Contempt

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  "It supposes two systems of local signs, whose relations—taking the eye as an example—we may think as ... the measuring of the manifold local-sign system of the retina by the simple local-sign system of the movements. In its psychological nature this is a process of associative synthesis: it consists in the fusion of both groups of sensations into a product, whose elementary components are no longer separable from each other in idea. In melting wholly away into the product which they create they become consciously undistinguishable, and the mind apprehends only their resultant, the intuition of space. Thus there obtains a certain analogy between this psychic synthesis and that chemical synthesis which out of simple bodies generates a compound that appears to our immediate perception as a homogeneous whole with new properties.'' Now let no modest reader think that if this sounds obscure to him it is because he does not know the full context; and that if a, wise professor like Wundt can talk so fluently and plausibly about 'combination' and 'psychic synthesis,' it must surely be because those words convey a so much greater fulness of positive meaning to the scholarly than to the unlearned mind. Really it is quite the reverse; all the virtue of the phrase lies in its mere sound and skin. Learning does but make one the more sensible of its inward unintelligibility. Wundt's 'theory' is the flimsiest thing in the world. It starts by an untrue assumption, and then corrects it by an unmeaning phrase. Retinal sensations are spatial; and were they not, no amount of 'synthesis' with equally spaceless motor sensations could intelligibly make them so. Wundt's theory is, in short, but an avowal of impotence, and an appeal to the inscrutable powers of the soul.[277] It confesses that we cannot analyze the constitution or give the genesis of the spatial quality in consciousness. But at the same time it says the antecedents thereof are psychical and not cerebral facts. In calling the quality in question a sensational quality, our own account equally disclaimed ability to analyze it, but said its antecedents were cerebral, not psychical—in other words, that it was a first psychical thing. This is merely a question of probable fact, which the reader may decide.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  the sense separately is to inwardly articulate word for word the discourse of another. One then finds that the meaning will often come to the mind in pulses, after clauses or sentences are finished. [255] The nearest approach (with which I am acquainted) to the doctrine set forth here is in O. Liebmann's Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit, pp. 427-438. [256] See, for a charming passage on the Philosophy of Dress, H. Lotze's Microcosmus, Eug. tr. vol. I. p. 592 ff. [257] "Who filches from me my good name," etc. [258] "He who imagines commendation and disgrace not to be strong motives on men . . . seems little skilled in the nature and history of mankind; the greatest part whereof he shall find to govern themselves chiefly, if not solely, by this law of fashion; and so they do that which keeps them in reputation with their company, little regard the laws of God or the magistrate. The penalties that attend the breach of God's laws some, nay, most, men seldom seriously reflect on; and amongst those that do, many, whilst they break the laws, entertain thoughts of future reconciliation, and making their peace for such breaches: and as to the punishments due from the laws of the commonwealth, they frequently flatter themselves with the hope of impunity. But no man escapes the punishment of their censure and dislike who offends against the fashion and opinion of the company he keeps, and would recommend himself to. Nor is there one in ten thousand who is stiff and insensible enough to bear up under the constant dislike and condemnation of his own club. He must be of a strange and unusual constitution who can content himself to live in constant disgrace and disrepute with his own particular society. Solitude many men have sought and been reconciled to; but nobody that has the least thought or sense of a man about him can live in society under the constant dislike and ill opinion of his familiars and those he converses with. This is a burden too heavy for human sufferance: and he must be made up of irreconcilable contradictions who can take pleasure in company and yet be insensible of contempt and disgrace from his companions." (Locke's Essay, book II. ch. XXVIII. § 12.) [259] For some farther remarks on these feelings of movement see the next chapter. [260] Wundt's account of Self-consciousness deserves to be compared with this. What I have called 'adjustments' he calls processes of 'Apperception.' "In this development (of consciousness) one particular group of percepts claims a prominent significance, namely, those of which the spring lies in ourselves. The images of feelings we get from our own body, and the representations of our own movements distinguish themselves from all others by forming a permanent group. As there are always some muscles in a state either of tension or of activity it follows that we never lack a sense, either dim or clear, of the positions or movements of

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  condition he apprehends in himself be , and be so , as he apprehends it. Whoever should doubt this would have reached that finished doubt which destroys itself in destroying every fixed point from which to make an attack upon knowledge."[189] Others have gone to the opposite extreme, and maintained that we can have no introspective cognition of our own minds at all. A deliverance of Auguste Comte to this effect has been so often quoted as to be almost classical; and some reference to it seems therefore indispensable here. Philosophers, says Comte,[190] have "in these latter days imagined themselves able to distinguish, by a very singular subtlety, two sorts of observation of equal importance, one external, the other internal, the latter being solely destined for the study of intellectual phenomena. . . . I limit myself to pointing out the principal consideration which proves clearly that this pretended direct contemplation of the mind by itself is a pure illusion. . . . It is in fact evident that, by an invincible neccessity, the human mind can observe directly all phenomena except its own proper states. For by whom shall the observation of these be made? It is conceivable that a man might observe himself with respect to the passions that animate him, for the anatomical organs of passion are distinct from those whose function is observation. Though we have all made such observations on ourselves, they can never have much scientific value, and the best mode of knowing the passions will always be that of observing them from without; for every strong state of passion . . . is necessarily incompatible with the state of observation. But, as for observing in the same way intellectual phenomena at the time of their actual presence, that is a manifest impossibility. The thinker cannot divide himself into two, of whom one reasons whilst the other observes him reason. The organ observed and the organ observing being, in this case, identical, how could observation take place? This pretended psychological method is then radically null and void. On the one hand, they advise you to isolate yourself, as far as possible, from every external sensation, especially every intellectual work,—for if you were to busy yourself even with the simplest calculation, what would become of internal observation?