Apish dwelling in the Shadowlands of ambiguity, between linguistic literalness and linguistic metaphor, was for making life easier. Whilst claiming his cultural rights as worker-boss and enjoyer of art, the evolutionary psychologist could always suppose to himself that "ape" is just a metaphor for human life.
However, convenience is preferred for its ability to buy a sense of superiority cheaply for its adherents.
"Ape" can be a term appropriated more literally, too -- as within domestic relations, in such instances as when the urge to rape and decimate appears from anywhere, and the adherent feels the need to give in to his lower impulses, without cultural mediation.
Exploiting the ambiguity between literal conceptualization of humanity as ape, and figurative conceptualization (as, for example, when he means to make use of civilisation's apparatus of legal, social or financial power) suits our social Darwinist adherent very much. This approach justifies the ape in whatever he feels like doing, and makes him very comfortable with himself.
The possibility that others may view his antics in a rather more perspicacious way, as being revelatory of the aesthetics and thought processes of an ape, passes way above his devolved consciousness.
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