Customer Reviews

The Limits of Family Influence: Genes, Experience, and Behavior

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This is not an easy book to get through, but read it anyway. Rowe brings razor-sharp clarity to some age-old frustrations. Looking at human behavior through the lens of evolution is difficult for me. I read Robert Wright's "The Moral Animal" many years ago and detested it. I thought the evolutionary-psychological portrait of human nature was terribly unflattering--Wright admitted this much--and not helpful in facing life. In a sense, I ran away from this approach, only to collide with it again later, when I was older and softer.

The big message in this research didn't hit me at once, but slowly over time. Humans are instruments of evolution, and most of our actions serve evolutionary purposes: to reproduce--above all--and survive. Relatively little is left to accident. This finding answers the Problem of Evil in human behavior. Why are people cruel to one another? They are cruel because their genes are locked in a life-and-death struggle to exist beyond this generation. The genes know nothing of compassion, only kill or be killed. From a male point of view, the plan of battle may be expressed, "Impregnate the females first, ask questions later." This is the real explanation for the evil we do, and why our attempts to control or eliminate it yield disappointing results.

We are programmed for murder, for addiction, for theft. We are programmed to eat the maximum calories available to us until we become so obese we can't move, and end our days hungry. All attempts to civilize us invite further evil; nurture it, give it fertile ground. In this light, it's remarkable we've made such progress as we have.

I know this may sound depressing, but it gives me a wonderful feeling of peace and relaxation. I can stop wishing people were different. I can know for certain that the religious approach is wrong. In aggregate, humanity will never improve by being told to shape up and act differently.