Subtitle: Why we are the way we are: The new science of evolutionary psychology
(Book Review)Started: March 4, 2018
Finished: July 14, 2021
Summary
This book is about evolutionary psychology which is an attempt to explain human psychology by looking at natural selection.
It was originally published in 1994. (Possibly parts of it are out of date now? I don’t know.) The author is a popular science writer, and so the book is meant to bring the field of evolutionary psychology to a wider audience.
The book also uses Darwin’s own life as an illustration of the principles of evolutionary psychology, so it’s part biography as well as part science.
Robert Wright can write well, so the book is highly readable. But it’s debatable whether or not knowing all this stuff is good for you. (Do you feel better or worse knowing that all your feelings and emotions are genetically determined?)
But the book really made me think a lot. (136 words)
[That's me attempting to be concise. If you want my usual long-winded version, continue on to The Full Review]
The Full Review
This is a popular science book, and if you've been following this blog for any length of time, you'll know that I almost never read popular science. My reading is almost exclusively fiction, history, religion, and (for professional development reasons) linguistics and TESOL.
If left to my own devices, I would never have picked up this book. But as it happens, there's a bit of a story about how this ended up on my reading list.
If left to my own devices, I would never have picked up this book. But as it happens, there's a bit of a story about how this ended up on my reading list.
Why I Read This Book
You see, it all started about 4 years ago, when a group of us at work decided to form a book club for the purpose of reading literature together.
Shortly afterwards, I realized that a lot of people at work were trying to read their way through the DELTA Reading List, and so I thought that if we were all going to read these books anyway, we might as well form a second book club so we could discuss them. And so we started a second book club for professional development.
Now, two book clubs is enough to keep anyone busy. But one person, Ben, wasn't satisfied. He wanted to start a third book club for reading general nonfiction. And he started asking around to see if anyone was interested.
We were all ambivalent. 3 book clubs at once?
And yet, when it became clear that Ben was going to go ahead and start this thing anyway, a bunch of us tentatively said we would try it with him. After all, 3 books a month isn't that much, right? It wasn't that I didn't have the time. I had the time, I just needed to get some self control and stop wasting so much time watching TV, and wasting time on Youtube and social media, et cetera.
(This was 3 years ago, before I became a parent. Nowadays, I have very little spare time to myself. But back when I was single, it was different. The time was there, it was just the focus and will power that were lacking.)
So, we all decided to give Ben's book club a try.
Now, what book to read? Nonfiction is, after all, a very broad category. Being a history guy, I submitted my own list of history books I've always been meaning to get around to (*1) . But my choices didn't win the day. Ben set up a Facebook poll, and The Moral Animal got the most votes.
So, we were reading The Moral Animal. "Okay," I thought. "Not my first choice, but I can still give it a try."
Now, the big problem was that we had voted for this book without any thought as to how we were going to get a copy. And it's almost impossible to find books in Vietnam. (If you're new to this blog, I'm currently teaching English in Vietnam.) There are some bookstores that sell English books in Vietnam, but it's almost all cheaply reprinted classics and YA. There was no chance we were going to find this book in Vietnam.
The solution is to find a pirated PDF copy off of the Internet. And for this I always rely on my friends. I've never been tech savvy enough to know how to (safely) find pirated material online, but some of my younger co-workers are quite good at it. So someone found a copy online, and I brought it to the printer shop in Vietnam and had them print out a copy for me.
One of the nice things about Vietnam is that printers shops are everywhere, and they are quite accustomed to print out PDFs and bind them up like books. People do it all the time here (*2). The disadvantage, though, is that the resulting "book" comes out on printer paper, and so the pages are huge, and when it all gets bound up and stapled together, it's this huge monstrosity that is very hard to conveniently take with you anywhere. So it's okay for reading at home, but it's difficult to lug around to the coffee shop. And coffee shops are where I get 90% of my reading done. (In my apartment, I find it very hard to avoid the temptation to turn on the TV or the computer.) So, that was going to be an obstacle to finishing the book. That, plus the fact that we had two other book clubs going.
I started this book back in March 4, 2018.
I mentioned it in this April, 2018 vlog about the books I'm currently reading: (Watch from 6:03)
But we never did end up discussing it at Ben's book club. We had set a date of May 14 for the book club meeting, but almost no one had finished it by that time.
Among other reasons, I think part of the problem was that May 14th was over 2 months from the start date of March 4. And 2 months is too much time. In the other book clubs, we usually meet every month, which gives everyone a tight deadline and keeps them focused. If the deadline is too far away, it just encourages procrastination. At least, that's what happened to me. I made a reasonable sized dent into the book--I got 180 pages into it. But then I got distracted by other stuff.
On May 14th, 2018, Ben posted in the group Facebook page:
Update! Most of us are still ploughing through the book. Does early June after the 3rd work for you all? I think we'll read something shorter next time!
We all agreed to the postponement. And then, that was the last anyone ever heard of the book club. Neither Ben nor anyone else posted anything else in the group, and the whole thing got quietly dropped. (*3)
And so, the book sat half-read on my shelf for the next 3 years.
And so, the book sat half-read on my shelf for the next 3 years.
During the past 3 years, there were a few times when I almost moved this book over to my abandoned book list.
Except that the 180 pages that I had read had made a huge impression on me. It changed the way I view most of my social interactions throughout the day, and also changed the way I view my own internal feelings about what happened to me during the day. It gave me new insight into a lot of aspects of my behavior, including this very blog (*4).
Except that the 180 pages that I had read had made a huge impression on me. It changed the way I view most of my social interactions throughout the day, and also changed the way I view my own internal feelings about what happened to me during the day. It gave me new insight into a lot of aspects of my behavior, including this very blog (*4).
So if the ideas in this book have had that big of an impact on my thought process, I needed a space to talk about them, right? If this book was going to influence how I viewed human nature, and thus influenced any number of things that I'd be talking about on this blog, I should at least acknowledge where that influence came from, and finish the book.
Well, it took me 3 years to get around to it. But it's actually not a difficult or intimidating book. Part of the problem is that (as mentioned above) my copy was large and inconvenient to lug around with me to work or coffee shops, where I get most of my reading done. (I think if I had had a normal sized edition of this book, I would have just thrown it in my backpack and finished it 3 long ago.)
Part of the problem is that my currently reading list just kept getting bigger and bigger due to my lack of self-discipline--I have the bad habit of starting new books before finishing old books. I was able to juggle this reading list to a certain extent back when I was still single, but then after the baby was born, I lost my time to try to juggle multiple books at once. And then it was a matter of trying to arrange my "currently reading" list into some sort of order and trying to knock the books out one at a time.
So it took me a while to get back around to this one. But then I finally I restarted it the week ending on July 4. I decided that after 3 years, I should just go back to the beginning and start over again. Which I did. And now, here I am with my review. Finally.
So it took me a while to get back around to this one. But then I finally I restarted it the week ending on July 4. I decided that after 3 years, I should just go back to the beginning and start over again. Which I did. And now, here I am with my review. Finally.
The Review
Okay, confession time. I am fully aware that the past few years my book reviews have gotten way too long. I usually want to talk about all of my reactions to the book--get all my thoughts and feelings out there--and lately I've been indulging this impulse too much, and as a result I've been writing these massive blog posts.
But, in this case, I can't possibly write down all my reactions. There was something on every page that I reacted to strongly. If I wrote down all my thoughts and feelings, I'd end up with a blog post longer than the size of the book. For the purposes of this book review, I'm just going to have to talk about this book in very general terms. That means that there are a lot of thoughts in my head that will never find expression in this post. Somehow I'll have to make my peace with that (*5).
But even though it would be impossible to talk exhaustively about all my reactions to this book, don't expect a short review. This is still going to be a long train-wreck of a review in which I ramble on and on. (Sorry, I can't help myself.)
Let's start at the beginning. This book was originally published in 1994. Its aim is to explain human psychology in terms of evolution. Why do we do all of the crazy stuff that we do? It's because of centuries of evolution.
Robert Wright, according to his bio, is a journalist, not a scientist, by trade. He's studied and written a lot about science, so presumably he knows his stuff, but the purpose of this book is not to advance any brand new theories, but instead to bring the existing theories of evolutionary psychology to a wider audience. In other words, it's a popular science book.
Whether you agree with the book or not, there's no denying that it's well-written, easy to understand, and entertaining to read. (Although sometimes the message of the book can be troubling, but more on that later.)
One of the things that makes the book entertaining is that Robert Wright decides to tell the story of Darwin's life through the prism of evolutionary psychology. After all, Darwin was just as much a victim of his genes as the rest of us, so various episodes from Darwin's life (his decision to marry, his concern about his status, his grief over the death of his daughter, etc) can be used to illustrate various aspects of evolutionary psychology.
Interweaving the science with the biography of Darwin gives the book a nice little narrative, which makes it all the more interesting to humanities majors like myself. It's not a thorough biography of Darwin by any means, but it does pick out some interesting moments in Darwin's life.
But the really mindblowing parts of the book are the assertations about how much our evolutionary heritage dictates our behavior.
To be honest, I'm not really sure what my frame of mind was reading this book. I guess I was agnostic. I was open to the possibility that human beings might have been created in the image of God, but not at all certain about it.
I believed in evolution, of course (*6). But I never thought to deeply about how evolution shaped my everyday behavior. I guess I had some idea that evolution only governed our more animalistic impulses--the desire for sex, for example. But I believed all the higher functioning of the brain was beyond the providence of evolution--art, music, morality, friendship, altruism, etc.,-- all this was unexplainable from an evolutionary standpoint (*7)
I believed in evolution, of course (*6). But I never thought to deeply about how evolution shaped my everyday behavior. I guess I had some idea that evolution only governed our more animalistic impulses--the desire for sex, for example. But I believed all the higher functioning of the brain was beyond the providence of evolution--art, music, morality, friendship, altruism, etc.,-- all this was unexplainable from an evolutionary standpoint (*7)
Robert Wright, however, argues that evolution can explain everything about human nature. And his book made a lot of sense. He pointed out a lot of irrational behaviors that humans engage in, and then point out that as illogical as these behaviors are, there are perfectly good evolutionary reasons why we these behaviors are ingrained in us.
I found it absolutely mindblowing.
 |
| Like, this was me constantly while reading this book. |
Now, some of the reason this book blew me away is probably because I don't normally read about science or psychology, so this book was all the more shocking to me because of my ignorance.
...and yet, I don't want to overstate my naivete too much. I had definitely heard some of these arguments before. If you spend a lot of time on Youtube (as I do), then you're probably familiar with a lot of the content of this book from listening to Youtube intellectuals. Many of the arguments of this book will be familiar to people who regularly listen to Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Jordan Peterson (*8) or Sam Harris (*9) on Youtube.
And in addition to those 4, I had picked up other bits and pieces from reading stuff on the Internet over the years, that also popped up in this book.
For example, somewhere years ago I read an article about the evolutionary explanations for why males are so aggressive in seeking sex, and females are so reversed about sex.
For example, somewhere years ago I read an article about the evolutionary explanations for why males are so aggressive in seeking sex, and females are so reversed about sex.
(The short answer is that a man has the potential to spread his genes into many different offspring over the course of one year, whereas a female's ability to reproduce is limited to one project per 9 months, so the female has to be more selective about her partner. But that's just the short answer. Robert Wright spends 150 pages expanding on all the in and outs about sex, romance and marriage from an evolutionary perspective.)