—on the other hand, after having with the utmost care attained this state of intellectual slumber, you must begin to contemplate the operations going on in your mind, when nothing there takes place! Our descendants will doubtless see such pretensions some day ridiculed upon the stage. The results of so strange a procedure harmonize entirely with its principle. For all the two thousand years during which metaphysicians have thus cultivated psychology, they are not agreed about one intelligible and established proposition. 'Internal observation ' gives almost as many divergent results as there are individuals who think they practise it." Comte hardly could have known anything of the English, and nothing of the German, empirical psychology. The 'results' which he

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  important sort at all.[572] Compare A. Riehl: Der Philosophische Kriticismus, Bd. II. Thl. I. Abschn. I. Cap. III. §6.[573] As one example out of a thousand of exceptionally delicate idiosyncrasy in this regard, take this: "I must quit society. I would rather undergo twice the danger from beasts and ten times the danger from rocks. It is not pain, it is not death, that I dread,—it is the hatred of a man; there is something in it so shocking that I would rather submit to any injury than incur or increase the hatred of a man by revenging it. . . . Another sufficient reason for suicide is that I was this morning out of temper with Mrs. Douglas (for no fault of hers). I did not betray myself in the least, but I reflected that to be exposed to the possibility of such an event once a year, was evil enough to render life intolerable. The disgrace of using an impatient word is to me overpowering." (Elton Hammond, quoted in Henry Crabb Robinson's Diary, vol. I. p. 424.)[574] Compare H. Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, bk. III. chap. XIII. §3.[575] A gentleman told me that he had a conclusive argument for opening the Harvard Medical School to women. It was this: "Are not women human?"—which major premise of course had to be granted. "Then are they not entitled to all the rights of humanity?" My friend said that he had never met anyone who could successfully meet this reasoning.[576] You reach the Mephistophelian point of view as well as the point of view of justice by treating cases as if they belonged rigorously to abstract classes. Pure rationalism, complete immunity from prejudice, consists in refusing to see that the case before one is absolutely unique. It is always possible to treat the country of one's nativity, the house of one's fathers, the bed in which one's mother died, nay, the mother herself if need be, on a naked equality with all other specimens of so many respective genera. It shows the world in a clear frosty light from which all fuliginous mists of affection, all swamp-lights of sentimentality, are absent. Straight and immediate action becomes easy then—witness a Napoleon's or a Frederick's career. But the question always remains, "Are not the mists and vapors worth retaining?" The illogical refusal to treat certain concretes by the mere law of their genus has made the drama of human history. The obstinate insisting that tweedledum is not tweedledee is the bone and marrow of life. Look at the Jews and the Scots, with their miserable factions and sectarian disputes, their loyalties and patriotisms and exclusions,—their annals now become a classic heritage, because men of genius took part and sang in them. A thing is important if any one think it important. The process of history consists in certain folks becoming possessed of the mania that certain special things are important infinitely, whilst other folks cannot agree in the belief. The Shah of Persia

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  disobey this prompting than water can refuse to boil when a fire is kindled under the pot. His life will again and again pay the forfeit of his gluttony. Exposure to retaliation, to other enemies, to traps, to poisons, to the dangers of repletion, must be regular parts of his existence. His lack of all thought by which to weigh the danger against the attractiveness of the bait, and of all volition to remain hungry a little while longer, is the direct measure of his lowness in the mental scale. And those fishes which, like our cunners and sculpins, are no sooner thrown back from the hook into the water, than they automatically seize the hook again, would soon expiate the degradation of their intelligence by the extinction of their type, did not their exaggerated fecundity atone for their imprudence. Appetite and the acts it prompts have consequently become in all higher vertebrates functions of the cerebrum. They disappear when the physiologist's knife has left the subordinate centres alone in place. The brainless pigeon will starve though left on a corn-heap. Take again the sexual function. In birds this devolves exclusively upon the hemispheres. When these are shorn away the pigeon pays no attention to the billings and cooings of its mate. And Goltz found that a bitch in heat would excite no emotion in male dogs who had suffered large loss of cerebral tissue. Those who have read Darwin's 'Descent of Man' know what immense importance in the amelioration of the breed in birds this author ascribes to the mere fact of sexual selection. The sexual act is not performed until every condition of circumstance and sentiment is fulfilled, until time, place, and partner all are fit. But in frogs and toads this passion devolves on the lower centres. They show consequently a machine-like obedience to the present incitement of sense, and an almost total exclusion of the power of choice. Copulation occurs per fas aut nefas , occasionally between males, often with dead females, in puddles exposed on the highway, and the male may be cut in two without letting go his hold. Every spring an immense sacrifice of batrachian life takes place from these causes alone. No one need be told how dependent all human social elevation is upon the prevalence of chastity. Hardly any factor measures more than this the difference between civilization and barbarism. Physiologically interpreted, chastity means nothing more than the fact that present solicitations of sense are overpowered by suggestions of aesthetic and moral fitness which the circumstances awaken in the cerebrum; and that upon the inhibitory or permissive influence of these alone action directly depends. Within the psychic life due to the cerebrum itself the same general distinction obtains, between considerations of the more immediate and considerations of the more remote. In all ages the man whose determinations are swayed by reference to the most distant ends has been held to possess the highest intelligence. The tramp who lives from hour to

