Nature’s Way, Ape Man’s Way.

By Black Cloud (Chief Poetic Justice Warrior).

with contributions from Ape X.

“It’s Nature’s Way of telling you something’s wrong.”—Spirit

“I want to sail away to a distant shore and make like an apeman.” —The Kinks

I. The Ballad of the Sentimental Species

In this late chapter of the Anthropocene, nothing unites us like a sentimental ballad insisting the Earth is trying to gently instruct us.

It’s a touching fantasy:

The glaciers melting just enough to tap us on the shoulder. The bees disappearing only to leave a helpful note. The forests erupting in flames as an educational demonstration.

We prefer our collapse with a hummable refrain—something to reassure us that if we only listen carefully, all will be mended.

The folk hymn to gentle warnings—earnest, melodic, and doomed.

II. Enter Ape X: The Loincloth Option

While the conservationist choirs tune up, Ape X proposes a different solution:

Become a bent conservative.

Picture it:

A cohort of old-guard reactionaries, so thoroughly exhausted by defending the decaying ramparts that they decide to embrace the progressive parade—but as an ironic art project. They declare themselves a recognized minority—the Endangered Traditionalist—file the paperwork, and immediately start issuing cultural impact statements. They adopt rainbow slogans, then quietly focus on the only truly subversive activity left: reproduction in bulk.

Ape X writes:

Perhaps it’s time to accept that nature exhibits malleability as well as blunt warnings. If you can’t beat them, outbreed them—and do it in costume.

Their soundtrack? Spirit’s earnest croon, or the more exuberant confession of Ray Davies:

🎶

I don’t feel safe in this world no more

I don’t want to die in a nuclear war

I want to sail away to a distant shore

And make like an apeman.

🎶

The escapist anthem of the sentimental primitivist—half joke, half prophecy.

III. Survival as Satire

This, Ape X insists, is not simply a stunt—it is a survival tactic:

When every institution demands you become a performance of yourself, you oblige—but on your own terms. You become a living meme: part ecological cautionary tale, part fertility cult. You trade sincerity for parody because it is the only camouflage left.

Imagine a future in which entire suburban enclaves are declared Heritage Conservationist Zones, complete with interpretive signage, tax credits, and nightly bonfires.

No one is quite sure if it’s a joke.

That’s how you know it’s working.

IV. Poetic Justice, With Extra Teeth

It is tempting to mock both camps:

The folk singers who believe nature is a kindly tutor. The ironists who think we can ride out the collapse in a banana hammock.

But here is the poetic justice: both are nature’s way.

If the locust must swarm, the fungus must bloom, the virus must mutate—so too must the human animal:

Compose ballads about balance. Dream of coconuts. Build entire ideological sandcastles out of nostalgia and panic.

Our illusions are as natural as our extinctions.

The only difference is that illusions come with a chorus.

V. The Last Chorus

So sing it, if you must.

Swing in your coconut trees, if you can.

File your paperwork for bent conservatism while there’s still time.

Just understand:

When the tide comes for you, it will not be humming your song.

And yet, in some perverse way, your chorus belongs to it. —Black Cloud

Interpretive Center, subject to interpretation.