And, around the time that it became clear that politics in America was more about tribal identity than about the rational discourse... around that time, I started seeing a lot of articles on the Internet about how we humans are actually not as rational as we think we are, and we have all sorts of evolutionary biases that cause us to value evidence from within our group and discount evidence from outside our group. (And all of that is a major theme in Robert Wright's book as well.)
And, around the time that it became clear that politics in America was more about tribal identity than about the rational discourse... around that time, I started seeing a lot of articles on the Internet about how we humans are actually not as rational as we think we are, and we have all sorts of evolutionary biases that cause us to value evidence from within our group and discount evidence from outside our group. (And all of that is a major theme in Robert Wright's book as well.)
[Sidenote: Since this book was published way back in 1994, I almost wonder if it's actually because of this book that these ideas are so popular now. Were Dawkins, Pinker, Peterson, and Harris influenced by this book? (*10) But then again, given that Robert Wright is by his own admission only acting as a popularizer of ideas already out there in the scientific community, it's more than possible that they got these same ideas from another avenue. (*11)]
Anyway, the point being that some of these ideas were not completely new to me. I had picked up some of this in dribs and drabs through various magazine articles and Youtube videos. But in spite of that, having it all laid out in a systematic way made me think about the effect of evolution on my psyche in a depth that I never had before.
And, a lot of this book actually was completely new to me.
The basic idea of the book is this:
We think that we are in control of our actions. But actually we are not. Our feelings are dictating our actions. And we're not in control of our feelings. Our genes are manipulating our feelings in order to maximize our potential of passing on our genes to healthy offspring.
We think that we are in control of our actions. But actually we are not. Our feelings are dictating our actions. And we're not in control of our feelings. Our genes are manipulating our feelings in order to maximize our potential of passing on our genes to healthy offspring.
You think you're really in love with that girl? That's actually just your genes telling you that she would be a good genetic match for potential offspring.
You think you're really friends with that guy? That's just your genes telling you that a strong friendship could potentially save your life one day if you ever got into trouble.
You think you're really grieving the death of your child? That's just your genes upset about the loss of a vehicle for passing on your genetic legacy.
You think you're really grieving the death of your child? That's just your genes upset about the loss of a vehicle for passing on your genetic legacy.
Yeah, I know. A lot of the stuff in this book is really unpalatable. It depressed me just as much as it fascinated me.
Sam Harris was talking about some of this stuff with a guest on his podcast one time (sorry, I don't remember which episode), and Harris remarked to the audience: "By the way, the jury is still out on whether knowing this stuff is good for you or not."
Sam Harris was talking about some of this stuff with a guest on his podcast one time (sorry, I don't remember which episode), and Harris remarked to the audience: "By the way, the jury is still out on whether knowing this stuff is good for you or not."
And that's how I feel. I'm not entirely sure I wanted to know a lot of what was in this book. I'm also not sure I like this deterministic view of human nature.
But there's no denying it has great explanatory value.
The basic problem with human nature is that we all do a lot of really crazy stuff and we can't explain why we do it.
Why do men spend so much time and effort seeking out sex when they know it is only a few minutes of fleeting pleasure?
Why do men spend so much time and effort seeking out sex when they know it is only a few minutes of fleeting pleasure?
Why are we so obsessed with our own personal status? I mean, logically we know that our own individual ego is meaningless to the greater universe. So why do people obsess over it?
Why are people so obsessed with the likes, comments and views that they get on social media? In most case, it doesn't have any tangible value to them, so why do they care?
(Actually for that matter, why do I spend so much time writing this very blog? I don't get any money from it.)
And why do people get irrationally angry at inanimate objects? (Why do people get angry at their computers?)
Why do parents love their own child more than other children? (On a strictly rational level, each child should be equally valuable.) And for that matter, why do people feel deeper love for their children than for any of their human contacts?
Why do we like gossip so much? Why do we spend so much time watching drama videos on Youtube?
Why do parents love their own child more than other children? (On a strictly rational level, each child should be equally valuable.) And for that matter, why do people feel deeper love for their children than for any of their human contacts?
Why do we like gossip so much? Why do we spend so much time watching drama videos on Youtube?
Why is there so much sex and violence on TV? (I love watching action movies, but in purely logical terms I could never explain to you what the appeal of violent movies is. All I know is that it appeals to something inside me.)
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You know as well as I do that the list of irrational human behaviors goes on and on.
This is a problem that has long been observed by humans. The apostle Paul, for example, famously said " I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing" (Romans 7:19).
Yes, me too. But why? I mean, logically it would seem counterintuitive, right? Why don't I just do what I want to do?
Yes, me too. But why? I mean, logically it would seem counterintuitive, right? Why don't I just do what I want to do?
Freud also realized the problem.
Robert Wright claims that Freud was on the right track when he realized that much of the human psyche is not under our conscious control. Freud realized that there are unconscious forces working in our brain that we aren't aware of that cause us to act in ways that our conscious self can't rationalize. But what Freud didn't realize is that this is actually because of centuries of evolution (and not because of repressed memories and Oedipal complexes.)
Evolutionary psychology works as a way to untangle all these irrational things that we do. Why do we do all of this stuff? Because it made sense in our ancestral environment.
Now, the caveat to all of this stuff is that you have to think about it in terms of the environment in which our ancestors evolved. Not all of it makes sense in the environment in which we live now, and that's a big part of the problem with human nature. As Robert Wright says:
Now, the caveat to all of this stuff is that you have to think about it in terms of the environment in which our ancestors evolved. Not all of it makes sense in the environment in which we live now, and that's a big part of the problem with human nature. As Robert Wright says:
...whatever the ancestral environment was like, it wasn't much like the environment we're in now. We aren't designed to stand on crowded platforms, or to live in suburbs next door to people we never talk to, or to get hired or fired, or to watch the evening news. This disjunction between the contexts of our design and of our lives is probably responsible for much psychopathology, as well as much suffering of a less dramatic sort.
