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A review by morgan_blackledge
Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind by Robert Kurzban
5.0
Uncle Walt said it all when he quipped:
"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes".
If you've ever wondered how someone can say one thing and do another (i.e. be a total hypocrite). The answer may be that there's more than one them. A lot more than one.
Don't feel bad for them though. Because the same could be said about you, me and everyone else.
According to modularity theory, who we are and what we do depends on which competing mental module wins the struggle for dominance in a given situation.
These modules evolved for different reasons and are often working at crossed purposes. They can have very different agendas and elicit very different types of behaviors.
So you no longer have to be even one bit surprised the next time an anti gay politician or tella-evangelist gets busted with a male prostitute. Or the mayor of Toronto gets busted smoking crack. These are simply amplified, very public examples of the same kind of erratic, hypocritical behavior that everyone does pretty much all the time.
There's a catch though. We're great at busting others at being hypocritical and literally terrible at seeing our own hypocritical behavior. That's why accountability is such a very good thing. In fact it's our only hope.
I loved this book. In fact I really think just about everybody ought to read it. It's funny and smart and if you're unfamiliar with (good) evolutionary psychology, specifically modularity theory, than it may radically change the way you view human behavior (including your own).
If "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" Dobzhansky (1973), and, assuming that mind is an emergent property of brain function (and it is), than nothing in PSYCHOLOGY makes sense except in the light of evolution either (and it doesn't).
This book is flawed. It labors some points while underworking others. But it's (a) LOL funny, (b) thought provoking as hell, and (c) extremely clarifying and useful, particularly if you are confused about psychology (and you are, and so is everyone else, even the "experts", trust me).
Its a first draft, of a corner of a map, that can lead us out of the tanged jukyard of incongruous mini theories that is psychology today (meaning the current state of the field-not the magazine).
Read it, ditch the tired unified self model, and keep thinking function and module over time under selection pressure in the environment of evolutionary of adaptation, and see if things about psychology (that were formerly terribly confusing) don't start making a bit more sense.
Great book!
"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes".
If you've ever wondered how someone can say one thing and do another (i.e. be a total hypocrite). The answer may be that there's more than one them. A lot more than one.
Don't feel bad for them though. Because the same could be said about you, me and everyone else.
According to modularity theory, who we are and what we do depends on which competing mental module wins the struggle for dominance in a given situation.
These modules evolved for different reasons and are often working at crossed purposes. They can have very different agendas and elicit very different types of behaviors.
So you no longer have to be even one bit surprised the next time an anti gay politician or tella-evangelist gets busted with a male prostitute. Or the mayor of Toronto gets busted smoking crack. These are simply amplified, very public examples of the same kind of erratic, hypocritical behavior that everyone does pretty much all the time.
There's a catch though. We're great at busting others at being hypocritical and literally terrible at seeing our own hypocritical behavior. That's why accountability is such a very good thing. In fact it's our only hope.
I loved this book. In fact I really think just about everybody ought to read it. It's funny and smart and if you're unfamiliar with (good) evolutionary psychology, specifically modularity theory, than it may radically change the way you view human behavior (including your own).
If "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" Dobzhansky (1973), and, assuming that mind is an emergent property of brain function (and it is), than nothing in PSYCHOLOGY makes sense except in the light of evolution either (and it doesn't).
This book is flawed. It labors some points while underworking others. But it's (a) LOL funny, (b) thought provoking as hell, and (c) extremely clarifying and useful, particularly if you are confused about psychology (and you are, and so is everyone else, even the "experts", trust me).
Its a first draft, of a corner of a map, that can lead us out of the tanged jukyard of incongruous mini theories that is psychology today (meaning the current state of the field-not the magazine).
Read it, ditch the tired unified self model, and keep thinking function and module over time under selection pressure in the environment of evolutionary of adaptation, and see if things about psychology (that were formerly terribly confusing) don't start making a bit more sense.
Great book!