Praise for How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker

After several unsuccessful attempts, I’ve given up. There is nothing new I can say about religion. I can repeat the things I’ve said and I can say it in different ways, but there’s no inspiration. My time is becoming more limited since I am in my final year in school and my future depends largely on how hard I work this year.

Therefore, I’ve decided to turn this blog into a more everyday blog where I’ll just write about anything that catches my intellectual fancy.

I’ve recently read the second half of How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker. It’s a brilliant book which describes where the human mind comes from, how it works and why it thinks how it thinks. I was told to read the sixth chapter, family values, as it’s the most interesting, but now I want to read the entire book.

Pinker sums up human behavior and takes on many myths and assumptions about human behavior. From the top of my head, I can remember one or two paragraphs:

The common assumption, especially among idealists, is that humans are inherently “good.” That they become influenced by the corrupt world around them and that is why they are evil. This assumption is influenced by a famous anthropological study (unfortunately I’ve forgotten the name of the woman who was in charge of the study, so I’ll call her Brown) done in South-America. In this study, it was found that the tribal people are good towards each other and live happily in a perfect society. Recently it has become clear that Brown was fooled by the tribesman. They lied to her and she believed every word. The truth was that the tribesmen were not much different than any other tribes, such as the Zulu.

For example:
In a survey conducted in South-America, it was found that 60% of all tribal deaths were caused by violence. Among these violent deaths, it was found that 60% were murdered by men from other tribes.

Being generous towards strangers also has an evolutionary reason behind it:
In a society of meat-eaters who hunt with a 40% chance of failure (no food at all), it is logically more beneficial for each individual if everyone shared the meat they bought home. Otherwise one person can be unlucky and die of starvation. In another society, where you harvest more food if you work harder, it is logically more beneficial for each individual if everyone simply worked hard enough to care for himself and his family.
Studies were done, and it was found that this is exactly how foraging and tribal societies work.
A scientist visited and studied the Khoi (or another Southern African tribe, I’m not sure which one). He found a generous society in which everyone shares all the meat he catches. He must have thought that the people were an insightful and loving society. But one of the tribesmen bought meat home, shared most of it with the clan and asked the scientist (a new element in the society) to hide the rest. The reason they are generous is not because they care, but because it is almost impossible to get away with not being selfish.

Another example: (this is explained more adequately in the book)
As Dawkins stated in “The Selfish Gene” it’s not quite about the survival of the fittest organism, but survival of the fittest gene.
That is why families love, even if they don’t like, each other. They share more genes than they share with any other living organism. The fewer genes a person shares with another organism, the smaller the chance of loving that organism. Families almost automatically love each other, while couples need to work hard and attend marriage counselling, or things might fall apart.

I am, unfortunately, not as good an author as Steven Pinker, but I would honestly suggest How the Mind Works to any person who is a scientist (or a geek) at heart.

I’ll try to update my blog more regularly from now on.