on being an ape

Science itself teaches the male his destiny. But why does the male refuse to conform to it? The sperm that succeeds is broken down by the ova -- broken down and reformulated. This is the quintessential example of shamanisation (or what Hegel, in his wisdom, calls "sublation"). In a shamanic sense, we can say that the winner sperm becomes "dissociated" and that its materials are reappropriated for something other than it, for something beyond what it had been.

This, by the way is the same principle by which the "Overman" (in Nietzschean terminology) is constructed -- not by being what he is, but by going BEYOND himself, by becoming something more than what he was. This, by the way, does not mean chimping around and pretending to be the social darwinistic "winner" -- the ape at the top of the castle! (a horrible miscarriage of interpretation, if ever there was one):

All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and ye want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than surpass man?

What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame.

Here is more about the shamanic destruction of "what is" that is supposed to lead to something beyond the currently favoured monkey identification of Western humanity:

I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth of the Superman may hereafter arrive.

I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going.

I love him who laboureth and inventeth, that he may build the house for the Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant: for thus seeketh he his own down-going.

It's sort of hard to get across, though, that Neechy doesn't want us to play at being monkeys. He wants us to 'shamanise'.

It's a hard message to take, since the male would rather be a monkey than create beyond himself.