RE: The biological goal of the human mind

-----Original Message-----
Behalf Of Ricardo Duchesne

>communities, evaluate those actions. Does every society
>value/interpret aggression in the same way? No, in which case, no
>biologist can say what we are outside a social context of norms.

I agree with you.  The reason I have such difficulty communicating with
sociologists and conventional psychologists is because I have an entirely
different focus. Instead of studying behavior that deviates from social
norms, or treating individual patients, I am interested in studying
"universal" human behavior.  Universal behavior is, by definition, outside
of the social context -- universal behavior is "genetic".

I am trying to understand why certain political forms work and others do
not.  I am trying to understand why all human societies reject any
scientific discovery that threatens social constructions of reality.  I am
trying to understand why only a handful of people even know that immutable
energy laws indicate our society will end forever in less than ten years.

All the work concerning the end of this society has been published by
respectable scientists in peer-reviewed journals.  It's all out in the open
for anyone to see, yet with few exceptions, people can not see it.
Obviously, this inability -- or unwillingness -- to see real world facts is
genetic.  This thesis is supported by scientific research on children. [pp.
39, 40, THE EVOLUTION OF MIND, 1998, Oxford ]

It is also the subject of a recent book.  The forward is written by
Lynn Margulis.  Morrison's book is endorsed by E.O. Wilson of Harvard, and
Thomas Eisner of Cornell.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0801436516

The Spirit in the Gene : Humanity's Proud Illusion and the Laws of Nature
by Reg Morrison, Lynn Margulis
Cornell University Press , March 12, 1999
Hardcover - 286 pages (June 1999)
Comstock Pub Assoc; ISBN: 0801436516

>From the jacket:

>From famines and deforestation to water pollution, global warming, and the
rapid rate of extinction of plants and animals -- the extent of the global
damage wrought by humankind is staggering. Why have we allowed our
environment to reach such a crisis?

What produced the catastrophic population explosion that so taxes the
earth's resources? Reg Morrison's search for answers led him to ponder our
species' astonishing evolutionary success. His extraordinary book describes
how a spiritual outlook combined with a capacity for rational thought have
enabled Homo sapiens to prosper through the millennia. It convincingly
depicts these traits as part of our genetic makeup -- and as the likely
cause of our ultimate downfall against the inexorable laws of nature.

The book will change the way readers think about human evolution and the
fate of our species. Small bands of apes walked erect on the dangerous
plains of East Africa several million years ago. Morrison marvels that they
not only survived, but migrated to all corners of the earth and established
civilizations. To understand this feat, he takes us back to a critical
moment when these hominids developed language and with it the unique ability
to think abstractly. He shows how at this same time they began to derive
increasing advantage from their growing sense of spirituality. He
convincingly depicts spirituality as an evolutionary strategy that helped
rescue our ancestors from extinction and drive the species toward global
dominance.

Morrison concludes that this genetically productive spirituality, which has
influenced every aspect of our lives, has led us to overpopulate the world
and to devastate our own habitats. Sobering, sometimes chilling,
consistently fascinating, his book offers a startling new view of human
adaptation running its natural course.

Jay