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  in my mind, as is the most rarefied and universally applicable quality he may possess—being , for example, when treated in the same way.[401] From every point of view, the overwhelming and portentous character ascribed to universal conceptions is surprising. Why, from Plato and Aristotle downwards, philosophers should have vied with each other in scorn of the knowledge of the particular, and in adoration of that of the general, is hard to understand, seeing that the more adorable knowledge ought to be that of the more adorable things, and that the things of worth are all concretes and singulars. The only value of universal characters is that they help us, by reasoning, to know new truths about individual things. The restriction of one's meaning, moreover, to an individual thing, probably requires even more complicated brain-processes than its extension to all the instances of a kind; and the mere mystery, as such, of the knowledge, is equally great, whether generals or singulars be the things known. In sum, therefore, the traditional universal-worship can only be called a bit of perverse sentimentalism, a philosophic 'idol of the cave.' It may seem hardly necessary to add (what follows as a matter of course from pp. 152-158, and what has been implied in our assertions all along) that nothing can be conceived twice over without being conceived in entirely different states of mind . Thus, my arm-chair is one of the things of which I have a conception; I knew it yesterday and recognized it when I looked at it. But if I think of it to-day as the same arm-chair which I looked at yesterday, it is obvious that the very conception of it as the same is an additional complication to the thought, whose inward constitution must alter in consequence. In short, it is logically impossible that the same thing should be known as the same by two successive copies of the same thought. As a matter of fact, the thoughts by which we know that we mean the same thing are apt to be very different indeed from each other. We think the thing now in one context, now in another; now in a definite image, now in a symbol. Sometimes our sense of its identity pertains to the mere fringe, sometimes it involves the nucleus, of our thought. We never can break the thought asunder and tell just which one of its bits is the part that lets us know which subject is referred to; but nevertheless we always do know which of all possible subjects we have in mind. Introspective psychology must here throw up the sponge; the fluctuations of subjective life are too exquisite to be arrested by its coarse means. It must confine itself to bearing witness to the fact that all sorts of different subjective states do form the vehicle by which the same is known; and it must contradict the opposite view. The ordinary Psychology of 'ideas' constantly talks as if the vehicle of the

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  do no more than decide what to think of his transcendental Ego if it be an agent. Well, if it be so, Transcendentalism is only Substantialism grown shame-faced, and the Ego only a 'cheap and nasty' edition of the soul. All our reasons for preferring the 'Thought' to the 'Soul' apply with redoubled force when the Soul is shrunk to this estate. The Soul truly explained nothing; the 'syntheses,' which she performed, were simply taken ready-made and clapped on to her as expressions of her nature taken after the fact; but at least she had some semblance of nobility and outlook. She was called active; might select; was responsible, and permanent in her way. The Ego is simply nothing : as ineffectual and windy an abortion as Philosophy can show. It would indeed by one of Reason's tragedies if the good Kant, with all his honesty and strenuous pains, should have deemed this conception an important outbirth of his thought. But we have seen that Kant deemed it of next to no importance at all. It was reserved for his Fichtean and Hegelian successors to call it the first Principle of Philosophy, to spell its name in capitals and pronounce it with adoration, to act, in short, as if they were going up in a balloon, whenever the notion of it crossed their mind. Here again, however, I am uncertain of the facts of history, and know that I may not read my authors aright. The whole lesson of Kantian and post-Kantian speculation is, it seems to me, the lesson of simplicity. With Kant, complication both of thought and statement was an inborn infirmity, enhanced by the musty academicism of his Königsberg existence. With Hegel is was a raging fever. Terribly, therefore, do the sour grapes which these fathers of philosophy have eaten set our teeth on edge. We have in England and America, however, a contemporary continuation of Hegelism from which, fortunately, somewhat simpler deliverances come; and, unable to find any definite psychology in what Hegel, Rosenkranz, or Erdmann tells us of the Ego, I turn to Caird and Green. The great difference, practically, between these authors and Kant is their complete abstraction from the onlooking Psychologist and from the Reality he thinks he knows; or rather it is the absorption of both of these outlying terms into the proper topic of Psychology, viz., the mental experience of the mind under observation. The Reality coalesces with the connected Manifold, the Psychologist with the Ego, knowing becomes 'connecting,' and there results no longer a finite or criticisable, but an 'absolute' Experience, of which the Object and the Subject are always the same. Our finite 'Thought' is virtually and potentially this eternal (or rather this 'timeless'), absolute Ego, and only provisionally and speciously the limited thing which it seems primâ facie to be. The later 'sections' of our 'Stream,' which come and appropriate the earlier ones, are those earlier ones, just as in substantialism the Soul is throughout all time the

