Rules To Live By: Hierarchy

Rules To Live By in a Hierarchy

Filed under: Dominance and Submission, eccology, Evolution of Emotion, Evolutionary psychology, Human Nature | 2 Comments

The fundamental unit of behavior in a hierarchy consists of a political triangle: two attempting to intimidate a third. When four possible political triangles between four individuals socially interact, the individual with the most alliances ends up at the apex of a stable social pyramid in which all four members are bound together by bonds …

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UNDERSTANDING THE EMOTION CAUSING SUICIDE

Filed under: Dominance and Submission, Evolution of Emotion, Mental illness

With two high-profile suicides in the news, it is timely to discuss the inner experience of the most lethal form of depression. Seeking escape from an intense feeling of entrapment is intrinsic to melancholic depression, among the most dreaded of all mental illnesses. Aptly named by Hippocrates, melancholia means “black bile,” a potent metaphor for …

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Elastic relationships

Inside the Most Common Type of Depression

Filed under: Dominance and Submission, Evolution of Emotion, Human Nature, Mental illness | 1 Comment

I practiced psychiatry during the period in which the paradigm of the mind shifted from the perspective of how it is experienced from the inside (i.e.: phenomenology, mainly psychoanalytic theory) to the examination of how it works from the outside, i.e.: neurochemistry, genetics, and cognitions. The impact of Prozac on this shift cannot be exaggerated. …

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The Human Spirit

The Human Spirit: Love

Filed under: Dominance and Submission, eccology, Evolution of Emotion, Human Nature, The Ascension of the Human Spirit

During the decade in which I was actively engaged in marital therapy, I became convinced that hidden beneath more superficial reasons that people marry each other is an evolved instinct to re-balance their respective temperaments. Temperament is the component of personality that is derived exclusively from genes and is comprised of blends of paired social …

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A Liberal Theory of Human Nature

Republicans Democrats and Human Nature

Filed under: Author narrative, Dominance and Submission, Emotional Fossils, Evolution of Emotion, Evolutionary psychology, Group Selection, Human Nature, Mental illness, Sexual Selection | 3 Comments

A glaring weakness of the agenda of the political left is that social justice does not appear to be rooted in the flesh and blood of human nature. The two most influential thinkers on our attitudes about what makes us tick are Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud: we are ape-men who when psychoanalyzed are revealed …

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A Liberal Theory of Human Nature

The Evolutionary Biology of Left and Right

Filed under: Dominance and Submission, Evolution of Emotion, Evolutionary psychology, Group Selection, Human Nature, The Ascension of the Human Spirit | 1 Comment

The Blog has stated before that the philosophical difference between the political left and right have their roots in their different views of human nature. This very moment of transition offers the philosopher of human nature a rare opportunity to have the distinctions on display. Thomas Hobbes expressed attitudes human nature popular on the political …

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World Series and Human Evolution

World Series and Human Evolution

Filed under: Dominance and Submission, Evolutionary psychology, Group Selection, Human Nature

This Blog is based on the premise that there was an evolutionary “metamorphosis” in the mental and emotional sphere that gave rise to our hominin “tribe” six million years ago. Pushed by harsh climates and the threat of extinction, the target of natural selection shifted from the fitness of individuals to the productivity of relationships. …

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What’s Missing in Matt Ridley’s “The Evolution of Everything?”

Filed under: Dominance and Submission, Enlightenment Narrative, Evolutionary psychology, Group Selection, History, Mental illness | 2 Comments

You can quibble around the edges about his analysis (and painfully trite take on religion), but I think he is generally right just as I have been claiming in this blog: over the long haul, human history has been in the direction of greater justice accompanied by prosperity—resulting from the progressive coordination of our increasingly divided labor.

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***”Our Two Minds, Emotions and Motivations in Human Evolution”*** The Book

Filed under: Author narrative, Dominance and Submission, Emotional Fossils, Evolution of Emotion, Evolutionary psychology, Group Selection, Language, Monogamy, Sexual Selection, Summary of Philosophy, The Ascension of the Human Spirit, The Deep Evolution of Emotion, Two Mind Hypothesis

This alternative view of human nature is a deeper, richer, and far more noble narrative of our exclusively human legacy: that of an indomitable spirit possessed of a will for justice and sustained through the millennia by the bounty that it fosters.

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