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Michael Ghiglieri studies the roots of male violence from a unique vantage: he's a former combat soldier and longtime primate researcher, a protégé of Jane Goodall. In The Dark Side of Man: Tracing the Origins of Violence, Ghiglieri uses this background, accompanied by copious scientific and statistical evidence, to construct an explanation of male violence that is often at odds with popular preconceptions.
Central to Ghiglieri's argument is that violence is a deeply entrenched behavioral strategy--especially among males--that simply emerges when other strategies fail, a thesis he reinforces convincingly with both anecdotes and hard numbers. And while he recognizes that culture and socialization play important roles in encouraging violence, he maintains that ignoring the powerful biological and evolutionary forces at work is "the single most useless--and dangerous--approach one could take in trying to explain human violence."
With extensive sections on rape, murder, war, and genocide, Ghiglieri methodically details our grim heritage, from wilding New Yorkers to wild gorillas. Some of his conclusions are surprising but persuasive--that the goal of rape is actually copulation, not control, for instance. But Ghiglieri's assessment is ultimately a hopeful one: he believes that by understanding and admitting to the biological origins of violence, we are better prepared to deal with it. --Paul Hughes
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"This book should be read by anyone concerned about violence-that is, by everyone."
-George B. Schaller, author of The Last Panda, The Serengeti Lion, and The Year of the Gorilla
"Michael Ghiglieri takes on a topic-male aggression-that many researchers try to avoid, and he takes it on with honesty, with grace, and with a real sense of hope. And it's a startlingly good read; Ghiglieri is a natural storyteller in addition to being a fine researcher."
-Deborah Blum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sex on the Brain
Customer Reviews:
Mean People evolved to be that way........2007-06-01
Explains a lot of the behaviors that humans repeatedly resort to, all based on the survival pressures of our geologic past. Supports the idea of evolution, but not in a way that would please everyone.
Throwing Light on the Darkness?.......2007-04-19
This is an 'in your face' look at male violence from an author who has clearly had direct experience of human male violence eg in Vietnam and Africa.
The first section is 'Roots' in which he explains how violence is a male reproductive strategy ie it is a trait that can lead to more offspring for males. He discusses sex differences, which he exaggerates a little, but he particularly recognizes the massive significance both of males staying in their birth groups and the unnatural enforcement of female monogamy.
The second section covers rape, murder, war and genocide. Though there is an argument as to whether rape is about power or sex the answer seems to be sex - but with men getting turned on by the humiliation of females in all sexual situations and not only in rape. It seems that domination of females is part and parcel of male sexuality and so, rather than arguing between sex and power as the true motive for rape, we are now faced with the fact that male power, aggression, domination, sadism IS sex. Andrea Dworkin and Co. were right after all though the clue was always there when men talk about their sexploits as 'conquests' or the conquering of countries as rape. Sex/reproduction is the motive but the male sexual emotions are those of domination and power.
As so often happens in these type of books we get a little bit about how women prefer violent men as mates. And as also happens in this argument, the evidence provided for this female preference is a female character in a novel written by a male!!! Ghiglieri is right, though, in recognizing how a woman might need a violent man as a mate to protect her from outside male violence. It's a Hobson's choice for women, though - just like female gorillas and their infanticidal mates.
In the chapter on war the author importantly recognizes how female exogamy and male relatedness is rare in nature and opens up a Pandora's Box of male violence. It 'sets the stage for exotic adaptations in the macho male sexual selection arms race' - male bonding, war, nepotism, sexism, xenophobia, infanticide, murder.....'Instincts are coded in the male psyche that they must win against other males'. The author does point out that many men do avoid killing and avoid many of the extremes but he does not explore this enough in my opinion.
The last section is meant to provide some answers but I found it far from doing so. Punishment seems to be an important answer. Ghigieri also brings in the human moral instincts but again, this has come rather late in the story and is not explored enough. The family gets some of the blame - as if the natural dark side of man turns out to be the fault of single mothers after all!!
Though the author accepts the lack of monogamy, especially in human males, as a major force behind the dark side of man he does not explore how greater equality between males could reduce polygyny (whether literal or in the form of serial monogamy or marriage plus adultery/mistresses). He does not explore how men only accepting their fair share of female fertility could improve all this violent competition, and perhaps men could concentrate more on parenting behavior than mating competition. This requires looking at sex as less positive for males - as it obviously is often very negative for females - rather than again blindly overlooking the obvious if devastating conclusion that sex itself is the root of all evil. Ahhh!!!
