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ALPHABETICAL BRAIN™ VOCABULARY
HUMANIST GALAXY
OF SECULAR SCIENCE STARS
ROBERT SAPOLSKY
June 17, 2021
BEHAVE:
The biology of humans
at our best and worst.
by Robert M. Sapolsky
Penguin Group, 2017 (800 pages)
Quote = "This is a miraculous book, by far the best treatment of violence, aggression, and competition ever. It ranges from how neurons and hormones interact, how emotions are an essential part of decision making, why adolescents are more likely to be violent than adults, why genes influence cultures and vice-versa, and the ins and outs of "we versus them," all the way to "live and let live" truces in World War I and the My Lai massacre. Its depth and breadth of scholarship are amazing, building on Sapolsky's own research and his vast knowledge of the neurobiology, genetic, and behavioral literature." (By Paul R. Ehrlich, author of the book, Human Natures)
BOOK OUTLINE
note = Numbers in parentheses refer to pages
INTRODUCTION (1-13)
1) THE BEHAVIOR (15-20)
2) ONE SECOND BEFORE (21-80)
[1] Three metaphorical (but not literal) layers (22-23)
[2] The Limbic system (24-44)
[3] The Amygdala (31-44)
[4] The frontal cortex (45-64)
[5] Mesolimbic/Mesocortical dopamine system (64-77)
[6] Conclusions (77-80)
3) SECONDS TO MINUTES BEFORE (81-98)
Conclusions (98)
4) HOURS TO DAYS BEFORE (99-136)
5) DAYS TO MONTHS BEFORE (137-153)
Some Conclusions: Two cautionary points about neuroplasticity (152-153)
6) ADOLESCENCE; OR, DUDE, WHERE'S MY FRONTAL CORTEX? (154-173)
7) BACK TO THE CRIB, BACK TO THE WOMB (174-222)
8) BACK TO WHEN YOU WERE JUST A FERTILIZED EGG (223-265)
Part 1 — Genes from the bottom up (225-233)
Part 2 — Genes from the top down: behavior genetics (233-249)
Part 3 — So what do genes actually have to do with behaviors we're interested in? (249-264)
Conclusions (264-265)
9) CENTURIES TO MILLENNIA BEFORE (266-327)
Some Conclusions (326-327)
10) THE EVOLUTION OF BEHAVIOR (328-386)
A final challenge laced with politics: Is everything adaptive? (380-386)
11) US VERSUS THEM (387-424)
Conclusions (423-424)
12) HIERARCHY, OBEDIENCE, AND RESISTANCE (425-477)
[1] The nature and varieties of hierarchies (426-430)
[2] Rank and hierarchy in humans (430-432)
[3] The view from the top, the view from the bottom (432-444)
[4] Oh, why not take this one on? Politics and political orientations (444-455)
[5] Obedience and conformity, disobedience and nonconformity (455-475)
[6] Summary and Conclusions (475-477)
note = Nine points to remember (475-477)
13) MORALITY AND DOING THE RIGHT THING, ONCE YOU'VE FIGURED OUT WHAT THAT IS (478-520)
14) FEELING SOMEONE'S PAIN, UNDERSTANDING SOMEONE'S PAIN, ALLEVIATING SOMEONE'S PAIN (521-552)
15) METAPHORS WE KILL BY (553-579)
16) BIOLOGY, THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM, AND (OH, WHY NOT?) FREE WILL (560-613)
17) WAR AND PEACE (614-670)
EPILOGUE (671-675)
note from webmaster:
Entire Epilogue Quoted Word for Word
"We have covered lots of ground, and some themes have arisen repeatedly. It is worth reviewing them before considering two final points."
"As the single most important of them, virtually every scientific fact presented in this book concerns the average of what is being measured. There is always variation, and it is often the most interesting thing about a fact. Not every person activates the amygdala when seeing the face of a Them; not every yeast adheres to another one bearing the same surface protein marker."
