Mario the lone bookwolf's Reviews > Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

The style of presentation, the concept of showing how interconnected everything is and to expand tiny elements of a second to a broad picture of millions of years are amazing, it seems so logical and consistent once one has grasped the importantce of this work, but nobody before Sapolsky mixed so many interdisciplinary approaches together to form such a comprehensive picture.

This travel back in time starts at the moment of any human action and its neurological, neurochemical, hormonal, neuroelectric,... background and what epigenetic and genetic factor made such a behaviour a habit, a personality, a group dynamic, a cultural identity. And then we go far back until primate times and see what might have influenced our current emotion and illusion of ego and self millions of years ago, and take a glimpse at the one or other event that happened between now and then and the mysticismn and theories rotating around those.

Of course it first seems a bit far fetched to go from hormones and neurotransmitters to apes, but the stages of culture, groups, tribes, hierarchies, mating, violence, competition,… are still very dominant in our genes and much we wouldn´t associate with fight or flight or mate and date instinct is permanently conscious and subconscous influencing our mental condition and thinking.

Sapolsky has a unique view, because he studied both primates and humans and can build his theories on hard facts and field studies, he is close to a modern polymath with his fields neuroendicronoly, neurology, neurosurgery, and biological sciences and he covers everything possible.

There is the question of how much of guilt and responsiblity could be linked to and relativated by brain science and how the law should possibly consider using modern techniques to check what´s going on in a criminals mind, but that´s more a philosophical ethics course topic until there is enough evidence to get it integrated in legislation.

We are so individual and unique that our complex, barely understood consciousnesses make it harder to determine what one person is going to do, while it´s becoming easier to predict large scale- and group dynamics thanks to tech. I did always know that my irresponsible and immature behaviour can be surprising, unpredictable, dangerous, and very funny and now I have the theoretical superstructure to substantiate it.

Not to change or something like that, become a better human, mindfulness, meditation and stuff, no, what are you thinking about me, I like my primitive instincts, just because I now know everything about them doesn´t mean that I can´t enjoy living them out. Come on, anger, greed, and horniness, let´s roll.

A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroen...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_e...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evoluti...
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