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 20
... give each other back massages instead of picking through each other's fur. But even though there's some hygienic value to social grooming, it doesn't explain why primates spend so much time doing it. Gelada baboons, for example, might ...
... give each other back massages instead of picking through each other's fur. But even though there's some hygienic value to social grooming, it doesn't explain why primates spend so much time doing it. Gelada baboons, for example, might ...
الصفحة 21
... give food to lower- ranked babblers, sometimes they force it down the throats of unwilling birds! Similarly, when a beta male is standing guard duty at the top of a tree, the alpha will often fly up and harass the beta off his perch ...
... give food to lower- ranked babblers, sometimes they force it down the throats of unwilling birds! Similarly, when a beta male is standing guard duty at the top of a tree, the alpha will often fly up and harass the beta off his perch ...
الصفحة 22
... gives the beta more leeway than he would give a beta with lower prestige. Thus babblers compete to help others in a way that ultimately increases their own chances of survival and reproduction. What looks like altruism is actually, at a ...
... gives the beta more leeway than he would give a beta with lower prestige. Thus babblers compete to help others in a way that ultimately increases their own chances of survival and reproduction. What looks like altruism is actually, at a ...
الصفحة 27
... give them less prominence when explaining our behavior. It's important to understand what we're actually afraid of here. Many kinds of competition are actually easy for us to acknowledge, even celebrate. We love playful competition, for ...
... give them less prominence when explaining our behavior. It's important to understand what we're actually afraid of here. Many kinds of competition are actually easy for us to acknowledge, even celebrate. We love playful competition, for ...
الصفحة 63
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