So it's no good trying to figure out how natural selection makes sense in the modern world. Quite often it doesn't. But it would have made sense when we lived in a small close-knit group of hunter-gatherers.
The example Robert Wright himself gives of natural selection gone awry is pornography. Pornography can become a huge waste of time for men and doesn't help spread their genes in any way. But you can't blame that on natural selection, because there's no way natural selection could have anticipated modern technology. Natural selection gave men a strong sex drive in order to spread their genes, but the invention of pornography has now altered the environment and screwed up our behavior.
Same with sugar addiction. We have a sweet tooth because fruits are good for us in the natural environment. But natural selection didn't anticipate the invention of refined sugar and processed foods.
This book doesn't talk about social media at all because it was written in 1994. But it's very easy to extrapolate what Robert Wright says to explain social media addiction. We crave the approval and status recognition from our peers, because in the ancestral environment higher status meant a greater share of the resources and better selection of mates. So this addiction to status feedback is how social media companies have hacked our brains to become addicted to meaningless status signifiers such as comments, likes, and shares from people we don't even know.
Same with sugar addiction. We have a sweet tooth because fruits are good for us in the natural environment. But natural selection didn't anticipate the invention of refined sugar and processed foods.
This book doesn't talk about social media at all because it was written in 1994. But it's very easy to extrapolate what Robert Wright says to explain social media addiction. We crave the approval and status recognition from our peers, because in the ancestral environment higher status meant a greater share of the resources and better selection of mates. So this addiction to status feedback is how social media companies have hacked our brains to become addicted to meaningless status signifiers such as comments, likes, and shares from people we don't even know.
Okay, I'm rambling now. What was my main point?
The main point is that the evolutionary psychology in this book offers a lot of very good explanations to explain a lot of the mysteries of human behavior. So it's very satisfying in that sense. But it's also in equal measures depressing to think that your behavior is completely determined by your genes. So the whole time I was reading, I alternated between finding the stuff in this book satisfying as an explanation, and also desperately wanting it not to be true.
Additionally, it does have to be admitted that the explanatory value of evolutionary psychology varies from case to case. Each chapter will usually follow a similar pattern. Robert Wright will start off strong, describing some human behavior for which there seems to be no other explanation other than natural selection.
For example, the male desire to have sex with as many women as possible. How else to explain this except through the obvious observation that this directly results in the spreading of genes?
Or the irrational level of love that parents feel only for their own children. How else to explain this except through the obvious observation that our children contain our genes?
But then, after starting out strong, each chapter will then move further and further into more and more speculation about other human behaviors that seem less obvious and more speculative.
And then, finally, we get to the stuff that even Robert Wright admits that evolutionary psychology can't explain. At least not yet. Things like homosexuality. Or suicide. Or extreme grief. (It makes evolutionary sense for parents to care about their children while they're still alive, but what evolutionary purpose does crippling grief serve after the child is already dead?)
And then, finally, we get to the stuff that even Robert Wright admits that evolutionary psychology can't explain. At least not yet. Things like homosexuality. Or suicide. Or extreme grief. (It makes evolutionary sense for parents to care about their children while they're still alive, but what evolutionary purpose does crippling grief serve after the child is already dead?)
And indeed, while reading this book, I was also making my own mental list of human behaviors that seemed strange from an evolutionary psychology point of view. Like, I understand people's irrational attachment to their children, but what about people's irrational attachment to their pets? Where does that come from?
Or, even putting aside homosexuality, what about all the heterosexual fetishes and kinks that are not designed to maximize the chances of egg fertilization?
Now both of those are just off the top of my head. And I suspect that if I did some research, there's some article out there already dealing with both of these issues from an evolutionary psychology perspective. I haven't researched this thoroughly, and I'm not an expert.
But the point is, as you're reading this book, you're constantly thinking to yourself: "Oh my gosh! This makes so much sense! This explains everything!" And then two seconds later. "Wait a minute. What about..."
And it's like that for every page, which is why (as I said above) it would be impossible for me to completely give my thoughts on everything in this book.
(It's a pity that Ben's book club fell apart. Because this book really should be discussed on a chapter by chapter basis. If we had met up for coffee after each chapter, we could have gotten so much discussion out of it!)
All in all, though, even though some of the arguments in this book were better than others, I found the case for evolutionary psychology to be persuasive because:
1) There are definitely some elements of human behavior (sex drive, etc), where evolutionary psychology seems to be the obvious explanation. And then once you accept that evolution is shaping our behavior in some instances, it's not clear to me that you can reject it in others? Can you take this stuff piecemeal for some aspects of human behavior and not for others, or do you have to accept it as an everything or nothing package?
2) There is an awful lot of irrational human behavior. Even in cases where the evolutionary psychological explanation is lacking, it seems that there has to be some explanation for why we do so many of the illogical things that we do. So if not evolution, then what?
1) There are definitely some elements of human behavior (sex drive, etc), where evolutionary psychology seems to be the obvious explanation. And then once you accept that evolution is shaping our behavior in some instances, it's not clear to me that you can reject it in others? Can you take this stuff piecemeal for some aspects of human behavior and not for others, or do you have to accept it as an everything or nothing package?
2) There is an awful lot of irrational human behavior. Even in cases where the evolutionary psychological explanation is lacking, it seems that there has to be some explanation for why we do so many of the illogical things that we do. So if not evolution, then what?
I suppose you could posit that there's a demon who's trying to tempt you into doing all of this illogical stuff. (And this was the explanation that I was raised with in the church.) But I don't find that explanation satisfying as an adult.
Okay, that's my review in general terms. I'm going to comment on a few other aspects of this book down below. Like I said, I'm not going to try to talk about everything, but I'll comment on a few things.
Other Random Thoughts
Reservations
I don't know, I may have fallen for this book too easily. I tend to do that whenever I read something new. (I'm always influenced by what I'm reading at the moment. Give me another couple years and I'll have found a new philosophy.)