Are men ever going to be able to see that sex is not about long-term happiness and see it for what it really is? Or are the genetic puppet-masters just far too powerful? Sexual rejection, as a very real experience for males who therefore potentially face personal genetic extinction, gives sex a very powerful hold over men and driving force behind pretty much everything they do.
We cannot deny that there are some very powerful truths in this book. There are also other sides that have not been explored including the fact that those other humans - ie females - are gradually undermining male domination and may change the picture with time. The natural female had to go undercover when she became men's property and had to concentrate on survival rather than challenging the bonded male kin-groups and the subsequent excesses of male behavior. Who knows what her emergence from the shadow of the human male may bring.
Oh my goodness, say its not so!.......2007-03-24
Many will find this book disturbing, but I loved it. The best thing about this book is that Ghiglieri went right to the core issues and questions about violence -- deals with it all from rape to genocide -- nothing left out. While I do not think he has the full and final word on the subject, anyone who is serious about dealing with violence MUST read this book or they are automatically out of the loop and cannot be taken seriously. This means all anthropologists, sociologists, anyone in public adminstration, crime control (i.e, all justice/police/law enforcement departments), the Department of Defense and ESPECIALLY everyone who works in the State Department. Without exposure to the real roots of human violence, how can anyone deal with it? Note to the PC crowd: you just had your idealistic notions about human nature thoroughly and justifiably trashed. What say you now?
Violence is Man's Original Sin Says the Good Doctor.......2004-10-03
Because it reaches deep inside the dark soul of man, this is a book that has aroused a great deal of controversy. Michael Ghiglieri has tackled a very difficult subject - the origins of male violence. Emerging from the field of anthropology and evolutionary psychology is the argument that male violence is deeply entrenched, that it is part and parcel of being male, not largely due to social factors. This idea makes people uncomfortable because if violence is a largely immutable male characteristic, than utopian social schemes won't be able banish it, to throw it on the dust heap of history. The author is an anthropology professor who toiled as a field biologist in Africa and Asia, where he worked with chimpanzees, the most intelligent of the great apes and man's closest animal relation. This work with the great apes - once thought to be peaceful animals - has contributed to his conviction that violence - while varying by degree from individual to individual - is an immutable human trait as it is among the chimpanzees. Ghiglieri is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and believes that most traits make sense when viewed through the prism of reproduction. He argues that male violence is largely a reproductive strategy.
Ghiglieri begins by citing the ever-larger body of scientific evidence that indicates just how different men and women are and why their reproductive goals fundamentally diverge. Then, he begins to address the spectrum of male violence - warfare, genocide, warfare, murder and rape - and begins each chapter with real world examples before segueing into a recitation of his evidence as to which reproductive and biological imperatives are fulfilled by that behavior.
One of the most controversial chapters of the book is about rape. While campus feminists have repeated the mantra that "rape is about power, not about sex" so many times that it has become part of the conventional wisdom, others have long questioned this certainty from purely logical viewpoint. After all, in a rape, the victim is not simply subjugated and beaten, but sexually violated. Now, Ghiglieri explains rape in the animal world and how it fulfills a mating strategy and then methodically marshals his evidence to prove that it is a disturbing but entrenched human mating strategy as well.
In a bold move, the author has a number of prescriptions - strategies - that he advocates in order to minimize the effects of male violence. In addition to our violent traits, he cites mankind's attributes, his ability to cooperate, to channel behavior, which will allow us to cope with man's innate aggression. Ghiglieri wants us to be appropriately tough on criminals, to eliminate those who are most violent, to encourage self-defense and advocates a criminal justice system that is almost biblical in its sense of retribution. According to him, these actions would reduce the damage done my male violence as they channel the protective strategies that are innate to me.
So, to Ghiglieri, there is no font of primitive happiness, no ideal society that so many anthropologists have sought. Man simply has a dark, aggressive side that is programmed into his DNA and so while it may be challenged, it can never be eliminated. With its disturbing anecdotal examples of male violence and its conviction that male aggression is an immutable reality, "The Dark Side of Man" is a disturbing book, but instead of looking away from some dark questions, it addresses them head-on. While the outlook for the world will forever be grim if man's baser instincts are hard-wired into us, it is probably better to be realistic about them so that we can develop effective countermeasures.
not a nice way to hundle evolutionary biology........2004-04-07
I
This book says that biology is solid science.Really?
