BookReports:  The Moral Animal

Readily I admit it, I struggled with this book (and I know I’m not going to do it justice in this post for this reason).  I stopped and started over and over, reading in fits and spurts.  It’s not Robert Wright’s writing style per se that’s at issue, although he’s a bit verbose, less than succinct.  The premise is the tripper for me – it’s not as if I hadn’t braced myself for it, but reading this book means having to open the door all the way and let Wright’s concept in…

The premise: the sum of human activity is nothing more than memes.  It’s a concept abhorrent to my sensibilities.  It removes the entire concept of free will from the equation of human life.  Once Wright lays it out, it’s incredibly difficult to argue against this premise, that everything we’ve ever done, are doing now, or will ever do is somehow predicted and predicated by a script.

<Aaarrrggghhh!!!> <skin crawling, hackles rising>

Pick any human event, stand back and look at it, as if you were a scientist looking at an ant colony and individual ant behavior.  Yup, you are little more than an ant in the scheme of things. 

Explore an example with me.  Take a look at a so-called “ant” – let’s examine Mary, the subject of my last DharmaSurfing post.  Mary is a divorced female, whose parents aren’t wealthy but not suffering; she has two other female siblings, as well as two daughters and a son of her own.

According to Wright’s observation of parenting behaviors, a certain meme or script determines how parents will handle resources based on availability and gender of child.  Parents who are wealthy are more willing to invest resources into a male child, as male children are more likely to create more wealth and resources.  Conversely, parents who are not wealthy are more likely to keep daughters closer, so that any resources expended stay within close proximity to the family unit. 

My sitter/friend and I have examined these “ants” closely during our morning walks, coming away with so many questions.  Why would parents buy a duplex and rent out both halves to their daughters?  Why would the parents continue to provide additional support (like automotive repair, yard work and new garden sheds) for these children?  Why would one of these daughters send her son to live with his father (even at the risk of neglect to the child) while keeping her teenage daughter and preschool daughter with her?  Why not tough love, ceasing enabling behaviors and forcing the daughters to become more self-sufficient?  What could be the motivation?

Bingo, there it is – the explanation for some of the otherwise inexplicable.  The resources stay close to the family.  Even if the parents aren’t completely impoverished, they may respond in this fashion because they’ve been “programmed” by the habits of previous generations and earlier versions of the meme to do just this: keep the resources close to the family.

I’m afraid to look closely at other so-called “ants” (including myself), to see where else memes crop up.

The good news (if you can call it that): if I read Wolfram’s text A New Kind of Science properly, there’s a limited number of memes.  We won’t have to root around too long to figure out the rest of any story…

1:43:49 PM    comment []