Costly Cures: Harsh Treatments Appear to Uphold Social Trust

We spend the beginning and end of our lives pathetic, weak and vulnerable. There is a limited window of time in which we are dangerous, vengeful, intelligent, and resourceful enough to be threatening.

We have no armor, no fur, no claws. We freeze to death in the cold and burn in the sun. We can't breathe underwater, nor can we fly. Being bipedal we can't hunt anything by chasing it and beating it to death; we leverage deception, surprise and traps and are quickly fucked when anything uses the same tactics on us.

We're good at leveraging technology. That's the only reason we're apex. If we can't exploit some other creature in time to adapt to the current situation, we're dead.