Morality, Then, Is Not A Set Of

In The Past Two Decades Anthropologists Have Gathered Data On Life And Death In Pre-state Societies Rather Than Accepting The Warm And Fuzzy Stereotypes. What Did They Find? In A Nutshell: Hobbes Was Right, Rousseau Was Wrong.

People Know There Is A Difference Between What You Do And What You Accept. There Is A Difference Between Me Knowing That People Swear, Me Hearing People Swear And Me Swearing, And Everyone Accepting That This Is Something You Can Do As Much As You Like.

Why Are Empirical Questions About How The Mind Works So Weighted Down With Political And Moral And Emotional Baggage?

The Stuff Of Life Turned Out To Be Not A Quivering, Glowing, Wondrous Gel But A Contraption Of Tiny Jigs, Springs, Hinges, Rods, Sheets, Magnets, Zippers, And Trapdoors, Assembled By A Data Tape Whose Information Is Copied, Downloaded And Scanned.

Perhaps The Most Extraordinary Popular Delusion About Violence Of The Past Quarter-century Is That It Is Caused By Low Self-esteem. That Theory Has Been Endorsed By Dozens Of Prominent Experts, Has Inspired School Programs Designed To Get Kids To Feel Better About Themselves, And In The Late 1980s Led The California Legislature To Form A Task Force To Promote Self-esteem. Yet Baumeister Has Shown That The Theory Could Not Be More Spectacularly, Hilariously, Achingly Wrong. Violence Is A Problem Not Of Too Little Self-esteem But Of Too Much, Particularly When It Is Unearned.