Why are we so VAIN?
The same vanity that makes the peacock so vigorously shake its tail has not just drawn us together to seed culture, it has proceeded to become the motive engine driving our economies,
The same vanity that makes the peacock so vigorously shake its tail has not just drawn us together to seed culture, it has proceeded to become the motive engine driving our economies,
Undoubtedly, many individuals, both male and female, prefer Donald’s bright fluffy bangs to my bald head!
Humans are unique in that both sexes have both motivations simultaneously: all of us both desire beauty and desire to be desired for being, acting, or wearing something beautiful. We Homo sapiens compete with bonobos as the primate species that most desire one another.
The political left is standing on the shifting sands of a philosophical vacuum which I have spent many years filling.
Below is a TED talk by Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist who wrote The Righteous Mind, in which he introduced six belief categories: important issues to Democrats are care/harm, liberty/oppression, and fairness/cheating, whereas for Republicans the most important issues are loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/ degradation. In this video he tells us that openness to new …
It’s called Darwinism Human nature is determined by: 1) The survival of the fittest (natural selection); 2) Including group selection: There can be no doubt that a tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to give aid to each …
First of a series: click second Political beliefs both start and end with attitudes toward human nature. The right has long been associated with the Hobbesian view that the natural state of mankind is “warre of every man against every man—Bellum omnium contra omnes” (Leviathan, 1651). Material progress is made possible by business competition permitted …
Since my retirement 10 years ago, Ape Mind, Old Mind, New Mind has been a work in progress. The basic ideas arose from my knowledge of the internal experience of the major mental illnesses directly imparted to me by thousands of my patients in 35 years of practicing psychiatry. The “data” of these composite descriptions …
In Yuval Harari’s widely acclaimed book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind (2015) he makes this sweeping statement: “The most important thing to know about prehistoric humans is that they were insignificant animals with no more impact on their environment than gorillas, fireflies or jellyfish.” He then makes the case that the event that catapulted …
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 …
This Blog is about the three levels of motivation that have been laid down since primates started evolving groups about 52-million-years ago, and this post is about how Donald Trump fits into them. The deepest level is the ancient motivation for (sexual) domination in a hierarchy. Then, pushed by harsh climates and the threat of …
If you are a progressive, perhaps you identify yourself as a Darwinist in relation to the religious right who deny evolution, but you are probably unaware that you are embracing a dark view of human nature—and one that is at the foundation of modern conservatism. In Darwin’s Autobiography (1887), he reports, In October 1838, that …
When one grasps the Darwinian dimension of psychoanalytic thinking, all the exquisite riches of a century of this creative thought about the inner dynamics of child development can viewed as the effect of natural selection.
Although there are limitations on how much can be known scientifically about the evolution of emotional experience through deep time, other methods of knowing can penetrate the origin of our emotions and thus reveal the core of human nature.
Frontispiece of my book about the evolution of emotion.
Ontology (the development of the individual) recapitulates phylogeny (the evolution of the species) is more applicable to the mind than the body. The process of identification in the oedipal complex is related to communication in early hominins.
In 1975, while working in a jail, I conceived that morality has been maintained for millions of years by means of justice exercised in groups.
There is very little argument that the reason that Homo sapiens has become the most dominant species on earth is our extraordinary ability to cooperate—I would say coordinate—in their behavior towards mutual goals. The issue addressed in this blog is how this came about. The demonstration by William Hamilton of “kin selection” in which the …
The mystery and complexity of many aspects of human language can be simplified by considering the emotional dynamics that underlies it.
Grasp in a single graphic 50 million years of human evolution into thousands of years into the future.