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  "I found the outside to be composed entirely of spikes, all laid with symmetry, so as to present the points of the nails outward. In the centre of this mass was the nest, composed of finely-divided fibres of hemp-packing. Interlaced with the spikes were the following: about two dozen knives, forks, and spoons; all the butcher's knives, three in number; a large carving-knife, fork, and steel; several large plugs of tobacco, ... an old purse containing some silver, matches, and tobacco; nearly all the small tools from the tool-closets, with several large angers, ... all of which must have been transported some distance, as they were originally stored in different parts of the house....The outside casing of a silver watch was disposed of in one part of the pile, the glass of the same watch in another, and the works in still another."[400] In every lunatic asylum we find the collecting instinct developing itself in an equally absurd way. Certain patients will spend all their time picking pins from the floor and hoarding them. Others collect bits of thread, buttons, or rags, and prize them exceedingly. Now, 'the Miser' par excellence of the popular imagination and of melodrama, the monster of squalor and misanthropy, is simply one of these mentally deranged persons. His intellect may in many matters be clear, but his instincts, especially that of ownership, are insane, and their insanity has no more to do with the association of ideas than with the precession of the equinoxes. As a matter of fact his hoarding usually is directed to money; but it also includes almost anything besides. Lately in a Massachusetts town there died a miser who principally hoarded newspapers. These had ended by so filling all the rooms of his good-sized house from floor to ceiling that his living-space was restricted to a few narrow channels between them. Even as I write, the morning paper gives an account of the emptying of a miser's den in Boston by the City Board of Health. What the owner hoarded is thus described:

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  the way of survival of the fittest, if by no director path, to take an intense interest in the bodies to which they are yoked, altogether apart from any interest in the pure Ego which they also possess. And similarly with the images of their person in the minds of others. I should not be extant now had I not become sensitive to looks of approval or disapproval on the faces among which my life is cast. Looks of contempt cast on other persons need affect me in no such peculiar way. Were my mental life dependent exclusively on some other person's welfare, either directly or in an indirect way, then natural selection would unquestionably have brought it about that I should be as sensitive to the social vicissitudes of that other person as I now am to my own. Instead of being egoistic I should be spontaneously altruistic, then. But in this case, only partially realized in actual human conditions, though the self I empirically love would have changed, my pure Ego or Thinker would have to remain just what it is now. My spiritual powers, again, must interest me more than those of other people, and for the same reason. I should not be here at all unless I had cultivated them and kept them from decay. And the same law which made me once care for them makes me care for them still. My own body and what ministers to its needs are thus the primitive object, instinctively determined, of my egoistic interests. Other objects may become interesting derivatively through association with any of these things, either as means or as habitual concomitants; and so in a thousand ways the primitive sphere of the egoistic emotions may enlarge and change its boundaries. This sort of interest is really the meaning of the word 'my .' Whatever has it is eo ipso a part of me. My child, my friend dies, and where he goes I feel that part of myself now is and evermore shall be: "For this losing is true dying; This is lordly man's down-lying; This his slow but sure reclining, Star by star his world resigning." The fact remains, however, that certain special sorts of thing tend primordially to possess this interest, and form the natural me. But all these things are objects , properly so called, to the subject which does the thinking.[268] And this latter fact upsets at once the dictum of the old-fashioned sensationalist psychology, that altruistic passions and interests are contradictory to the nature of things, and that if they appear anywhere to exist, it must be as secondary products, resolvable at bottom into cases of selfishness, taught by experience a hypocritical disguise. If the zoological and evolutionary point of view is the true one, there is no reason why any object whatever might not arouse passion and interest as primitively and instinctively as any other, whether connected or not with the interests of the me. The phenomenon of passion

• From Story of O (1954)

  But then, what was René compared to Sir Stephen? Ropes of straw, anchors of cork, paper chains: these were the real symbols of the bonds with which he had held her, and which he had been so quick to sever. But what a delight and comfort, this iron ring which pierces the flesh and weighs one down forever, this mark eternal, how peaceful and reassuring the hand of a master who lays you on a bed of rock, the love of a master who knows how to take what he loves ruthlessly, without pity. And O said to herself that, in the final analysis, with René she had been an apprentice to love, she had loved him only to learn how to give herself, enslaved and surfeited, to Sir Stephen. But to see René, who had been so free with her - and she had loved his free ways - walking as though he were hobbled, like someone whose legs were ensnarled in the water and reeds of a pond whose surface seems calm but which, deeper down, swirls with subterranean currents, to see him thus, filled O with hate for Jacqueline. Did René dimly perceive her feelings? Did O carelessly reveal how she felt? In any case, O committed an error.

• From Story of O (1954)

  The only time that Jacqueline let O come into the house and follow her up to her room, O had understood why she had so adamantly refused René permission to set foot in the house. What would have happened to her prestige, her black-and-white legend on the slick pages of the posh fashion magazines, if someone other than a woman like herself had seen the sordid lair from which the glorious creature issued forth every day? The bed was never made, at most the bedclothes were more or less pulled up, and the sheet which was visible was dirty and greasy, for Jacqueline never went to bed without massaging her face with cold cream, and she fell asleep too quickly to think of wiping it off. Sometime in the past a curtain had apparently partitioned off the toilet from the room: all that remained on the triangular shaped curtain rod were two rings and a few shreds of cloth. The color was faded from everything: from the rug, from the wallpaper whose pink and gray flowers were crawling upward like vegetation gone wild and become petrified on the imitation white trellis. One would have had to throw everything out and start again from scratch: scrape off the wallpaper, throw out the rug, sand the floors. But without waiting for that, one could in any case have cleaned off the dirt that, like so many strata, ringed the enamel of the basin, immediately wiped off and put into some kind of order the bottles of make-up remover and the jars of cream, cleaned up the powder box, wiped off the dressing table, thrown out the dirty cotton, opened the windows. But, straight and cool and clean and smelling of eau de Cologne and wild flowers, dirt-proof and impeccable, Jacqueline could not have cared less about her filthy room. What she did care about, however, what caused her no end of concern, was her family. It was because of her hovel, which O was frank enough to have mentioned to René, that René made a proposal which was to alter their lives, but it was because of her family that Jacqueline accepted. René's suggestion was that Jacqueline should come and live with O. "Family" was a gross misunderstatement: it was a clan, or rather a horde. Grandmother, mother, aunt, and even a maid - four women ranging in age from fifty to seventy, strident, heavily made up, smothered beneath onyx and their black silks, sobbing and wailing at four in the morning in the faint red light of the icons, with the cigarette smoke swirling thickly about them, four women drowning in the clicking of the tea glasses and the harsh hissing of a language Jacqueline would gladly have

