercurrent to every decision we make. This is the carroty bit.

Our beautifully crafted cultures, that exquisite set of rules that define civilization, is the icing.

Fucking great metaphor, Dirk.

We can slather on the politeness as thick as we like. We can follow the rules and be good people. We can be monogamous and kind to all. We can have Thai food and Indian food and Italian food, all in the same week. We can share indiscriminately with our fellow humans, like the friendly communists. But under it all, a man still wants to spread his seed. We still don’t trust the other tribe. And we still want to protect those that are close to us (cheer up, it’s not all bad).

Don’t forget that these are the qualities that got us this far.

Of course, we will continue to layer rules of civilization on top – we need to because there’s just so many of us. Different tribes will have different approaches to the rules and we will go to war with the other tribes for having an approach different to ours. Because protecting people, protecting beliefs and fighting are all the same thing.

And we will always fight the other tribes, we will always murder. We will cheat and rape and discriminate, and we will always love those close to us. These are not signs of good and bad people, it’s built right in to all of us. These things are merely signs of how well we cover our carrot cake with icing.

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* Now I’m craving an onion muffin, dammit.

**I use the word ‘design’ when talking about evolution just to toy with the creationists.