Exordia

by Seth Dickinson

“You want the generalizations,” Ssrin says. “Since nuance and complexity are hard on your brain.” “Exactly.” Nodding vigorously. “Generalize me.” “You’re a species of gangly distance runners, adapted to sweat and throw stuff. You like watching each other fuck. A few million years ago you developed culture in the form of survival techniques, and whoever learned culture the fastest could have the most babies. Your brains started to swell and reorganize themselves for cultural learning. The development of culture and the development of large brains drove each other in a feedback loop. Your brain grew as large as it could before exhausting the mother’s supply of calories—” “I thought it got too big to fit through the hips.” “A myth, as far as I can tell. You could have much juicier hips. Don’t interrupt. You are wired for small social groups, so all human organization degenerates into power trading and gossip between a tractably sized elite, no matter the stakes. You have two sources of authority—dominance and prestige—which conflict in interesting ways. Something killed most of you, and so your survivors are very inbred. Very similar. Your meat smells the same.”