A lively and provocative look at how evolution shapes our behavior and our lives. Contrary to conventional wisdom, our brains and bodies are hardwired to carry out an evolutionary mission that determines much of what we do, from life plans to everyday decisions. With an accessible... read more
“Of course, diamonds and flowers are beautiful, but they are beautiful precisely because they are expensive and lack intrinsic value, which is why it is mostly women who think flowers and diamonds are beautiful. Their beauty lies in their inherent uselessness; this is why Volvos and potatoes are not beautiful.”
Men have built (and destroyed) civilizations in order to impress women so that they might say yes. Women are the reason men do everything.Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers
men become jealous of their mates’ sexual infidelity with other men, underlying their reproductive concern for cuckoldry. In contrast, women become jealous of their mates’ emotional involvement with other women, because emotional involvement often leads to diversion of their mates’ resources from them and their children to their romantic rivals.20Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers
“For a man to walk into a bar and have his choice of any woman he wants, he would have to be the ruler of the world. For a woman to have the same power over men, she’d have to do her hair.”Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers
greater fitness variance among men, rather than gender socialization, is the reason why men are much more aggressive, competitive, and violent than women.Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
Many stereo types are empirical generalizations with a statistical basis and thus on average tend to be true.Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
a lot of the rest of human social behavior—in politics, in religion, in economics—is ultimately about sex.Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
Humans are instead born racist and ethnocentric, and learn through socialization and education not to act on such innate tendencies. Humans are innately ethnocentric because ethnocentrism—helping others of one’s group members at the cost of all others—was adaptive in the ancestral environment.Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
Of course, diamonds and flowers are beautiful, but they are beautiful precisely because they are expensive and lack intrinsic value, which is why it is mostly women who think flowers and diamonds are beautiful. Their beauty lies in their inherent uselessness; this is why Volvos and potatoes are not beautiful.Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers
Women only steal what they need for them and their children to survive, whereas men steal to show off and gain status as well as resources. In other words, women steal less than men for exactly the same reason as they earn less than men.15Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers
All men (criminal or not) are more or less the same. The ultimate reason why men do what they do—whether they be criminals, musicians, painters, writers, or scientists—is to impress women so that they will sleep with them. Men do everything they do in order to get laid.Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers