Jim Hopkins: Wills and bin Laden reveal our basic instincts

There were huge crowds - cheering, chanting, singing, waving flags, joyful and triumphant, happy to celebrate a glorious event. And then there was the wedding.

One wedding and a funeral; strange, this coincidence of opposites.

Odd that the marriage of a monarch and the death of a tyrant should come in such short order. This may be fearful symmetry writ large, an uncanny intersection of hope and happening.

Time, perhaps, to dust off that old copy of Nostradamus and see if these are propitious acts or harbingers of dark things stirring.

They could be either, though they're probably not - just random occurrences walking the passage of time. Yet we can still draw conclusions from our response to both - and we don't need old Nostri pops to tell us what they are.

How the world stirs us and the feelings things arouse come as much from our nature as our person. We're not just the people we think we are.

We're animals too, shaped by evolution as well as choice. And though we've escaped the kingdom we came from, it owns us still.

It's easy to forget who we were and the imprint of our ancient ages, all those tidal urges, impulses and imperatives, the savageries and terrors that lurk in our hippocampus.

We know animals have instincts hard-wired in them but we forget that dark nut of nature, the amygdala, buried at the bottom of our own brains.

Comfortable, insulated, part-liberated by reason, we forget how much we have in common with our pets.

And then there is a wedding and two billion of us clap and cheer and cheer even louder when they kiss. The tribe is united. We share the bond.

This is a primal wish incarnate. We are stirred by power and passion and shared symbols. We celebrate. And we are happily subordinate.

Because most of us are happy to be subordinate. We're happy to follow the leader of the pack. And there he is, with his bride.

Every roar of approval is a willing surrender. We crave leaders, we want to be lead. We give others dominion over us and willingly too, as the crowds in the Mall and a million places more made plain.

Most of us are perfectly content to follow. And cheer as we do.

No matter that the monarchy has been on home detention for centuries. No matter that the House of Windsor is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the House of Commons.

Its heirs and successors are the modern equivalents of our ancient chiefs. And the victor chief, the Alpha ape, still rules our hippocampus.

Speaking of which, but sotto voce, lest we vex the lemon-lipped, it's also clear that millions of women still go alpha leather for the Alpha male. This will not sit well with the dwindling ranks of feminism - and some survivors do endure, in sheltered workshops like the universities, National Radio and the Ministry of Education - but it is so.

Many a pauper would be wealthy today if they'd got a dollar each time someone said, "This is every girl's dream". Of course it is. And why not? Better a princess than a policy analyst, surely?

Diamonds trump desolation any day. And young Wills' wedding was the perfect opportunity to reiterate that primal fact.

Happily, the commentators did. "I am beside myself," gushed one BBC lady, confirming she'd spend the whole day without intelligent company. "This is such a fashion moment." Maybe so, although the notion of woman as an ornamental offering will not sit well with Germaine Greer.

"Let's hope she's got a big train and a big veil, said another, "Just for the drama".

And to remind us that we are a species, smart mammals with our own courtship rituals, mating displays and hard-wired wants, all given voice when one particular ceremony becomes a symbol for the imperatives compelling us all.

Sex and death, power and peril - these are primal forces in the caves of our consciousness. And if the hold that sex and power have over us were manifest in the wedding, so the grip of death and peril was confirmed when President Obama announced bin Laden had been killed.

Again, crowds gathered spontaneously to cheer and rejoice. Their jubilation came closer to the celebrations at the end of World War II than anything in between. The enemy was slain, the killer killed. Vengeance was ours. Victory confirmed virtue.

Our tribe had beaten his tribe. He was dead, we were not. It's the outcome of every battle we've ever fought. It's the story of history and the history of stories.

Every fable is a feeling netted. Our fantasies answer our needs. So do our celebrations. There are human truths evident in both. We yearn for moments that embody our hopes and extinguish our fears. Most of the time, we can only invent them. But sometimes - twice in the last seven days - our fables are fact. And we do as our amygdalas bid.

The thin Vermeer of civilisation may mask our deeper nature yet it lives within us. It is good. It is bad. It is both. But, most important of all, from savannah to city, from alpha to omega, it is real.