The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday LifeOxford University Press, 01/12/2017 - 288 من الصفحات Human beings are primates, and primates are political animals. Our brains, therefore, are designed not just to hunt and gather, but also to help us get ahead socially, often via deception and self-deception. But while we may be self-interested schemers, we benefit by pretending otherwise. The less we know about our own ugly motives, the better - and thus we don't like to talk or even think about the extent of our selfishness. This is "the elephant in the brain." Such an introspective taboo makes it hard for us to think clearly about our nature and the explanations for our behavior. The aim of this book, then, is to confront our hidden motives directly - to track down the darker, unexamined corners of our psyches and blast them with floodlights. Then, once everything is clearly visible, we can work to better understand ourselves: Why do we laugh? Why are artists sexy? Why do we brag about travel? Why do we prefer to speak rather than listen? Our unconscious motives drive more than just our private behavior; they also infect our venerated social institutions such as Art, School, Charity, Medicine, Politics, and Religion. In fact, these institutions are in many ways designed to accommodate our hidden motives, to serve covert agendas alongside their "official" ones. The existence of big hidden motives can upend the usual political debates, leading one to question the legitimacy of these social institutions, and of standard policies designed to favor or discourage them. You won't see yourself - or the world - the same after confronting the elephant in the brain. |
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الصفحة ix
... expect the typical reader to accept roughly two- thirds of our claims about human motives and institutions. Yet, we find it hard to imagine the book's central thesis becoming widely accepted among any large population, even of scholars ...
... expect the typical reader to accept roughly two- thirds of our claims about human motives and institutions. Yet, we find it hard to imagine the book's central thesis becoming widely accepted among any large population, even of scholars ...
الصفحة 3
... expect our readers to believe this explanation just yet. We'll examine it in more detail in Chapter 14. What's important is getting a feel for the kind of explanation we're proposing. First, we're suggesting that key human behaviors are ...
... expect our readers to believe this explanation just yet. We'll examine it in more detail in Chapter 14. What's important is getting a feel for the kind of explanation we're proposing. First, we're suggesting that key human behaviors are ...
الصفحة 4
... expect from such creatures. And consciousness is useful— that's why it evolved. So shouldn't it stand to reason that we'd be hyper- conscious of our deepest biological incentives? And yet, most of the time, we seem almost willfully ...
... expect from such creatures. And consciousness is useful— that's why it evolved. So shouldn't it stand to reason that we'd be hyper- conscious of our deepest biological incentives? And yet, most of the time, we seem almost willfully ...
الصفحة 9
... expect from a competitive social animal. Something just doesn't add up. 4. Economic puzzles. When we study specific social institutions—medicine, education, politics, charity, religion, news, and so forth—we notice that they frequently ...
... expect from a competitive social animal. Something just doesn't add up. 4. Economic puzzles. When we study specific social institutions—medicine, education, politics, charity, religion, news, and so forth—we notice that they frequently ...
الصفحة 18
... expect to see more selfgrooming in proportion to social grooming. • Finally, we can correlate the average body size (of each primate species) with the amount of time they spend grooming. If grooming were strictly a hygienic activity, we ...
... expect to see more selfgrooming in proportion to social grooming. • Finally, we can correlate the average body size (of each primate species) with the amount of time they spend grooming. If grooming were strictly a hygienic activity, we ...
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