Social biology ,ebolutionary biology,evolutionary psychology are very fragile science and have been abused for sexism,racism biological determinism,etc
And if one theory has the ring of the truth,it is possible to assert that that is truth,by using every fragile logic,biased indirect evidence .and the atmosphere(I myself have done so).
And considering such facts ,Scientists have to be humble.
But History repeats itself.
I'm not surprised that his theory sounds plausible to people who don't know the field well.I myself feel so about guns.
His tactic goes like this
When there are good data,he uses them perfectly and says a is --%,b is --% etc.And he doesnft note what unbiased people usually note.And maybe he doesnft know the field he looked down.
When there are controversial data or theories,he uses the part of data what are convenient for him( if he wants 'crime is not casused by the poor environment,'he sites only criminal's son tend to be a criminal ,and ignores the fact that criminal's son became criminal much less frequently when brought up by normal family.or goes like 'most authority agree with that'.or something like that.
And when there are obvious unconvinient facts ,data,construals or whatever ,he ignores that ,masks that.and instead uses ,illogical thinkings,personal quotations,and rare cases.and atmosphere.
For example,men kill men for pride and women love such dangerous,with low intelligence,and wanton vilonent guys.And it is an adoptation.according to him.
If men kill men, he earns the reputation that he is violent and he robs the resource easily when in need.And as an evidence he cites Yanomamo tribe's case or mafia and a woman who was attracted by the mafia.He uses this logic again and again,some rich men also do rape ,so most men...some rich men also do kill ,so most men...Yanomamo tribe and mafia are so,so most men...
But with evolutionary logic anyone can conclude opposite theory.
As he says , ,in evolutionary history,men act in union and if he breaks the harmony,he gets the penalty(this holds true to most societies.).Or maybe gets the revenge.violent?so what ? human got the equalizer(the authority also says eequalizerf put the leader in different position) .Or maybe he was excluded from the community.
And so how about women? according to the social psychology's experiment,when men are picked a fight by another man,this kind of violent reaction was very unpopular to women.
and if you teachs women that one man is criminal his appearance appeal became lower.And criminal type face was unpopular to women.
And what kind of men ,do women hate most?according to Bass's reserch all over the world he also quoted,typical killer type men ,violent ,low inteligence and can't constrain him,is one of the worst types.You're surprised? but not so surprised if you think well.
And the time that physical power counts much ends before the age of 10 in our world.
So typical killing was not adopted action ,or say worst action .So ?what happened ?human evolves the frontal cortex and among many of the human's brains high noble abilities (which are all very pppular to women,men,human and as a result are chosen),'brake is included .and no matter men became angry ,normal men don't kill and in a well contorolled society ,to meet a killer is hundreds times more difficult than many obviously unadopted actions.
And as a whole Killers have problems in frontal cortex and mineral balance.Which indicate they just couldn't express the abilities they have in themselves and not completely non problem guys as he try to indicate.
And to solve the problem ,we have to fully blossom our noble abilities,not eeye for eyef.
Ob course this is also very biased.
But this is evolutionary biology.I can fabricate another theories if his tactic is allowed.
He said one friend pointed out 1000 places to correct.. But still there were another 1000 to improve.Itfs not an exaggeration.I was tired to read this because of this.
And I reccomend to all the readers that they don't swallow all the stories written in this book.Though some of them are interesting ,They may be just his personal briefs,or ideologies..What kind of ideology he has ,I donft have to say..
Though I canft say his theories(or maybe any other theories) were definitely wrong.The fact that he has to use assertive ways again and again indicats his were in many cases unlikely.
Book Description
Thematically organized, this intriguing volume looks at 9 specific contemporary political issues grouped into three broad categories that hold an enduring importance in American political life--money and politics, violence and politics, and biology and politics. All nine chapters and their respective topics (campaigns, corruption, welfare, crime, terrorism, arms control, the environment, biomedical issues, and biotechnology) have a strong conceptual base with current political dimensions and policy concerns woven throughout. Readers not only learn the context, status, and prospects of issues confronting the US government, but also see how these issues now cross our domestic borders into a global realm. The Politics of Poverty and the Welfare State. The Politics of Health Care. Money in Public Office: Campaign Finance, Graft, and Corruption. The Politics of Crime in America. The Politics of Terrorism. Arms Racing and Arms Control. Biomedical Issues. Biotechnology. The Ecological Crisis. For anyone interested in contemporary American political issues.