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Oh, and in all of this, nothing ever gives managers permission to “out” people who aren’t ready. I Don’t See Color (and Other Dumb Things to Say) Howard Schultz, former CEO of Starbucks, said at a town-hall event that he doesn’t see color when it comes to race. Schultz said, “As somebody who grew up in a very diverse background as a young boy in the projects, I didn’t see color as a young boy and I honestly don’t see color now.” Says activist Franchesca Ramsey, “People who say this usually mean well—they want you to know they’re sooo not racist that they can’t even conceive of a reality in which racism exists. But what they’re actually saying is that racial identity is bad, not that racial oppression is bad. It suggests people’s experiences aren’t valid—or flat-out aren’t real. If you wear glasses and I say, ‘I don’t even see your glasses,’ that doesn’t mean you suddenly have 20/20 vision; it just means I’m in denial. Or maybe I need glasses myself.” Statements denying there’s a problem are problematic to diversity and inclusion efforts, says Janice Gassam, PhD, author of Dirty Diversity . “Anyone who is able to see can discern and recognize one skin color from the next. How can you possibly fix something that you don’t believe you actually see? It’s important to understand that the goal is not to be color-blind. The goal is actually to see and recognize skin color but to control and regulate your innate impulse to make decisions based on such characteristics,” she added. Gassam is of course correct. We all see color. We see height and weight. We remember when someone tells us they are part of the LGBTQ+ community or a minority religious group. We must recognize that each of us has preconceived notions and expectations about different groups of people. Pretending we can’t see differences shows a lack of empathy and ignores when certain groups or individuals are being alienated. Implicit bias is something that we shouldn’t be afraid to recognize in ourselves, and we should actually seek it out so we can unlearn expectations. Two of the leading scholars in implicit bias, social psychologists Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald, talk about this in their aptly titled book Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People . They say implicit bias can affect people who say, quite honestly, that they are horrified by these types of attitudes. They refer to a study by the Pew Research Center.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  In this chapter, Daniel Kahneman explores the idea of fairness as a crucial element that shapes economic behavior. He begins by asserting that when firms face challenging circumstances, it is commonly accepted that they can act selfishly, imparting losses onto customers and employees. However, consumers and workers hold strong views about fairness, which often dictates their loyalty and productivity. This understanding is evident from research that shows respondents do not always regard firms as unfair when they choose to retain profits during favorable economic conditions; instead, they reserve indignation for explicit exploitation, such as breaking informal contracts. This section introduces the complex nature of fairness as it pertains to economic behavior, particularly in the context of firms facing difficult situations. Kahneman argues that while firms may act in self-interest, consumers and workers have strong expectations regarding fairness. Interestingly, he notes that consumers do not label a firm's retention of profits during favorable economic conditions as unfair, indicating a nuanced perception of fairness that only backlash arises when firms exploit their power. This exploration of fairness lays the groundwork for a deeper understanding of how perceptions of fairness can invite both loyalty and punishment in economic interactions, emphasizing the importance of navigating these perceptions skillfully in business practices. By framing the study of economic fairness as a means to identify acceptable versus unacceptable behaviors, Kahneman shifts the focus from ideal conduct to the boundaries of acceptable actions in economic transactions. In this reflective section, Kahneman discusses the initial reception of his research on fairness in economic behavior, highlighting the prevailing notion among economists that self-interest reigns supreme in economic affairs. Upon submitting his findings to the American Economic Review, he faced skepticism rooted in the reliance on survey data, typically dismissed in the field. However, the paper was favorably reviewed and accepted, underscoring a shift in economic thought recognizing the significance of fairness concerns. Kahneman notes the growing acknowledgment of how violations of fairness lead to tangible consequences—such as reduced productivity among employees and decreased sales among merchants. He presents empirical evidence revealing customers’ adverse reactions to perceived price inequities, highlighting a critical transition within economic theory towards incorporating notions of fairness into discussions of market dynamics. This section elucidates the repercussions that firms face when engaging in practices perceived as unfair, particularly the concept of "altruistic punishment." Kahneman describes evidence indicating that not only do victims retaliate against unfairness, but observers may also participate in punishing unfair behavior, as shown through neuroeconomic studies involving MRI scans. The results suggest that punishing unfairness activates pleasure centers in the brain, indicating a profound psychological link between fairness, social order, and individual satisfaction. This section fortifies the premise that perceptions of loss not only motivate individual decisions but can also catalyze broader social dynamics that uphold fairness within economic systems. The risks of unfairly imposing losses extend beyond immediate business impacts, demonstrating that maintaining ethical conduct is crucial for long-term social stability and operational success.