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 9
... lives and individual behaviors. But few have taken the logical next step of using those insights to study our institutions. The point is, we act on hidden motives together, in public, just as often as we do by ourselves, in private. And ...
... lives and individual behaviors. But few have taken the logical next step of using those insights to study our institutions. The point is, we act on hidden motives together, in public, just as often as we do by ourselves, in private. And ...
الصفحة 11
... lives even better. Of course, not everyone cares about the design of large- scale social institutions. A more practical use for our book is to help readers develop better situational awareness (to borrow a term from the military) ...
... lives even better. Of course, not everyone cares about the design of large- scale social institutions. A more practical use for our book is to help readers develop better situational awareness (to borrow a term from the military) ...
الصفحة 18
... lives. At first blush, then, social grooming seems like an act of hygiene, a way to keep one's fur clean. This is far from the complete picture, however. We can't take social grooming at face value. There are some puzzling facts that ...
... lives. At first blush, then, social grooming seems like an act of hygiene, a way to keep one's fur clean. This is far from the complete picture, however. We can't take social grooming at face value. There are some puzzling facts that ...
الصفحة 20
... lives in the arid brush of the Sinai Desert and parts of the Arabian Peninsula. Babblers live in small groups of 3 to 20 ... live as part of a group do well for themselves, whereas those who are kicked out of a group are in great danger ...
... lives in the arid brush of the Sinai Desert and parts of the Arabian Peninsula. Babblers live in small groups of 3 to 20 ... live as part of a group do well for themselves, whereas those who are kicked out of a group are in great danger ...
الصفحة 22
... the main lesson to draw from the preceding examples. The surface- level logic of a behavior often belies deeper, more complex motives. And this is true even in species whose lives are much simpler than our 22 Why We Hide Our Motives.
... the main lesson to draw from the preceding examples. The surface- level logic of a behavior often belies deeper, more complex motives. And this is true even in species whose lives are much simpler than our 22 Why We Hide Our Motives.
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