Customer Reviews:
A must read..........2000-01-07
"Issues" is a must read for any intro. to political science class, and a good read for those wanting to know what the issues in today's political rhetoric are all about. The authors offer a balanced perspective, and leave the reader anxious to find out more. Academic in nature, but universal in scope.
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There has been a revolution in neuroscience over the last ten years, and, as Debra Niehoff shows in the first book to examine violence from a complete biological perspective, now is the right time to consider how we are going to use the achievements of that revolution to reduce the level of violence in our society.
What is this new perspective that Niehoff presents? Simply that by understanding human biology we can control violence in our society. The debate over the roles of "nature" and "nurture" is over. Our genes do affect the likelihood of violence. And so does our mature brain chemistry. And so does our environment, as well as the nurturing we get as children and the social life we have with our peers. Everything affects us, but no one element is the sole determining factor. The real story that biology has shown us is that we recreate ourselves all the time, even as adults. Everything is involved in the ongoing process of life.
Niehoff brings together a wide range of research to show that we understand behavior in a totally unprecedented way, and that our ability to control violence effectively has never been greater. The awful consequences of violence for victims and perpetrators are not an outcome we have to accept. The vicious circle that connects bad genes, bad environment, and bad brain chemistry in a kind of feedback loop can be broken. As Niehoff shows, creating a caring, safe social environment is almost always the first step in halting the train of aggression.
The received wisdom is that psychological disorders such as violent aggression are too complicated, too intractable to be cured. In far too many cases, incarceration is the only solution we live with. But do so many people have to be in prison? Aren't there cheaper, more humane, and more civilized ways of dealing with violence now? Niehoff makes many surprising, fascinating, and provocative observations on the new science of violence.
Niehoff is eminently qualified to present these breakthrough ideas. A Johns Hopkins-trained neuroscientist and a biomedical communications professional, she has composed a book of vision and courage. More than merely a polemicist, here is that rare writer who can objectively and clearly present a whole new area of science and identify its explosive implications. Niehoff has a timely, powerful message. She demands science, and also compassion, in the face of violence.
Customer Reviews:
A Primer for Anger Management.......2001-05-12
This is an excellent book, well written and very intensive for understanding the dynamics involved in aggression. I find this book a primer in anger control and every helping professional must have this one available for their reference.
Found: A Gem Among the pile of Rocks!.......2001-03-20
"The Biology of violence" by Debra Niehoff is the best book on the subject I have read. I've been through over 300 books in the last three months looking for a neuro-chemical link between aggression and violence, specifically "impulsive" aggression, that from which I have, at times, suffered its unpleasant effects.
Niehoff clearly shows her education and scientific background through her writing. This book is throughougly and adeptly referenced down to the smallest detail. Every sentence informs, every page educates. I learned, for example, about the role of serotonin, the master hormone, and norepinephrine, and how they keep each other in check. One controls aggression, the other fear, both having specific receptors which, it is to be discovered, sometimes receive signals from other neurotransmitters and hormones (and also caffeine!). The role of environmental factors is given a fair and impartial comparison in conjunction with the actions of the body's hormones, increasing Niehoff's conclusion and credibility.
There is far too much information to be absorbed briefly; a detailed study is in order, well worth its rewards. I have found this work to be monumental, and while not solving the total violence problem, will at least lead the reader to make better choices at the root: the diet (foods are converted to make certain hormones and neurotransmitters). Also of interest is the treatment of insulin and its role in the body. A complete, highly informative work, unparalleled in depth and understandability by the educated layperson. Top recommendation!
The Biology of Violence.......2000-01-14
As a distinguished Doctor of Pyschology, this is an excellent book in analizing the mind of a....nevermind.
A college sstudent in southern California.......1999-12-05
this is an very good book, the evidence i present from this book in my sociology class leaves the professor annoyed with me.