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa claim that, “We know that humans have been polygynous throughout most of history because men are taller than women.” These authors go on to conclude that because “human males are 10 percent taller and 20 percent heavier than females, this suggests that, throughout history, humans have been mildly polygynous.” 5 Their analysis ignores the fact that the cultural conditions necessary for some males to accumulate sufficient political power and wealth to support multiple wives and their children simply did not exist before agriculture. And males being moderately taller and heavier than females indicates reduced competition among males, but not necessarily “mild polygyny.” After all, those promiscuous cousins of ours, chimps and bonobos, reflect precisely the same range of male/female size difference while shamelessly enjoying uncounted sexual encounters with as many partners as they can drum up. No one claims the 10 to 20 percent body-size dimorphism seen in chimps and bonobos is evidence of “mild polygyny.” The assertion that the same physical evidence correlates to promiscuity in chimps and bonobos but indicates mild polygyny or monogamy in humans shows just how shaky the standard model really is. For various reasons, prehistoric harems were unlikely for our species. The famed sexual appetites of Ismail the Bloodthirsty, Genghis Khan, Brigham Young, and Wilt Chamberlain notwithstanding, our bodies argue strongly against it. Harems result from the common male hunger for sexual variety and the post-agricultural concentration of power in the hands of a few men combined with low levels of female autonomy typical of agricultural societies. Harems are a feature of militaristic, rigidly hierarchical agricultural and pastoral cultures oriented toward rapid population growth, territorial expansion, and accumulation of wealth. Captive harems have never been reported in any immediate-return foraging society. While our species’ shift to moderate body-size dimorphism strongly suggests that males found an alternative to fighting over mating opportunities millions of years ago, it doesn’t tell us what that alternative was. Many theorists have interpreted the shift as confirmation of a transition from polygyny to monogamy—but that conclusion requires us to ignore multimale-multifemale mating as an option for our ancestors. Yes, a one-man/one-woman system reduces competition among males, as the pool of available females isn’t being dominated by just a few men, leaving more women available for less desired men. But a mating system in which both males and females typically have multiple sexual relationships running in parallel reduces male mating competition just as effectively, if not more so. And given that both of the species closest to us practice multimale-multifemale mating, this seems by far the more likely scenario. Why are scientists so reluctant to consider the implications of our two closest primate relatives displaying the same levels of body-size dimorphism we do? Could it be because neither is remotely monogamous? The only two “acceptable” interpretations of this shift in body-size dimorphism appear to be: It indicates the origins of our nuclear family/sexually monogamous mating system.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  But just as “patriotism is the conviction that your country is superior to all others because you were born in it” (G. B. Shaw), the notion that we live in our species’ “most peaceful moment” is as intellectually baseless as it is emotionally comforting. Journalist Louis Menand noted how science can fulfill a conservative, essentially political function by providing “an explanation for the way things are that does not threaten the way things are.” “Why,” he asks rhetorically, “should someone feel unhappy or engage in anti-social behavior when that person is living in the freest and most prosperous nation on Earth? It can’t be the system!” 23 What’s your problem? Everything’s just fine. Life’s great and getting better! Less war! Longer life! New and improved human existence! This Madison Avenue vision of the super-duper new and improved present is framed by an utterly fictional, blood-smeared Hobbesian past. Yet it’s marketed to the public as the “clear-eyed realist” position, and those who question its founding assumptions risk being dismissed as delusional romantics still grieving over the death of Janis Joplin and the demise of bell-bottoms. But that “realistic” argument is riddled with misunderstood data, mistaken interpretations, and misleading calculations. A dispassionate review of the relevant science clearly demonstrates that the tens of thousands of years before the advent of agriculture, while certainly not a time of uninterrupted utopian bliss, was for the most part characterized by robust health, peace between individuals and groups, low levels of chronic stress and high levels of overall satisfaction for most of our ancestors. Having made this argument, have we outed ourselves as card-carrying comrades in the Delusional Utopian Movement (DUM)? Is it Rousseauian fantasy to assert that prehistory was not an unending nightmare? That human nature leans no more toward violence, selfishness, and exploitation than toward peace, generosity, and cooperation? That most of our ancient ancestors probably experienced a sense of communal belonging few of us can imagine today? That human sexuality probably evolved and functioned as a social bonding device and a pleasurable way to avoid and neutralize conflict?

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Echoing the Kama Sutra, Sherfey isn’t shy about the implications of this mismatch of orgasmic capacity between human males and females, writing: “The sexual hunger of the female, and her capacity for copulation completely exceeds that of any male,” and, “To all intents and purposes, the human female is sexually insatiable. …” That may or may not be, but it cannot be denied that the design of the human female’s reproductive system is far from what the standard narrative predicts, and thus demands radical rethinking of the evolution of female sexuality. Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality P A R T V Men Are from Africa, Women Are from Africa The sooner we accept the basic differences between men and women, the sooner we can stop arguing about it and start having sex! D R. S TEPHEN T. C OLBERT, D.F.A. Permeating the standard narrative of human sexual evolution is the depressing claim that men and women always have been and always will be locked in erotic conflict. The War Between the Sexes is said to be built into our evolved sexuality: men want lots of no-strings lovers, while women want just a few partners, with as many strings as possible. If a man agrees to be roped into a relationship, the narrative tells us, he’ll be hellbent on making sure his mate isn’t risking his genetic investment by accepting deposits from other men, as it were. Extreme as it sounds, this is no overstatement. In his classic 1972 paper on “parental investment,” biologist Robert Trivers remarked, “One can, in effect, treat the sexes as if they were different species, the opposite sex being a resource relevant to producing maximum surviving offspring.” In other words, men and women have such conflicting agendas when it comes to reproduction that we are essentially predators of one another’s interests. In The Moral Animal, Robert Wright laments, “A basic underlying dynamic between men and women is mutual exploitation. They seem, at times, designed to make each other miserable.” 