found_drama

Bring in the spring good and proper: kayaking and grilling with homemade barbecue sauce.

First and foremost: an uncritical read of this book will leave you feeling cynical and a bit cheated. It ranks up there with E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology and Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene¹. It would be very easy to find yourself getting defensive about the material presented in here; especially if you believe humans to be some special exception among animals. 

Meanwhile, with a more critical approach, you will find that you cannot get Robert Wright’s The Moral Animal out of your head: it is insightful, intellectually rigorous, even-handed, and at times palpably funny. Plus, you will find that it informs a great many (all?) of the human discourse (verbal or otherwise) that you encounter daily — how certain traits and behaviors came to be and the functions they serve. 

Don’t ask about their intentions though; we need to remember that evolution is goal-less, after all. Put most succinctly: 

We are built to be effective animals, not happy ones.

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1. Though I will readily admit that I know these two texts primarily by reputation, having only read excerpts and not their entireties.[↩]