Indispensable Book.......1999-07-21
I have read widely in neuropsychology and neurobiology over the last five years by necessity. This book is written by an expert with a thorough grasp of her material and the English language. This is a book with the depth needed by professionals (psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, law enforcement, probation, attorneys, judges, etc.) and the accessibility needed by laymen. Niehoff's analogies simplify complex interrelationships. Her analysis is compassionate, realistic, and sound. Her discussion of working memory and aggressive behavior is indispensible for parents of TBI children. Her discussion of PTSD and of the interplay between nature and nurture are lucid and compelling. She has an excellent introduction to brain functioning that readers will readily appreciate. When I consider the strength of the book I felt that the conclusion was somewhat weak; however, this should not deter potential readers. In another books, I would have considered the conclusion strong. I think highly enough of this book to have two copies. One for my bookshelf and the other to loan to those concerned with aggression and violence.
Book Description
This practical, comprehensive text will feature concise chapters pertinent to bioterrorism, infectious disease, microbiology, virology, public health, epidemiology, disaster medicine and will serve as a practical guide for situation-specific disasters (whether natural or man-made); recognize what injuries or illnesses to expect; provide proactive guidelines to define specific diseases; and give a guide of appropriate personnel protective equipment during these large-scale emergencies. It would be an essential companion to any individual who is either interested or currently working in any of the aforementioned fields.
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Natural Conflict Resolution
Manufacturer: University of California Press
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Good Natured: The Orgins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals
ASIN: 0520223462 |
Book Description
Aggression and competition are customarily presented as the natural state of affairs in both human society and the animal kingdom. Yet, as this book shows, our species relies heavily on cooperation for survival as do many others--from wolves and dolphins to monkeys and apes. A distinguished group of fifty-two authors, including many of the world's leading experts on human and animal behavior, review evidence from multiple disciplines on natural conflict resolution, making the case that reconciliation and compromise are as much a part of our heritage as is waging war.
Chimpanzees kiss and embrace after a fight. Children will appeal to fairness when fighting over a toy. Spotted hyenas, usually thought to be a particularly aggressive species, use reconciliation to restore damaged relationships. As these studies show, there are sound evolutionary reasons for these peacekeeping tendencies. This book also addresses the cultural, ecological, cognitive, emotional, and moral perspectives of conflict resolution.
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Biology and Violence: From Birth to Adulthood
Deborah W. Denno
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ASIN: 0521362199 |
Book Description
This book presents the most comprehensive study to date of the major biological, psychological and environmental predictors of criminal behavior, particularly violence, through a detailed analysis of nearly 1000 low-income black youths from their birth to early adulthood. By examining over 150 variables spanning the lives of these youths, the study concludes that both biological and environmental factors produce strong, and independent, effects on delinquency and adult crime among males and females, who are distinguished from their controls. Powerful influences on violence include behavioral disorders during youth, low school achievement, parents with a low educational level, an absent father, hyperactivity, lead poisoning, left-handedness and mixed dominance, soft neurological signs, and neurological abnormalities. Case study comparisons between the most violent males and females and their controls show that criminals evidence a higher incidence of lead poisoning, disobedience, head injury, and a history of epileptic seizures among themselves or their immediate family members. Violent females are also more likely to have a family member who was incarcerated. The results do not confirm the findings of previous studies indicating direct relationships between violence and early intelligence, mental retardation, socioeconomic status, or early central nervous system dysfunction. The author concludes that both biological and environmental factors, in interaction, cause crime. For example, whereas some factors, such as hyperactivity, can be genetically transmitted across generations, causing a biological predisposition to criminal behavior, hyperactive people, as adults, can in turn, create instability in their families, making their children more prone to criminality, an environmental condition. The author concludes that most factors contributing to criminal and violent behavior can be prevented because they have environmental origins that can be eliminated.
Book Description
Almost 200 million human beings, mostly civilians, have died in wars over the last century, and there is no end of slaughter in sight.
The Most Dangerous Animal asks what it is about human nature that makes it possible for human beings to regularly slaughter their own kind. It tells the story of why all human beings have the potential to be hideously cruel and destructive to one another. Why are we our own worst enemy? The book shows us that war has been with us---in one form or another---since prehistoric times, and looking at the behavior of our close relatives, the chimpanzees, it argues that a penchant for group violence has been bred into us over millions of years of biological evolution. The Most Dangerous Animal takes the reader on a journey through evolution, history, anthropology, and psychology, showing how and why the human mind has a dual nature: on the one hand, we are ferocious, dangerous animals who regularly commit terrible atrocities against our own kind, on the other, we have a deep aversion to killing, a horror of taking human life. Meticulously researched and far-reaching in scope and with examples taken from ancient and modern history, The Most Dangerous Animal delivers a sobering lesson for an increasingly dangerous world.