1 Don’t believe it. We aren’t designed to make each other miserable. This view holds evolution responsible for the mismatch between our evolved predispositions and the post-agricultural socioeconomic world we find ourselves in. The assertion that human beings are naturally monogamous is not just a lie; it’s a lie most Western societies insist we keep telling each other. There’s no denying that men and women are different, but we’re hardly different species or from different planets or designed to torment one another. In fact, the interlocking nature of our differences testifies to our profound mutuality. Let’s look at some of the ways in which male and female erotic interests, perspectives, and capacities converge, intersect, and overlap, showing how each of us is a fragment of a greater unity.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  The genius of Pretty Woman lies in making explicit what’s been implicit in hundreds of films and books. According to this theory, women have evolved to unthinkingly and unashamedly exchange erotic pleasure for access to a man’s wealth, protection, status, and other treasures likely to benefit her and her children. Darwin says your mother’s a whore. Simple as that. Lest you think we’re being flip, we assure you that the bartering of female fertility and fidelity in exchange for goods and services is one of the foundational premises of evolutionary psychology. The Adapted Mind, a book many consider to be the bible of the field, spells out the sex contract very clearly: A man’s sexual attractiveness to women will be a function of traits that were correlated with high mate value in the natural environment…. The crucial question is, What traits would have been correlated with high mate value? Three possible answers are as follows: The willingness and ability of a man to provide for a woman and her children…. The willingness and ability of a man to protect a woman and her children…. The willingness and ability of a man to engage in direct parenting activities. 5 Now let’s review some of the most prominent research founded upon these assumptions about men, women, family structure, and prehistoric life. The Famously Flaccid Female Libido The female… with the rarest exception, is less eager than the male…. C HARLES D ARWIN Women have little interest in sex, right? Despite Tiresias’s observations, until very recently, that’s been the near-universal consensus in Western popular culture, medicine, and evolutionary psychology. In recent years, popular culture has begun to question women’s relative lack of interest, but as far as the standard model is concerned, not much has changed since Dr. William Acton published his famous thoughts on the matter in 1875, assuring his readers, “The best mothers, wives, and managers of households know little or nothing of sexual indulgences…. As a general rule, a modest woman seldom desires any sexual gratification for herself. She submits to her husband, but only to please him.” 6 More recently, in his now classic work The Evolution of Human Sexuality, psychologist Donald Symons confidently proclaimed that “among all peoples sexual intercourse is understood to be a service or favor that females render to males.” 7 In a foundational paper published in 1948, geneticist A. J. Bateman wasn’t hesitant to extrapolate his findings concerning fruit fly behavior to humans, commenting that natural selection encourages “an undiscriminating eagerness in the males and a discriminating passivity in the females.” 8 The sheer volume of evidence amassed to convince us that women are not particularly sexual beings is quite impressive. Hundreds, if not thousands, of studies have claimed to confirm the flaccidity of the female libido.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  18. Many accounts of human sexuality incorporate this explanation, but that of Desmond Morris is probably still the most widely known. 19. Dixson (1998), pp. 133–134. 20. Dixson refers specifically to macaques and chimps in this passage, though he’s speaking of the capacity for multiple orgasm in female primates in general in the section where the passage appears. Passages like this led us to wonder why Dixson hadn’t followed the data to where they seem to so clearly lead. We sent him an email outlining our argument and requesting his comments and criticisms, but if he received our message, he chose not to respond. 21. Symons (1979), p. 89. 22. Lloyd, a former student of Stephen Jay Gould, recently published an entire book in which she reviews (and rather contemptuously dismisses) the various adaptive arguments for the female orgasm (The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution). For a sense of why we don’t recommend her book, take a look at David Barash’s review, available online (“Let a Thousand Orgasms Bloom”). Download at http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/ep03347354.pdf. 23. As noted above, some of the findings of Baker and Bellis are highly controversial. We mention them because they are known to many in the general audience, but none of their findings are necessary to our argument. 24. Barratt et al. (2009). Available online at http://jbiol.com/content/8/7/63. 25. Pusey (2001). 26. Both quotes appear in Potts and Short (1999). The first quote is from the main text, page 38, and the second is quoting Laura Betzig, p. 39. 27. Dixson (1998), pp. 269–271. An excellent review of the development of the concept of postcopulatory sexual selection can be found in Birkhead (2000). Copious evidence for this filtering function can be found in Eberhard (1996), where the author presents dozens of examples of females exerting “post-copulatory control” over which sperm fertilize their eggs. 28. Dixson (1998), p. 2. 29. Small (1993), p. 122. 30. Gallup et al. (2002). Part V: Men Are from Africa, Women Are from Africa 1. Wright (1994), p. 58. Chapter 20: On Mona Lisa’s Mind 1. Kendrick et al. (1998). 2. Baumeister (2000). 3. Chivers et al. (2007). 4. Much of the research reviewed here is mentioned in Bergner’s excellent article “What Do Women Want?—Discovering What Ignites Female Desire,” January 22, 2009. Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html. 5. Anokhin et al. (2006). 6. Georgiadis et al. (2006). Or, for a review: Mark Henderson, “Women Fall into a ‘Trance’ During Orgasm,” Times Online, June 20, 2005. