Homo Sapiens, Birds of Prey in Sheep’s Clothing

I watch the wind pick at the dust of our world and think: we are both more and less than we claim. We proclaim ourselves the stewards of Earth, masters of logic, creatures of divine reason—but in our bones, we are still Homo sapiens. We are no angels. We are animals. Animals who tell stories. Animals who sin. Animals who build cages in the image of their fear.

From the beginning, we set ourselves apart. We drew lines: us, them; human, animal; civilized, savage. We erected human exceptionalism as though it were both shield and crown. But anthropology teaches us humility: that the traits we prize—language, reason, morality—emerged from the same evolutionary soil that produced claws, competition, violence. We are flawed, because flaws lie in our lineage.

In studying kinship systems, descent, and ritual, I learned that humans are bound by webs of obligation—the same webs that trap us. We imagine ourselves free, but we live in systems of power, of exchange, of social debts. We worship our myths, craft our norms, pretend they flow from moral truths, while they are often the scaffolding of dominance.

We celebrate monogamy as the ideal. We promise fidelity, we sanctify vows, we judge those who deviate. And I too—deep in my heart—agree, as though love must be tethered to the sacred. But anthropology reveals that monogamy is not universal, nor inevitable. In fewer than 10 % of mammal species does exclusive pairing truly dominate (Edgar, 2016). Among primates, only a minority live in genuinely monogamous pair bonds; many show flexible systems of relationships, serial bonds, or polygyny (Schacht et al., 2019). Human societies, too, mirror that variation: monogamy is normative in many cultures, but exceptions, affairs, divorce, even polygamous forms persist. Monogamy may be a cultural ideal layered onto deeper biological and social complexity.

Yes, monogamy can bind us, give us stability. But to enforce it as though it were nature is to wage war against the more tangled reality of human nature. We punish, shame, exile those whose desires diverge from the made-norm. We raise laws on foundations of illusions.

We are flawed because we forget that our strongest morals are built atop weaker instincts. Jealousy, desire, fear, pride—all evolutionary shadows. Religions speak of sin, of original rupture; philosophy speaks of reason, of ideal forms. But both often paper over the rift that lies within — the rift between what we wish ourselves to be and what we are.

We pretend morality distinguishes us from beasts, but beasts also protect, kill, compete, mate. We weave language, but animals communicate. We build temples, but ants build cities. The divide we proclaim is narrower than we admit.

We desire monogamy because it asks less of us than infinity. It is a manageable myth—a vow small enough for our mortal hands. Yet human history shows us that many practices are born from social pressure, inheritance systems, property inheritance, and power relations, not from a flawless moral blueprint. (Solomon et al., 2020).

So I live with the tension: believing in love, in trust, in fidelity, while knowing those are fragile, imperfect edifices over a foundation of animal instinct and social construction. I do not surrender idealism—I embrace it with open eyes.

Because to face our flaws is not to despair — it is to see the raw clay we are sculpted from. And perhaps from that ragged clay, we can mold something more honest, more kind, more real.

If humanity is flawed—and it is—then let us not hide in illusions. Let us walk in the twilight with awareness, humility, and love, knowing that we are not gods. We are sapiens: thinking, suffering, dreaming animals, trying to craft meaning in a world that never gives guarantees.