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A pompous, bigoted, self serving, atheist political tirade with nothing new to add to the debate.......2007-09-27
A pompous, bigoted, self serving, atheist political tirade with nothing new to add to the debate, save a sophomoric level of inept 'scholarship' in service of a transparent sham of propaganda and sophistry.
In his sad excuse for recycling the propaganda of the radical leftist / gender feminist / homosex lobby, malignantly narcissistic pseudo-pundit David Smith spends far more time telling his readers how objective he intends to be, than actually engaging in any sort of open minded investigation. In doing so, he provides no new insights in to his alleged subject of war, but does open a window on the preening self aggrandizing egoism that fuels the Thought Police in the pathetic farce that passes itself as 'higher' education; and particularly the rigidly narrow and dogmatic agenda of conformity in 'Academentia' better known as the "Pander or Perish / Cannibal Soup" social engineering pogrom.
Consider the following bizarre statement from his book - in regard to his strange mix of Intentional Propagandizing with Factual Misrepresentation in service of Anti-Religious Bigotry, when he purports to discuss the Atheist / Technocrat - National Socialist movement from the book "Mein Kampf" - without mentioning that it was written by a syphilitic coprophile / homo-anal prostitute named Hitler: "The Nazi's built the final solution on Christian foundations..."
Anyone who wants to do a little independent fact checking of this disgraceful pretense of 'scholarship' should check out a copy of "The Pink Swastika" by Abrahms & Lively (provided your library censors haven't burned it), then try watching the History Channel program "Night of the Long Knives", if only to see just how much of the inconvenient truth Smith has Censored.
In fact, while Smith relies on the Nazis (and Spartans / modern Jihadis) for many references, he studiously avoids any discussion of the Homosex nature of these and similar War Mongering Cults, in which EPHEBOPHILIA - the Rape of Boys, was a common feature. This is clearly shown by the fact that the Nazi movement was started by such Homosex "Chicken Hawks" as Ernst Rohm - Leader of the "Sturm Abteilung" (Brown Shirt - Storm Troopers), and particularly because of the Homosex Relations that led Rohm's to hiring a professional 'joy boy' named Hitler as his protege.
At least Smith is correct in stating that: "The human brain did not evolve primarily to discover truth" - at least as concerns his own writings, but then Smith doesn't even do the reader the courtesy of explaining his own manifest political biases, before presenting them as unquestionable truth.
Beyond such pathetic excuses for 'objective' scholarship,Smith uses much of his book to promote his own bizarre brand of pseudo-scientific Absolutist Faith - Atheism. For example, He Firmly and Unambiguously asserts that Humans Have No Souls - End of Discussion!
He then goes on to state that Debate on the matter is simply Not Allowed, because this is an "Exhaustive" finding of a certified academic, and only those in the grip of "Ism-Obia" would dare dissent. Of course he then spoils the spoiled child certainty of his positions by admitting massive ignorance of just about everything else about the nature of existence / eternity / infinity... Still, like a true modern 'liberal'
academic, he doesn't let little things like eternity / infinity to interfere with his righteous trashing of people who believe in God.
In the end - Smith's book only serves to show us the craven and malignant narcissism that is the 'soul' of modern Academentia, and how they have become their own gods - even if nobody else believes in them
Ohso
Not merely the validity of experience but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. George Orwell - 1984 On the Thought Police
A Decent Try.......2007-09-22
I want to avoid being too negative here since this is the best book on the incredibly important issue of humanity and war that is available today, in my opinion having read at least 85% of them. I have a paper very much along the lines of this book which both myself and the author regret his having found only after he finished writing it. What complaints I have are not that I disagree with the contents generally but more a frustration with the little errors which are inevitable when covering this much ground and with the lost chance to go further than he does.
In general philosophers tend to do poorly when they turn their hands to evolutionary psychology, but he mostly pulls it off. However, there are notable weaknesses. He does not know enough about evolutionary biology to avoid believing, and repeating, some dumb and illogical ideas heard elsewhere and he does not manage to present speculative notions in a scientific manner, carefully framed. Instead we get statements presented as fact which one can dismiss with a few minutes thought. These will leave his work vulnerable to attack by all of those with far weaker and more illogical, and more ideological, ideas about humanity and war, unfortunately.