It struck me that part of the reason this book wowed me as much as it did was because it articulated the problem so well. The problem is that we humans do a lot of strange things. Why do we do all these crazy things?
And then, once I was focused on the problem, I was eager to accept any solution Robert Wright could give me. So perhaps in that respect I was overly wowed by this book. Perhaps other explanations are out there?
And then, once I was focused on the problem, I was eager to accept any solution Robert Wright could give me. So perhaps in that respect I was overly wowed by this book. Perhaps other explanations are out there?
It also got me thinking a bit when Robert Wright talked about Freud. Freud's ideas were hugely influential in his own day, but nowadays nobody takes them seriously. In another 100 years, will there be yet another paradigm? (I'm not saying evolution will be disproved, but maybe the explanatory power of evolution will be seen to be more limited? I mean, who knows, right?)
The Evolutionary Settings
I should make it clear that Robert Wright isn't arguing that everything is determined by our genes. Rather, it's determined by how our genes interact with our environment. Robert Wright believes that our genes have equipped our brains with different settings, and once the brain realizes what kind of environment it's in, the settings get flipped accordingly.
For example, males aren't born with "high status" or "low status" genes. But once the human brain figures out where we are in the hierarchy, then the switches get flipped to a certain setting, and we start to behave in high status or low status ways. (Robert Wright believes that these switches get solidified in adolescence, because in the ancestral environment our status was unlikely to change after that.)
For example, males aren't born with "high status" or "low status" genes. But once the human brain figures out where we are in the hierarchy, then the switches get flipped to a certain setting, and we start to behave in high status or low status ways. (Robert Wright believes that these switches get solidified in adolescence, because in the ancestral environment our status was unlikely to change after that.)
The different switches of the brain get used to explain a lot of things in this book, actually.
It reminded me of Chomsky's Universal Grammar, and how Chomsky and his followers believed that the human brain is already programmed with the grammar, but the universal grammar comes with a lot of settings, and we just need exposure to our mother tongue in order for the switches to get flipped for the various parameters of our language.
...and speaking of Chomsky, one of the criticisms that Vyvyan Evans made against Chomsky's theories in The Language Myth was that supposedly the DNA couldn't carry all the intricate detailed information that would be necessary for Universal Grammar. But Robert Wright is ascribing a lot of very detailed human behavior to our genes. So which is it? Is Evans wrong or is Wright wrong?
...and speaking of Chomsky, one of the criticisms that Vyvyan Evans made against Chomsky's theories in The Language Myth was that supposedly the DNA couldn't carry all the intricate detailed information that would be necessary for Universal Grammar. But Robert Wright is ascribing a lot of very detailed human behavior to our genes. So which is it? Is Evans wrong or is Wright wrong?
The Problem of Sex
I wish I would have read this book back when it first came out in 1994. It would have saved me a lot of trouble.
I grew up in a religious environment where the sexual urge was described in moral terms but not in biological terms. For example, we were taught that when sexual thoughts enter into your brain, that was because Satan put them there. There was very little discussion about the different sexual urges between men and woman, because the sexual urge was simply ascribed to Satan.
When I got older, I rejected the view that consensual sex had a moral dimension. If two people want to have sex with each other, who are they hurting?
I was, in retrospect, terribly naive about the sexual differences between men and women. I realized that women had different sex organs than men, but assumed that their minds functioned the same way mine did. I mean, why wouldn't it? We were both human after all. So I assumed that once you got rid of the religious hang-ups surrounding sex, casual sex would be just as appealing to women as it was to men.
I also hung out with feminist friends who believed that the idea that men were more desirous of sex than woman was in itself sexist, and was used to create a double-standard around sexual activity. (Men who had sex were studs, women who had sex were sluts, etc.)
As a result of this naivete, I spent my 20s confused about what women wanted. And in addition to the general confusion and frustration, I regret to say that I hurt the feelings of a couple of women who associated sex with commitment. I couldn't understand why they didn't regard the sex as being just as meaningless as I did.
[Some of those confused feelings spilled over into my review of Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, which, among other things, is about free love.]
Robert Wright spends 150 pages trying to explain the different male and female attitudes towards sex and their biological reasons, and I feel like I understand the whole thing much better after reading this book.
Robert Wright is also aware that this view is going to make him very unpopular among feminists who believe that it's dangerous to say that men and woman have different sexual urges. So he lays down his arguments carefully, but he doesn't back away from it.
Put me on team Robert Wright for this particular controversy. My anecdotal experience jives with what he's saying.
Actually on the topic of free love, I remember a passage from when I was reading Emma Goldman's autobiography years ago:
From Chapter 16:
From Chapter 16:
Another Reitzel "friend" introduced himself as a brewer from Cincinnati. He moved closer to me and began to talk of sex. He had heard that I was the "great champion of free love" in the United States. He was delighted to see that I was not only clever, as I had just proved, but also young and charming, not at all like the rigid blue-stocking he had imagined me to be. He, too, believed in free love, though he didn't think most men and women were ripe for it, especially women who always try to hold on to the man. But "Emma Goldman, that's another matter." His lewd and smirking manner nauseated me. I turned my back upon him and went to my room. Very tired, I fell asleep almost immediately. I was awakened by a persistent tap-tap on my door. "Who is it?" I called. "A friend," came in reply; "won't you open?" It was the voice of the brewer from Cincinnati. Jumping out of bed, I shouted as loud as I could: "If you don't leave instantly, I shall wake the whole house!" "Please, please!" he pleaded through the door, "don't make any scene. I'm a married man, with grown children. I thought you believed in free love." Then I heard him hurrying off.
This is perhaps a very good illustration of how the philosophy of "free love" can mean something very different to a man than it does to a woman! (Although Emma Goldman herself doesn't comment on the episode any further. She appears to ascribe the whole thing just to one particular lewd man, and not to a potential problem in how the different sexes might interpret the doctrine.)
