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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
slow-paced
I always find psychology interesting and this was no exception. I did however, find myself questioning some of the author's conclusions regarding society, genders and relative culpabilities. However as it has been a while since I have listened, my memory is not so good that I can cite specific examples.
A very dense read. This one took me dedicated reading and an entire month (with one off in between), but I was engrossed. I never had to “force” my way through. Reading this gave me a sense of comfort. And, if you came off this feeling horrified, remember natural selection shapes our organs, not our individual behavior! (Now to find some companion papers on homosexuality with these same concepts...)
Profoundly disappointing. What it should have been titled, "Notes from Darwin, his life biography, and a little evolutionary psychology."
I was often bored to pieces with a solid mix of interesting passages to keep me paging through.
I was often bored to pieces with a solid mix of interesting passages to keep me paging through.
This is a really cynical take on human nature so you must read carefully. There are many insights that are thought provoking, but he tends to stretch the truth to have it neatly fit into a Darwinian framework. The conclusion reached by Darwin is that human beings have the capacity to be moral animals, but Wright's misanthropy is always in the shadows reminding the reader how we inherently are immoral. He writes:
“In this sense, yes, we are moral; we have, at least, the technical capacity for leading a truly examined life; we have self-awareness, memory, foresight, and judgment. But the last several decades of evolutionary thought lead one to emphasize the word technical. Chronically subjecting ourselves to a true and bracing moral scrutiny, and adjusting our behavior accordingly, is not something we are designed for. We are potentially moral animals — which is more than any other animal can say — but we aren't naturally moral animals. To be moral animals, we must realize how thoroughly we aren't”
The book then explores topics ranging from marriage to friendship to social status to altruism and how all behaviour is ultimately rooted in self-interest and passing our genes on to the next generation. It's a very reductive and deterministic take on things. It's a little too neat and chauvinistic as well. I really enjoyed Wright's book "Why Buddhism is True" so I was let down with this one as it just came off as morally bankrupt. To be fair, this book was written in the early 90's so perhaps his disdain towards humanity has cooled off some. Criticisms aside, the book itself is impressive and is a seminal work in the controversial field. There may very well be some hard truths here, but not enough attention was given on how we can evolve to be better than this. Ultimately, a healthy balance of science, philosophy, spirituality and the arts will encapsulate ‘why we are the way we are’ much better than evolutionary psychology and can provide an ethical path forward while reconciling the realities of what we are and what we potentially can be.
3/5
“In this sense, yes, we are moral; we have, at least, the technical capacity for leading a truly examined life; we have self-awareness, memory, foresight, and judgment. But the last several decades of evolutionary thought lead one to emphasize the word technical. Chronically subjecting ourselves to a true and bracing moral scrutiny, and adjusting our behavior accordingly, is not something we are designed for. We are potentially moral animals — which is more than any other animal can say — but we aren't naturally moral animals. To be moral animals, we must realize how thoroughly we aren't”
The book then explores topics ranging from marriage to friendship to social status to altruism and how all behaviour is ultimately rooted in self-interest and passing our genes on to the next generation. It's a very reductive and deterministic take on things. It's a little too neat and chauvinistic as well. I really enjoyed Wright's book "Why Buddhism is True" so I was let down with this one as it just came off as morally bankrupt. To be fair, this book was written in the early 90's so perhaps his disdain towards humanity has cooled off some. Criticisms aside, the book itself is impressive and is a seminal work in the controversial field. There may very well be some hard truths here, but not enough attention was given on how we can evolve to be better than this. Ultimately, a healthy balance of science, philosophy, spirituality and the arts will encapsulate ‘why we are the way we are’ much better than evolutionary psychology and can provide an ethical path forward while reconciling the realities of what we are and what we potentially can be.
3/5
Just a bunch of unproven theories. Not a concise book.
This was an awesome layman's tour of a subject I've often wondered about. The examples cited and the level of explanation behind the theories and concepts was all that I could have hoped for. Reading this has satisfied my curiosity and yet left me wanting more. Everything a good non-fiction book should do.
So - for some reason; I'm not sure why - I was under the impression for most of this book that it had been published in 2013 and thus was a relatively up to date. Ergo, I was rather surprised to notice upon updating my progress in the last couple days that the publish date is actually 1995. (And audible actually claims that it was published in 1994.) ...Oops. It's only 18 years difference...
With that misunderstanding in mind, a lot of my annoyance with this book is somewhat unjustified. I noticed and while (and a few other reviewers have also pointed it out) that most of the research cited in The Moral Animal was done in the 1960s and 1970s. While not terribly out of date for the time the book was published, it is somewhat horrifically out of date for a reader in 2017. But the book isn't bad; it's just old. And, while parts of it haven't aged well (primarily due to new research), other parts are still have the power to make readers reflect on themselves and their own lives (which, I think, is exactly what The Moral Animal was meant to do). Ultimately, I think The Moral Animal can be summed up in the following passage:
Some people worry that the new Darwinian paradigm will strip thier lives of all nobility. If love of children is just defense of our DNA, of helping a friend is just payment for services rendered, if compassion for the downtrodden is just bargain-hunting--then what is there to be proud of? One answer is: Darwin-like behavior. Go above and beyond the call of a smoothly functioning conscience; help those who aren't likely to help you in return, and do so when nobody's watching. This is one way to be a truly moral animal. (R. Wright, The Moral Animal, p. 377)
In the end, I ended up appreciating The Moral Animal. I would have rathered it actually been published in 2013 (and thus more up to date), but I appreciated it nonetheless. Great bits are still there, even if you have to dig a bit to find them.
With that misunderstanding in mind, a lot of my annoyance with this book is somewhat unjustified. I noticed and while (and a few other reviewers have also pointed it out) that most of the research cited in The Moral Animal was done in the 1960s and 1970s. While not terribly out of date for the time the book was published, it is somewhat horrifically out of date for a reader in 2017. But the book isn't bad; it's just old. And, while parts of it haven't aged well (primarily due to new research), other parts are still have the power to make readers reflect on themselves and their own lives (which, I think, is exactly what The Moral Animal was meant to do). Ultimately, I think The Moral Animal can be summed up in the following passage:
Some people worry that the new Darwinian paradigm will strip thier lives of all nobility. If love of children is just defense of our DNA, of helping a friend is just payment for services rendered, if compassion for the downtrodden is just bargain-hunting--then what is there to be proud of? One answer is: Darwin-like behavior. Go above and beyond the call of a smoothly functioning conscience; help those who aren't likely to help you in return, and do so when nobody's watching. This is one way to be a truly moral animal. (R. Wright, The Moral Animal, p. 377)
In the end, I ended up appreciating The Moral Animal. I would have rathered it actually been published in 2013 (and thus more up to date), but I appreciated it nonetheless. Great bits are still there, even if you have to dig a bit to find them.
This was quite the heavy read and the last couple chapters I totally slogged through. But it was illumating even if 25 years old. I got my questions answered: why are siblings so different from one another? why do people choose to have no children? Why do people commit suicide? Why do people commit infanticide? Why do soldiers die for their country? What about homosexuals? I was totally captivated by the topic of behavioral genetics .... which before this book I was unaware that the topic existed! So now I'm off to read about that specific part of our human makeup!