A few examples then. When discussing chimpanzees and bonobos, their peaceful cousins, he states that "A lot hangs on whether the trunk from which the two branches grew was chimpanzee-like or bonobo-like....if the prehistoric ape that gave rise to the human and chimpanzee-bonobo lines was more like the sensual, affable bonobo than the violent, patriarchal chimpanzee, this might indicate that the heart of human nature is more gentle than truculent."
There is no logic to this assertion. If the common ancestor was peaceful, still we see that chimpanzees evolved in these five million years to not be peaceful anymore and there is no reason not to think that humans could not also do so. It also may be that the common ancestor was unlike all three of it's descendants in terms of these behaviors. Sussman makes this same error in Man the Hunted asserting that what our ancestors were like behaviorally millions of years ago is of some import to the question of what we are like now. We are talking about creatures with brains a third as large as our weighing up to 60lbs when adults. We are different from them in hundreds of other ways and there is no reason to an asserion that this trait must have remained fixed despite so many other changes.
Late in the book he asserts a connection between exposure to unfamiliar germs and xenophobia, saying that "When human beings lived in small isolated groups, encounters with strangers were potentially threatening because you might not have acquired a resistance to the germs carried by the outsider." There is a lot wrong here. First, our ancestors were not so isolated as he seems to imagine and second, we are pretty welcoming of strangers. It is the known outsiders who are in danger. Anthropologists have wandered into thousands of isolated societies without being killed most of the time. In fact we are attracted most to those whose immune systems differ from our own to the greatest extent, and some reproduction with outsiders is needed to maintain the genetic health of a human group. Furthermore, cultural exchange with outsiders is known to be important to maintain and advance the group culture and knowledge. Highly isolated groups are known to lose their knowledge of various technology over time.
There are other examples but the general issue is that some things he did not think through for himself and there are lots of others out there quite happy to lead you astray, and they did.
Still he gets a lot right including things that trip up most others, dismissing the connection between hunting and aggression for example. And as far as he goes his general argument is sound and in my view correct.
He sees the paterns of labelling enemies as threat animals and so on and rightly concludes that this helps us justify killing them psychologically, not a hugely novel insight but he does go the next step to say that there is an evolved component to this. In my work I assert that this is because we are using our evolved altruism to compel each other to go to war, he stops simply with the view that this helps us not see the other we kill as human and become repulsed by our own actions.
He also never mentions the quite commonly expressed sentiment that soldiers volunteer for war for nation and ideals but once there they fight for each other and nothing else. They form very strong bonds with each other and they kill to keep their brothers in arms from being killed.
Finally I was puzzled by his failure to mention those who die to save others in combat. These actions also seem to indicate a strong altruistic component to the psychology of war, in my view.
A good effort and I do recommend this book. The philosophy side is very strong and there was much there I had not found. But those of you with an interest should not stop here. If you want my own fairly similar take on it (the author said "What a usefull paper!") then you can find it here http://theroadtopeace.blogspot.com/
Thought Provoking, but one omission.......2007-09-16
The Most Dangerous Animal is full of thought provoking insights. The one insight that is missing is that, in a world full of dangerous ideologies and with some powerful countries led by people with warlike mentalities, the only way to counter them is for basically peaceful people to defend themselves. You may hate war, you may recognize the terrible flaws of mankind - but sometimes you have to participate in war or let better men die in your place.
An interesting look at war, but some weaknesses........2007-08-21
I enjoyed this book a great deal. The analysis of war through the lens of evolutionary psychology is very useful; it allows a person to approach the problem of war from a different perspective, hopefully allowing for more effective prevention. The area that I found very disappointing was Mr. Smith outline of the philosophy of mind. He states that there are two types of theory with respective to the Mind/Body problem; this is wrong, there are at least three. There is Dualism, Materialism, both of which Mr. Smith outlines, and there is Idealism, something that Mr. Smith completely ignores. As a philosopher, Mr. Smith should have mentioned Idealism; there are and were many philosophers who were Idealists. Mr. Smith is a Materialist, which is fine, but the Mind/Body problem remains a problem. I would have preferred if he outlined his prejudice, then continued on with his text. His treatment of the issue of the mind was not necessary and did little to further his thesis.
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Aggression and Violence: Genetic, Neurobiological, and Biosocial Perspectives
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Family Violence Readings in the Social Sciences and Professions
Makepeace
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