Burnham Terry - Mean genes: from sex to money to food, taming our primal instincts

Warning! You will not be able to put this book down! It will change your life. A witty, wise, and irreverent work by two highly regarded scholars.

IRVEN DEVORE, PROFESSOR OF
ANTHROPOLOGY AND BIOLOGY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Enormously entertaining... Burnham and Phelan explain the evolutionary basis for such troublesome matters as overspending, gambling, drug abuse, sexual infidelity, rudeness, and greed.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (STARRED REVIEW)

An unusual cross between a social Darwinist monograph and a self-help manual.

THE NEW YORKER

Consider this book an owners manual for your brain.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

Provocative... a delightfully readable presentation of the evolutionary, as distinct from the moralized, appreciation of human nature.

BOOKLIST

Read this book for the latest scoop on the evolutionary origins of your sins.

AMERICAN SCIENTIST

Incisive.

NATURE GENETICS

A sly and informed discussion of the human animal.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

Well-written... humorous... excellent.

LIBRARY JOURNAL

Burnham and Phelan present a fascinating look at our aboriginal dark side.

BOOKPAGE

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and Perseus Publishing was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in initial capital letters.

Copyright 2000 by Terry Burnham and Jay Phelan
Hardcover first published in 2000 in the United States by Perseus Publishing,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
Paperback first published in 2012 in the United States by Basic Books

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 250 West 57th Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10107.

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Set in 10.5 pt Minion
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover as follows:

Burnham, Terry.

Mean genes : from sex to money to food, taming our primal instincts / Terry
Burnham and Jay Phelan.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 0738202304 (hardcover : alk. Paper)

1. Self-management (Psychology) 2. Self-help techniques. 3. Genetic psychology. I. Title.

BF632 .B87 2000
155.7

00105183

ISBN: 978-0-465-04698-0 (e-book)

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bankruptcy savings big business

dieting laziness liposuction

caffeine alcohol prozac addiction hope

casinos jalapeo peppers roller coasters rewards

money happiness materialism progress joy

mars & venus hormones homosexuality culture

attraction desire fads

marriage cheaters love lust promise

blood siblings conflict motherhood

warfare race gossip road rage loyalty

The brownie. If one can understand how to beat the brownie, one can understand how to tame our primal instincts.

In the 1990s, we began the Mean Genes book project because we had learned the secret to the brownie, and we wanted to share that secret with the world.

Perhaps the most repeated story in Mean Genes concerns Jay and his treatment (or mistreatment) of a brownie on an airplane flight. In order to be physically fit and have energy throughout the day, Jay limits his intake of sugar. Whenever he was on a flight, however, the airline presented a challenge to his plan: A flight attendant delivered a mediocre brownie and left it in front of him for an hour or more.

How does one win the willpower battle? Should Jay have tried to pretend the brownie was not there? Should he have chanted reaffirming messages to himself to bolster his self-image, or reminded himself of the health benefits of resisting the brownie? Jays solution was none of these; it was to smear mayonnaise over the brownie. The effect was that the brownie lost its appeal, and the self-control battle was over. Game, set, match.

The solution to self-control battles lies in the works of Charles Darwin. The spark that created Mean Genes was the insight that our brains were built to solve our ancestors problems, not the problems of modern life.

Our ancestors were hungry. Before the invention of agriculture, about ten thousand years ago, and for the vast majority of our evolutionary history, humans were hunters and gatherers. They had no grocery stores, no refrigerators, not even any ceramic pots in which to keep some rice.

Because our ancestors were hungry, they were built to eat everything they could in times of plenty. This desire to gorge was a biological adaptation, a feature that helped our ancestors to survive.

A second solution to the problem of constant, life-threatening hunger is the ability to save for the future. Humans are amazing savers. Whenever we get a little surplus, we store it up. Where is this savings? Not in your bank account, but rather at your midsection. If you are like most humans over the age of twenty-one, you have a layer of body fat. That fat will allow you to survive, in most cases for two months or more, on just water.

In Mean Genes, we wrote that our toughest battles are with ourselves. We fight these battles against powerful and ancient brain machinery shaped by evolution for survival in the hunter-gatherer world.

We want to eat the brownie because our ancestors were more likely to survive and reproduce if they ate the brownie. For a hungry Pleistocene human, it would have been stupid not to eat the brownie. Worse than stupid, as not eating was a choice that could lead to death.

Our brains, the products of many thousands of generations of evolution, were built to solve these ancient problems. Sometimes our modern problems are similar to our ancestors problems; in such cases, our brains work beautifully and effortlessly to get us to the correct solution.

In some important areas, however, our brains nudge us toward exactly the wrong behaviors. How can we change this and live in the modern world in a way that can keep us healthy? In Mean Genes we explored the first two necessary steps: first, understanding why our brains get us into troublethey are adapted to function in a world different from the one in which we now find ourselves; and second, recognizing that we must outsmart our brains. We cannot expect to override millions of years of evolution easily. It is not easy to sit in front of a brownie for an hour and not eat it. We have to be smarter than that.

Armed with our Darwinian knowledge of the world, we became teachers of these concepts. At Harvard, Jay was the head teaching fellow for a course officially known as human behavioral biology, but known to the students simply as sex. Harvard students loved to call the class sex and make jokes: Did you have sex yesterday? Id love to have lunch with you, but I have sex now.