On Intellectual Discourse
Robert Wright spends a lot of time describing how important our status was in the ancestral environment, and why people go through a lot of effort to promote themselves, and also get very upset when there is any threat to their status. This is why any intellectual discussion is never purely about the ideas involved--it's also about the egos of the participants.
As Robert Wright puts it: "This fact seems to have deeply affected the texture of intellectual discourse, especially among men."
How true! And for exhibit A, see The Linguistics Wars.
Robert Wright spends a lot of time describing how important our status was in the ancestral environment, and why people go through a lot of effort to promote themselves, and also get very upset when there is any threat to their status. This is why any intellectual discussion is never purely about the ideas involved--it's also about the egos of the participants.
As Robert Wright puts it: "This fact seems to have deeply affected the texture of intellectual discourse, especially among men."
How true! And for exhibit A, see The Linguistics Wars.
On Richard Dawkins:
I associate Richard Dawkins with The God Delusion and the new atheist movement of the Aughts. I had heard of The Selfish Gene, of course, but never realized how influential that book had been.
But Robert Wright quotes from Dawkins a lot, and describes The Selfish Genes as one of the foundational texts of evolutionary psychology.
...actually speaking of The God Delusion, there's a passage in The God Delusion in which Richard Dawkins is struggling to account for why religion exists in evolutionary terms. Dawkins says that one tempting explanation is that religion evolved because it was good for the group. But then Dawkins goes on to say that we can't use this explanation, because we can never use the good of the group to account for evolution, only the good of the individual. (Dawkins explains it all much better in his book, and also spends a couple pages doing so.)
The reason I'm bringing that up here is, Robert Wright makes the exact same point about group evolution in The Moral Animal.
On Alfred Russel Wallace:
The controversy of Darwin and Wallace, and how Darwin may have stolen some of the credit that belongs to Wallace, takes up the whole first half of Tom Wolfe's book The Kingdom of Speech. Robert Wright also retells this story in chapter 14 to illustrate (among other things) how the human conscience works, and how our conscience has a biased accounting system that always puts our own actions in the best light.
Although that being said, Robert Wright's account of the whole affair makes Darwin look a lot less nefarious than Wolfe's account.
The controversy of Darwin and Wallace, and how Darwin may have stolen some of the credit that belongs to Wallace, takes up the whole first half of Tom Wolfe's book The Kingdom of Speech. Robert Wright also retells this story in chapter 14 to illustrate (among other things) how the human conscience works, and how our conscience has a biased accounting system that always puts our own actions in the best light.
Although that being said, Robert Wright's account of the whole affair makes Darwin look a lot less nefarious than Wolfe's account.
The Karamazov Brothers
In my 2017 review of The Karamazov Brothers, I wrote:
One of the things I found interesting was Dostoevsky's description of life in the monastery, and all the various egos that were clashing.It was interesting, because you would normally think of monks as having given up their own personal ego. But in fact, Dostoevsky portrays them as constantly bickering, and being jealous of each other. Monks resented it when other monks were recognized as being holier than they were.It's odd, of course, because monks are supposed to believe in a philosophy in which respect and status on earth don't matter. And yet, they can't help themselves from being concerned about these things.It made me wonder if it is possible to get rid of the human ego entirely.For example, if I were in a monastery, and I knew I was the holiest monk there, but I didn't get any respect, and instead other monks were being recognized as being more holy than me, would it be possible for me to not feel resentful of it?
This is yet another theme that Robert Wright's book touches on. Robert Wright talks about how all humans strive for status, but they do it in different ways. In a lot of cultures, status is achieved by being macho and fighting a lot, but this is not the only way humans seeks status. Wright says at one point, "In a monastery, serenity and asceticism can be sources of status."
It strikes me that now that Dostoevsky's book is the perfect example of how the urge to seek status is just as strong in a monastery as it is in the playground.
It strikes me that now that Dostoevsky's book is the perfect example of how the urge to seek status is just as strong in a monastery as it is in the playground.
Confessions
Another reason that this book was somewhat painful for me to read was that I saw so much of my own selfish and egotistical behavior reflected in Robert Wright's general descriptions of human selfishness.
And that's been included in my blogging over the years as well.
I mean, the very existence of this blog is an ego trip, isn't it? It's a way of saying to the world: "Look at me! I have thoughts! I have opinions! Give me recognition!"
Which is to say nothing of the content of this blog. There have been a few posts over the years that have been full of self-congratulation or self-promotion.
I mean, the very existence of this blog is an ego trip, isn't it? It's a way of saying to the world: "Look at me! I have thoughts! I have opinions! Give me recognition!"
Which is to say nothing of the content of this blog. There have been a few posts over the years that have been full of self-congratulation or self-promotion.
Now, Robert Wright would say this a certain amount of this is unavoidable. All humans are always self-promoting all the time. Evolution has hard-wired it into us. We need to constantly be showing our group that we are useful to keep around, and that we are good mating material. But the key is we have to be graceful and subtle about it, because if our self promotion becomes too obvious, then we get resentment from the group. So to the extent that I cringe about past blog posts (which I regularly do all the time), it's to the extent that the self-promotion was too obvious.
But I also have this other strange urge--the urge to constantly use this blog as a place to list all my faults. For example, this post, which chronicled a list of the stupid things I've done, while simultaneously castigating myself for them. Or, this post on my 10 year blogging anniversary, which also turned into a list of everything I do wrong on the blog. And if I'm being completely honestly, I actually have the urge to detail my faults on social media much more than I actually do. The only reason that I'm not constantly listing my faults on this blog is that I'm worried people aren't interested in my faults as much as I am.
(A few years ago, I actually blew an interview for a senior teacher position because I spent the whole interview talking about my faults instead of trying to tell the manager why I would be good at the job. "Why did you do that?" the manager asked me later. "I'm not sure," I said. "It just felt natural to confess everything.")
