Predator or Prey?

One of the dangerous psychospiritual trends I’m tracking is a collective identity shift from 'humanity as predator' to 'humanity as prey'.

The collective unconscious waffles between these two poles on a seemingly daily basis.

Beyond Apex Predators.

"An apex predator, also known as a top predator or superpredator, is a predator at the top of a food chain, without natural predators of its own." — Wikipedia

Humanity is a predator species of such unmatched capacity that we have blown past the definition of apex predator. We defy classification according to apex predator theory. 

An orca, or lion—both apex predators—hunt a single shark or gazelle at a time; humans drag line and machine gun entire herds overnight. It’s no longer reasonable to classify humanity as apex predators. There are categorical differences.

This difference is so vast that you can pay for cute little excursions to laugh and take photos of other apex predators in their natural environments.

We’re like omega predators: the end goal of planetary predatory evolution. Capable of hunting anything and everything, no matter where or what it is. Humanity is at the top of all food chains. 

We’re dragons.

Hunting Made Us Human.

Meat was a profound catalyst for the evolution of humanity. Meat made us human.

It provided the caloric and nutritional density required for the brain to undergo a dramatic increase in size, baseline metabolic demand, and, thus, capability and intelligence. 

To eat meat, you must hunt. To hunt, you must be a predator. 

It is true that deep within your blood memory, there live recollections of an ancient past when humanity was hunted—when proto-sabertooth tigers had demonic fangs perfectly shaped to enter the soft point of your skull for a one-shot instakill—but that time is long gone.

For millennia, humanity has hunted.

It's like trauma healing: yes, something bad happened in the past, but that's not the reality of your present; let's get your nervous system unfrozen in time.

Physiognomy.

“Physiognomy: a person's facial features or expression, especially when regarded as indicative of character or ethnic origin.”

Beyond apex predator theory and evolutionary arguments, there is physiognomy. Character traits from facial structure also indicate a predator class.

Predators have close-set eyes, enabling better depth assessment and pinpoint tracking ability. Perfect for hunting. Humans have close-set eyes.

Prey have wide-set eyes, perfect for scanning as much of the landscape as possible for threat detection.

It’s worth noticing the images, traits, and silhouettes a society deifies and glorifies.

Hypertelorism is emerging in up-and-coming celebrities. Wide-set eyes. There’s a strong argument that this is part of a greater shift toward desiring more neotenic features—juvenilization.

Babies are cute. Humans are hardwired to care for cute things. Babies are cute in part because they have disproportionately large/wide eyes for their faces.

This is why anime-style faces are so popular. Gigantic eyes staring at you.

We are glorifying, becoming attracted to, and elevating to celebrity status the physiognomic features of the harmless, the child-like, the baby-faced, the prey animals.

Humans are predators. You are a predator. Your ancient ancestors were predators. There is nothing wrong with this. This is human history. Your history.

Predator is a loaded word in modern culture—in many ways justified.

It conjures images of atrocity, creepy fat men in basements, and levels of aggression that modern city slickers are all too uncomfortable with.

A predator class necessitates hierarchy. There are predators, and there are prey. There are predators, and there are apex predators. It is not equal.

In prey, everyone is equal.

Ah, there it is... the familiar perfume of political party slogans, "We the equal. We the oppressed. We the weak. We the victims. We the prey."

• In predator classes, characteristics like decisiveness, conviction, power, capability, excellence, and vitality are praised and rewarded.
• In prey classes, characteristics like camouflage, escaping confrontation, threat detection, speed/agility, and power-in-numbers are rewarded.

Which of these is the direction we are moving in?

Predator vs. Prey Morality.

Nietzsche, in one of his prophetic (& problematic) masterpieces, On the Genealogy of Morality, calls this master vs. slave morality.

Those terms are too loaded even for me to enjoy using, but predator vs. prey morality has a certain ring to it.

In the endless evolutionary dance between lion and gazelle, who is correct? Is the lion wrong, or the gazelle?

It’s a meaningless question.

However, in no way—biologically, psychologically, morally—as much as you want to believe, and certainly as much as other people want to tell you, are you the gazelle in this situation. As an inheritor of the human bloodline, you are the lion.  

This is textbook psychological shadow material. A life-affirming, reality-according Truth is silently subjugated and rejected, pushed out of conscious experience and into the depths of the collective shadow. 

Without proper integration, it syphons energy, influences experience, and generates events in life that we call coincidence.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”‌ – Carl Jung

By rejecting the reality of humans as a predator species, humanity is rejecting significant aspects of itself: power, purpose, vitality, capability, and our very role and responsibility in the natural ecosystem.

What I find most compelling is what happens in all the ideologies that ascribe to 'prey morality':

1. The 'oppressed', 'victimized', and 'prey' group together (strength in numbers).
2. A groundswell of support builds, and the group acquires power.
3. The group uses this new power to hunt and prey on those they view as the predators/oppressors.
4. Vicious censorship, deplatforming/debanking, cancel culture, violent protests, ‘tax the rich’.
5. Even the simple socialist act of "Hey Government, make this guy pay taxes on his hard-earned money under threat of violence/jail/death, and give that money to me to help my family" is predatory. You just remove the responsibility of 'doing the dirty work' (taking someone else's money) yourself.

Every time, like clockwork. The predator spirit burns brightly even in those waving the flag of ‘humble, meek, simple prey’. After all, it's only natural...

You must see how most of these traits are traditionally masculine as well, yes?

• The vilification of masculine ‘toxicity’—leadership, strength, assertiveness, action, vitality, decisiveness.
• The bulldozing of all hierarchical structures as nothing more than systems of oppression.
• The resurgence of interest in Marxist communism & socialist policy.
• The growing impotence/sickness/waywardness/infertility of younger generations.

This is of paramount importance for men. Testosterone is a hunting hormone. Stamina, strength, emotional steadiness, mental clarity.

Every Silicon Valley tech guru and Wall Street finance bro is attempting to recreate a very ancient blood memory: the art of the hunt.

We are in a slow but steady transition of our collective identity from a predator class to a prey animal.

Finally, there remains the critical issue of an individual, and an entire species, at war with its very nature.

“A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed.” — Carl Sagan

Being at war with yourself is the seed of all kinds of neuroses, psychoses, mental health problems, suicide, even war. Nothing desirable arises from the fragmentation of the psyche.

If you are an omega predator species hell-bent on rejecting every aspect of your nature, you’re in for a bad time. 

The conspiratorial conclusion is simple: prey animals are easier to control. Sheep can be herded. There is a perverse incentive to keep a population docile.

But this is not conspiracy. It cuts deeper. This is an ongoing negotiation for the identity of the human race. 

This does not mean, as they want you to believe, that you are a tool of destruction, a wanton-killing machine that eviscerates living creatures for fun like a psychotic jaguar. 

Far from it... 

True apex predators assume their place in the natural order. They steward the security of the ecosystem. They exist in harmony and wholeness with the world and accept their role without hesitation.

After all, wolves change the rivers. The introduction of wolves into an ecosystem had such profound trophic cascades that the shape of the rivers changed. 

Apex predators are necessary. They steward ecosystems and maintain environmental homeostasis. 

The problem is not that you are a predator. The problem is that you don’t embrace it.

You have forgotten your blood memory. Your ancestral inheritance—cast off into the mud. You have forgotten who you are.

Reclaim your birthright. Return to natural order. Hold your head high and gaze firm, as all predators do.

And whatever you do: never let them convince you that you are nothing but a victim of oppression and mere circumstance.

For you are not prey here...

With great power comes great responsibility,
EB.