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article535521.ece. 7. Tarin and Gómez-Piquer (2002). 8. Little’s quote is from BBC News article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2677697.stm. 9. Wedekind et al. (1995). A more recent follow-up that confirms these results is Santos et al. (2005). 10. Birth control pills don’t just interfere with women’s ability to sense MHC in men, but appear to affect other feedback systems as well. See Laeng and Falkenberg (2007), for example. 11. For a recent survey of this research, see Alvergne and Lummaa (2009). 12. This isn’t meant as an indictment of the pill.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  But nobody’s very clear what all this incessant war was over. Despite his certainty that foragers’ lives were plagued by “constant warfare,” Wade acknowledges that “ancestral people lived in small egalitarian societies, without property, or leaders or differences of rank….” So we’re to understand that egalitarian, nonhierarchical, nomadic groups without property … were constantly at war? Hunter-gatherer societies, possessing so little and thus with so little to lose (other than their lives), living on a wide-open planet were nothing like the densely populated, settled societies struggling over dwindling or accumulated resources in more recent historical times. 3 Why would they be? We’ve no space for a comprehensive response to this aspect of the standard Hobbesian narrative, but we’ve selected three well-known figures associated with it for a closer look at their arguments and data: evolutionary psychologist Stephen Pinker, the revered primatologist Jane Goodall, and the world’s most famous living anthropologist, Napoleon Chagnon. 4 Professor Pinker, Red in Tooth and Claw Imagine a high-profile expert stands before a distinguished audience and argues that Asians are warlike people. In support of his argument, he presents statistics from seven countries: Argentina, Poland, Ireland, Nigeria, Canada, Italy, and Russia. “Wait a minute,” you might say, “those aren’t even Asian countries—except, possibly, Russia.” The expert would be laughed off the stage—as he should be. In 2007, world-famous Harvard professor and best-selling author Steven Pinker gave a presentation built upon similarly flawed logic at the TED conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design) in Long Beach, California. 5 Pinker’s presentation provides both a concise statement of the neo-Hobbesian view of the origins of war and an illuminating look at the dubious rhetorical tactics often used to promote this bloodstained vision of our prehistory. The twenty-minute talk is available at the TED website. 6 We encourage you to watch at least the first five minutes (dealing with prehistory) before reading the following discussion. Go ahead. We’ll wait here. Though Pinker spends less than 10 percent of his time discussing hunter-gatherers (a social configuration, you’ll recall, that represents well over 95 percent of our time on the planet), he manages to make a real mess of things. Three and a half minutes into his talk, Pinker presents a chart based on Lawrence Keeley’s War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. The chart shows “the percentage of male deaths due to warfare in a number of foraging or hunting and gathering societies.” He explains that the chart shows that hunter-gatherer males were far more likely to die in war than are men living today. But hold on. Take a closer look at that chart. It lists seven “hunter-gatherer” cultures as representative of prehistoric war-related male death. The seven cultures listed are the Jivaro, two branches of Yanomami, the Mae Enga, Dugum Dani, Murngin, Huli, and Gebusi. The Jivaro and both Yanomami groups are from the Amazon region, the Murngin are from northern coastal Australia, and the other four are all from the conflict-ridden, densely populated highlands of Papua New Guinea.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  It signifies “a powerful nonhuman with deeply disturbed tendencies and wild eccentricities.” 33 Since 1995, Chagnon has been legally barred from returning to the lands of the Yanomami. When anthropologist Leslie Sponsel lived among the Yanomami in the mid-1970s, he saw no warfare, just one physical fight, and heard a few loud marital disputes. “To my surprise,” writes Sponsel, “people in [my] village and three neighboring villages were simply nothing like ‘the fierce people’ described by Chagnon.” Sponsel had brought along a copy of Chagnon’s book, with its photos of fighting Yanomami warriors, as a way to explain the sort of work he was doing. “Although some of the men were absorbed by the pictures,” he writes, “I was asked not to show them to children as they provided examples of undesirable behavior. These Yanomami,” Sponsel concluded, “did not value fierceness in any positive way.” 34 For his part, in over a decade living among them, Good witnessed a single outbreak of war. He cut his association with Chagnon eventually, having concluded the emphasis on Yanomami violence was “contrived and distorted.” Good later wrote that Chagnon’s book had “blown the subject out of any sane proportion,” arguing that “what he had done was tantamount to saying that New Yorkers are muggers and murderers.” The Desperate Search for Hippie Hypocrisy and Bonobo Brutality For a certain kind of journalist (or evolutionary psychologist), nothing is more satisfying than exposing hippie hypocrisy. A recent headline from Reuters reads, “Hippie Apes Make War as Well as Love, Study Finds.” 35 The article states, “Despite their reputation as lovers, not fighters, of the primate world, bonobos actually hunt and kill monkeys….” Another assures us that “Despite ‘Peacenik’ Reputation, Bonobos Hunt and Eat Other Primates Too.” A third, under the headline “Sex Crazed Apes Feast on Killing, Too,” opens with an audible sneer: “As hippies had Altamont [where Hell’s Angels killed a concert-goer], so bonobos have Salonga National Park, where scientists have witnessed the supposedly peace-loving primate hunting and eating monkey children.” “Sex crazed”? “Supposedly peace-loving”? “Eating monkey children”? Do monkeys have “children”? If both chimps and bonobos make war, maybe we are “dazed survivors” of a “5-million-year habit of lethal aggression” after all. But a closer look reveals that it’s the journalists who are a bit dazed. Researchers witnessed ten attempts to hunt monkeys over five years of observing the bonobos in question. The bonobos were successful three times, sharing the monkey meat among the hunters—mixed groups of males and females. A brief reality check for science journalists: Researchers have long known and reported that bonobos regularly hunt and eat meat, generally small jungle antelopes known as duikers—as well as squirrels, insects, and grubs. The evolutionary line leading to humans, chimps, and bonobos split from that leading to monkeys about thirty million years ago.