We're Literally Just Apes Flying Through Space at 67,000 MPH

Return to Monke (Impossible: We Never Left)

You guys ever just suddenly become hyper aware you’re an evolved ape? Like you’ll be working, watching a show, then just suddenly become hyper aware about just how surreal we’re apes, like why not some other phenotype of evolved animal.

That’s what happened to me at 4 AM last night. One moment I’m programming, the next I’m having the full realisation that I’m a primate who learned to make computers think.

It’s weird being human. You forget most of the time. Then you remember that we’re on a ball rotating a thousand miles an hour going hundreds of thousands of miles an hour around the sun, going millions of miles an hour around the galaxy.

Right now, while you’re reading this, Earth is hauling ass around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour. Sixty. Seven. Thousand. We’re on a giant rock doing endless loops around a nuclear explosion and everyone’s just acting normal about it. Your coffee’s sitting perfectly still on your desk while you’re technically moving faster than any bullet ever fired.

And that’s just the start. The whole solar system is screaming through the galaxy at something like 500,000 mph. We’re cosmic lint on a dust speck in a hurricane we can’t even see.

I mean regardless, it’s super weird. This planet evolved life, turned into smart apes which then concreted over the whole planet. It’s pretty nuts.

And now we’re building metal efigies of ourselves.

That’s what really gets me. We evolved from primates who figured out fire, and now we’re teaching silicon to recognise patterns and respond to prompts. We’re literally trying to recreate consciousness in machines. It’s like humanity looked at itself and decided to build a reflection that doesn’t need food or sleep.

The weird part is how we just... forget. Our ape brains can’t hold onto the cosmic vertigo for more than a few minutes. It’s too much. So we go back to our regular Tuesday problems while we’re hurtling through the void at speeds that would liquify us if we stopped suddenly.

This existence is strange, but then again what is strange? What would be considered normal? Does that even really exist? Probably not and it’s all completely subjective.

There’s no baseline for reality. We keep acting like there’s some correct way for conscious beings to exist. But there isn’t. It’s all just... this. Evolved apes, flying through space, building increasingly complicated systems to organise information and create more of ourselves in different forms.

Sometimes it hits you at 4 AM and you can’t unsee it. The absolute insanity of being a conscious arrangement of atoms aware of its own velocity through spacetime.

Then you go back to debugging code or watching TV or whatever you were doing. Because what else are you going to do?

The vertigo passes. But it always comes back. Guess it’s a reminder to not take yourself too seriously.