“Pinker's incisive, meticulous, and brilliant mind thoroughly dispels the major cultural post-renaissance myths that have governed our perception of ourselves, our world, and our place in that world with surgical precision, wit, and facts. His ability to distill centuries of ideology and social constructs that have, in reality, done little to serve humanity in ordinary language ranks him as a polymath of the highest degree--a rare genius who can make highly specialized and competing disciplines that generally baffle the lay reader into an accessible, readable, and enjoyable book. Moreover, considering the urgent state of the survival of all species of life on our planet, Pinker's work could hardly be more timely. The faster we humans "cop on" to the basic fact that we are indeed animals first, the sooner we might be able to understand that--like it or not--we will be animals last, regardless of race, gender, socio-economic caste, religion, education, ad infinitum.
Many years ago, I read a brilliant work by C.J. Smith entitled "The Neurotic Foundations of Social Order: The Psychoanylitic Roots of Patriarchy" wherein the author--a male--describes that we humans will do anything and everything it takes to satisfy our neurotic needs--consciously or unconsciously; Pinker's assessment of human nature supports Smith's post-Freudian (flavored with a soupcon of Vico) arguments with empirical evidence of how and why our brains work and cleave to certain templates. Both works explain how and why we come to believe what we believe--individually, culturally, collectively, and how we will act out our beliefs even to the destruction of all. Despite our large brains and talent for rationality, we humans have battled against our animal natures, our irrationality, and our propensity for violence; our battle has resulted in a series of Pyrrhic victories only, and the sooner we embrace, acknowledge, and just guit denying that we are animals, the sooner we might employ our large brains towards living as mere humans in harmony with the rest of life on our planet. Unless we do that, we are doomed.
Although fundamentalists of all stripes will find much to offend in Pinker's thought, for most fundamentalists--religious, philosophical, atheistic, etc--agree that we humans are unique amongst life forms. Pinker shows that we are not. And as "Die Off" accelerates at a frightening rate, Pinker's thesis will prevail. That's not a comforting reality, but I doubt Pinker's intention was to comfort. And to those who would condemn this book as immoral, amoral, anti-religious, and just plain wrong, I would question whether they actually read the book at all.
And by the way, what's so terrible about being an animal? When did any species other than our own ever wage wars of extinction, destroy its own air and water supply, or build death camps and weapons of mass destruction? One wonders whom among the species is, in the end, the most highly evolved.
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Caitlin ó wrote this review Friday, December 14 2007.
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