Robert Wright also has an explanation for this as well. Low status males, he says, have an urge to constantly denigrate themselves as a way to avoid conflict with higher status males, and to secure a niche for themselves lower in the dominance hierarchy where they can still hope to obtain some food and resources.
Well, I guess that's me explained then!
The Pursuit of Happiness
I mentioned above that some of the ideas in this book I had already absorbed through the Internet.
Somewhere on the Internet (I think maybe it was on one of Sam Harris's podcasts), I heard the idea that evolution has probably not designed us to be happy.
It seemed strange, but it got me thinking. It makes a certain amount of sense when you think about it.
If you're happy, you're content. And if you're content, you're not constantly trying to make your life better. And if you're not constantly trying to make your life better, than you're not going to be competitive when it comes to passing along your genes. So the last thing natural selection wants you to do is to relax on your back porch and say, "I am perfectly satisfied with my life." We are designed to be unsatisfied with our life.
Robert Wright spends a lot of time expanding on this idea in his book. Happiness, Wright says, is something that we always seek, but we never get. It's designed to be the carrot that constantly keeps us moving, but is always just slightly out of our grasp. We think that climbing up the next rung of the ladder will make us happy, but when we get there, we realize that now there's something else that we want.
The revelation that you can never achieve happiness is kind of discouraging, but at the same time I find it kind of liberating as well. After all, we put so much pressure on ourselves to be happy. And we always think that there's something wrong with us when we're not happy. So the knowledge that we're not designed to be happy can almost come as a kind of relief. "It's impossible for anyone to achieve happiness? Oh thank goodness! I thought it was just me!"
So then, what to do?
If earning the next promotion at work won't make you happy, then one tempting alternative is to drop out of the rat race completely and live a life of blissful idleness.
This is what I used to think in my younger days. (Influenced as I was by the hippy ethos). But I've since discovered that being idle doesn't make you happy either. There's a constant nagging voice in your brain, which is telling you that you need to be doing something. (*12)
This is what I used to think in my younger days. (Influenced as I was by the hippy ethos). But I've since discovered that being idle doesn't make you happy either. There's a constant nagging voice in your brain, which is telling you that you need to be doing something. (*12)
(In fact the worst thing you could do to yourself is give yourself too much time to think. Your brain will take advantage of the quiet time to beat you up with all your neuroses and insecurities.)
The solution may be to be constantly engaged in productive work. Or, as Jordan Peterson put it in one of his Youtube lectures (I don't remember which one): You're never going to be happy, so the best thing that you can hope for is to be useful.
But I think the key is that it has to be meaningful work. People who slave away at mercenary corporate jobs where they can't see the value of their work--those people are the most miserable.
But if you can find intellectually stimulating work, that makes you feel both useful and productive, and also pays enough to live on (while also maintaining a good work/life balance), then maybe that's the key to a contented life? (Good luck with that, huh?)
But anecdotally, I've recently been trying to find projects that I can work on which I think will be useful to other people, and have been finding satisfaction in that. The Grammar ESL Listening videos I've been making recently, for example. Nobody's actually been watching them (the view count is very low), but at the very least it has the potential to be useful to people. Or at least, I work on them under the illusion that they have the potential to be useful to people. Maybe the key to contentment is just for everyone to find some sort of project like that?
...Of course, all the time I spent creating those videos was a lot of screentime, which wasn't good for me.
So, maybe the real key is to find useful and productive work that pays well, and has a good work life/balance AND doesn't involve computer screens. Is that possible nowadays?
On Free Will
The conclusion of this book is that we don't have any free will. Everything is dictated by our genes and our environment.
Robert Wright admits that this is disturbing to people, but then he says that it shouldn't be that much more disturbing than what people already believe. People already believe we are largely products of our culture and our environment. As long as you are going to admit that we are shaped by outside forces, then you've given up free will already. So what difference does it really make to say that our genes (interacting with culture and environment) are determining everything.
I actually didn't find that part to be too shocking, actually. I've been skeptical about free will for as long as I can remember.
Even as a kid, I remember the Sunday school teacher telling us that good people go to heaven, and bad people go to hell, and I said, "But then, why would anyone choose to be bad?"
Actually that's a lie. I didn't say it in those words, because I didn't know how to articulate myself back then. What I said was, "Why are people bad?" And I waited several weeks to ask the question, because the problem didn't occur to me until much later. And when I did finally ask the question, I brought it up completely out of nowhere, and my Sunday school teacher had no idea what I was trying to ask about.
But the point being, I've long been skeptical about free will. And this skepticism has increased as I've gotten older, and I've felt less and less like I had control of my actions, and more and more like I'm a prisoner inside the confines of my own personality.
What did trouble me about this book, however, was the assertion that all of our emotions and feelings are dictated by our genes.
For example, Robert Wright says that evolution causes parents to grieve more for the death of a child at its reproductive peak. If a toddler dies, parents don't grieve as much, because the reproductive years of the offspring are years in the future. And if a 40 year old child dies, the parents don't grieve as much, because the 40 year old has less reproductive years ahead of him than a 17 year old. But if a 17 year old dies, then the parents grieve the most.
For example, Robert Wright says that evolution causes parents to grieve more for the death of a child at its reproductive peak. If a toddler dies, parents don't grieve as much, because the reproductive years of the offspring are years in the future. And if a 40 year old child dies, the parents don't grieve as much, because the 40 year old has less reproductive years ahead of him than a 17 year old. But if a 17 year old dies, then the parents grieve the most.
Now, this isn't what we consciously think, obviously. We invent other reasons to explain the intensity our grief. But this is what is actually going on beneath the surface. At least according to Robert Wright.
And the book is full of this kind of thing--explaining our feelings and emotions through evolutionary reasons. And who wants to believe that? Don't we instead want to believe that our feelings are true and legitimate? Don't we want to believe that grief, and love, and friendship, can exist independently of our need to pass on our genes?
I should say, though, that the purpose of the book is not to celebrate the values of natural selection. The purpose of the book is to let people know what the values of natural selection is so that we can know how our genes are manipulating us, and then make choices to counter that manipulation. For example, once we realize that our genes are causing us to behave selfishly, we can more effectively work to counter our own selfishness.
Robert Wright repeatedly talks about "knowing your enemy". We have to know just how selfish natural selection predisposes us to be, so that we can actively work to moderate our own selfish behavior.
(But wait... does that assume an element of free will?)
So the book ends on somewhat of an optimistic note with some practical suggestions about society reform.
All of which is another subject for discussion, but I'm not going to talk about it here.
I'm going to have to finish off here
There's so much more to talk about, but I'm tired of typing now.
I'm sorry this review rambled on so much. I at least feel better for having gotten some of my thoughts out. I'm not sure if this review is going to be readable to anyone else. I'll try to be more focused in my next book review, but this book was just too hard to discuss succinctly.
Footnotes (docs, pub)
(*1) My list of history books I've always been meaning to get around to: Among the books I suggested were Herodotus, Plutarch, 10 Days that Shook the World by John Reed, Brother Enemy by Nayan Chanda, The Great French Revolution by Kropotkin. And some others I don't remember off-hand.
(*2) On Having this Book Printed: Some of the gang had kindles or other electronic readers, but I absolutely refuse to read books off of a screen. (Reading is supposed to be my break from screen time.)
And yes, I realize I owe an apology to Robert Wright and his publishers. In my defense, I would never have done this if I lived in a country where I could just order the book at my local bookstore. This was my only option for getting the book.
(*3) At this point, we were working at different locations, so the Facebook page was how everyone kept in touch.
(*4) It's been apparent to me for a long time that the amount of time I spend on this blog is not rational given how little benefit it brings me. So why do I do it? I've tried to explore my behavior in the past--for example in this post here, but never entirely satisfactorily.
This book was written in 1995, before social media was even a thing, but it's very easy to extrapolate what this book says into our behavior on social media.
(*5) The other difficulty in reviewing this book is that I've long ago lost track of who the audience for this blog is. (Is anyone out there? Is anyone reading this?) Which will also make it hard to know which part of this book to focus on, and how to frame that discussion. There are parts of this book which are going to upset Christians, parts which will upset feminists, parts which will upset liberals, and parts which will upset conservatives.
(*6) I believed in evolution, of course: Even though I grew up in an evangelical Christian community, my teachers had almost all been believers in theistic evolution. So even in my young Christian days I wasn't opposed to evolution. It wasn't until I got much older that the penny finally dropped, and I realized that there was no way to reconcile the worldview of the New Testament with a belief in evolution.
(*7) On my preconceptions: Somewhere, in some program I once watched, I remember hearing some scientist guy saying "When it comes to the human brain, normal evolutionary explanations don't apply." Even though I don't remember which program I heard that on, the sentiment has stuck with me.
As it turns out, though, that sentiment is far from the consensus view. Robert Wright and his colleagues believe that evolution can explain much of the human brain.
As it turns out, though, that sentiment is far from the consensus view. Robert Wright and his colleagues believe that evolution can explain much of the human brain.
(*8) On Jordan Peterson: What reminded me of Jordan Peterson in particular was the discussion of status and hierarchies in this book. In fact, while I was reading this book, I started listening to some Jordan Peterson again, and what he's saying about dominance hierarchies in human society is pretty much exactly the same as what's in this book.
It's funny--Peterson does a lot to court conservative Christians, but at the same time there's a lot of evolutionary psychology in his lectures.
It's funny--Peterson does a lot to court conservative Christians, but at the same time there's a lot of evolutionary psychology in his lectures.
(*9) On Sam Harris: What reminded me of Sam Harris in particular was the discussion about whether or not humans actually have free will. And also the atheist morality espoused at the end of the book--that our new morality should simply be focused on maximizing happiness and minimizing suffering--is the same one espoused by Sam Harris. And maybe I've heard some of the discussion about whether or not evolution has designed us to be happy on Sam Harris's show--I don't remember.
(*10) Steven Pinker at least definitely read this book, because his review of it is blurbed on the back-cover.
Also, Steven Pinker participates in a discussion with Robert Wright on Youtube in which many of the themes of the book are discussed. (If you want a preview of what kind of stuff is in this book, go ahead and watch the video.)
Also, Steven Pinker participates in a discussion with Robert Wright on Youtube in which many of the themes of the book are discussed. (If you want a preview of what kind of stuff is in this book, go ahead and watch the video.)
(*11) Also, since this book was published in 1994, I also wonder how much the field of evolutionary psychology has advanced since then? How many of the ideas in this book are now out of date?
(*12) On idleness:
Although Tolstoy jokes that military life is the solution to this conundrum. From War and Peace:
The Bible legend says that the absence of toil--idleness--was a circumstance of man's blessed state before the Fall. Fallen man, too, has retained a love of idleness but the curse still lies heavy on the human race, and not only because we have to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow but because our moral nature is such that we are unable to be idle and at peace. A secret voice warns that for us idleness is a sin. If it were possible for a man to discover a mode of existence in which he could feel that, though idle, he was of use to the world and fulfilling his duty, he would have attained to one facet of primeval bliss. And such a state of obligatory and unimpeachable idleness is enjoyed by a whole section of society--the military class. It is just this compulsory and irreproachable idleness which has always constituted, and will constitute, the chief attraction of military service. (p. 574)
July 4, 2021 The Moral Animal p.1-161
July 11, 2021 The Moral Animal p.161-321
Video Review (Playlist HERE)
(The camera shut down about 5 seconds before I thought it would, so I got cut off right at the tail end, but I was just about to finish up at that point anyway.)
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