Behave
2017 • 790 pages
Ratings19
Average rating4.3
15
Ratings19
Average rating4.3
Why do we do the things we do?
Over a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its genetic inheritance.
And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. What goes on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happens? Then he pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell triggers the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones act hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli which trigger the nervous system? By now, he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened.
Sapolsky keeps going--next to what features of the environment affected that person's brain, and then back to the childhood of the individual, and then to their genetic makeup. Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than that one individual. How culture has shaped that individual's group, what ecological factors helped shape that culture, and on and on, back to evolutionary factors thousands and even millions of years old.
The result is one of the most dazzling tours de horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do...for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.
Source: Publisher
Reviews with the most likes.
I've been struggling for two weeks, trying to figure out what to say about Behave. Sapolsky is one of my all-time heroes: kind, wise, eloquent, a great teacher. This is possibly his most important book, at least in the sense of material that everyone should know. Unfortunately, it's not his most readable one. It's dense, so rich in information that it's overwhelming—and I say that as someone who is already familiar with much of this material and who likes to stay informed. He writes clearly; humanely; but it's just too much at once. And despite that, I'm going to urge you to read it anyway. Take your time. Have a highlighter handy, be willing to dog-ear copiously. Go back and reread when you feel lost. And don't feel obligated to learn it all: you'll pick up enough along the way and, perhaps, change a little of how you see yourself and your fellow humans.As a side note, I read this while also reading Parker Palmer's [b:Healing the Heart of Democracy 10836406 Healing the Heart of Democracy The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit Parker J. Palmer https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347421252s/10836406.jpg 15750551] and am dumbstruck by the parallels. Heartened by their common message of compassion and understanding.
