By sliding the animal’s feelings up and down, an animal’s software uses the feelings like reins to keep the animal’s goals and the genes’ goals perfectly aligned.

Humans had also gained the superpower of imagination, making them the world’s first animal that could fantasize and tell stories and dream of places they had never been.

The problem is that genes themselves aren’t alive, they’re just a force of nature—and forces of nature don’t give a shit about anything. Gravity wants to smoosh matter together, so that’s what it does. It has no concern for the well-being of the atoms it smooshes.

They evolved into a variety of hominid species, all of whom have since been discontinued, except one—a saucy one called homo sapiens. For them, the advancements in intelligence proved to be a major survival asset, so their cognitive capacity rapidly increased, developing into an array of shiny new tools that no animal had ever possessed before.... See more

The Primitive Mind doesn’t care about you any more than gravity cares about atoms.

When he thinks about it—and he does think about it, sometimes—he wonders whether this is all a mistake and he ended up in the wrong head. Because he can’t help but notice that next to him at all times is a hectic ball of orange fuzz that was living here when he moved in.

Let’s call our ancient animal software, which is still very much in our heads—our Primitive Mind. And let’s call this highly advanced, independent new consciousness our Higher Mind.

Meanwhile, the Primitive Mind doesn’t know the Higher Mind exists. The Primitive Mind doesn’t even know the Primitive Mind exists. The Primitive Mind is software—programmed by evolution to serve the will of your genes. In its hand, the Primitive Mind carries your primal flame—the raw will of your animal genes to survive.

These superpowers took their place in the human mind as powerful new enhancements.