"Instead, on the average, both do. Reflecting this, I have just discovered that this book contains variations on "average," "typically," "usually," "often," "tend to," and "generally" more than five hundred times. And I probably should have inserted them even more as reminders. There are individual differences and interesting exceptions everywhere you look in science."
"Now, in no particular order:"
[1] It is great if your frontal cortex lets you avoid temptation, allowing you to do the harder, better thing. But it is usually more effective if doing that better thing has become so automatic that it is not hard. (end page 671) And it is often easiest to avoid temptation with distraction and reappraisal rather than willpower.
[2] While it is cool that there is so much plasticity in the brain, it is no surprise — it has to work that way.
[3] Childhood adversity can scar everything from our DNA to our cultures, and effects can be lifelong, even multi-generational. However, more adverse consequences can he reversed than used to be thought. But the longer you wait to intervene, the harder it will be.
[4] Brains and cultures coevolve.
[5] Things that seem morally obvious and intuitive now were not necessarily so in the past; many started with nonconforming reasoning.
[6] Repeatedly, biological factors (e.g., hormones) do not so much inspire ["muse"] a behavior as modulate and sensitize, lowering thresholds for environmental stimuli to cause it.
[7] Cognition and affect [emotions] always interact. What is interesting is when one dominates.
[8] Gene's have different effects in different environments; a hormone can make you nicer or crummier, depending on your values; we have not evolved to be "selfish" or "altruistic" or anything else — we have evolved to be particular ways in particular settings. Context, context, context.
[9] Biologically, intense love and intense hate are not opposites. The opposite of each is indifference.
[10] Adolescence shows us that the most interesting part of the brain evolved to be shaped minimally by genes and maximally by experience; that is how we learn. — Context, context, context.
[11] Arbitrary boundaries on continua can be helpful. But never forget that they are arbitrary.
[12] Often we are more about the anticipation and pursuit of pleasure [webmaster's note, in Jefferson's time, "pursuit of happiness" meant the daily practice of happiness] than about the experience of it.
[13] You cannot understand aggression without understanding fear (and what the amygdala has to do with both).
[14] Genes are not about inevitabilities; they are about potentials and vulnerabilities. And they do not determine anything on their own. (end page 672) Gene/environment interactions are everywhere. Evolution is most consequential when altering regulation of genes, rather than genes themselves.
[15] We implicitly divide the world into Us and Them, and prefer the former. We are easily manipulated, even subliminally and within seconds, as to who counts as each.
[16] We are not chimps, and we are not bonobos. We are not a classic pair-bonding species or a tournament species. We have evolved to be somewhere in between in these and other categories that are clear-cut in other animals. It makes us a much more malleable and resilient species. It also makes our social lives much more confusing and messy, filled with imperfection and wrong turns.
[17] The homunculus has no clothes.
[18] While traditional nomadic hunter-gatherer life over hundreds of thousands of years might have been a little on the boring side, it certainly was not ceaselessly bloody. ln the years since most humans abandoned a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, we have obviously invented many things. One of the most interesting and challenging is social systems where we can be surrounded by strangers and can act anonymously.
[19] Saying a biological system works "well" is a value-free assessment; it can take disciplined, hard work, and willpower to accomplish either something wondrous or something appalling. "Doing the right thing" is always context dependent.
[20] Many of our best moments of morality and compassion have roots far deeper and older than being mere products of human civilization.
[21] Be dubious about someone who suggests that other types of people are like little crawly, infectious things.
[22] When humans invented socioeconomic status, they invented a way to subordinate like nothing that hierarchical primates had ever seen before!
[23] "Me" versus "us" (being prosocial within your group) is easier than "us" versus "them" (prosociality between groups). (end page 673)
[24] lt is not great if someone believes it is okay for people to do some horrible, damaging act. But more of the world's misery arises from people who, of course, oppose that horrible act... but cite some particular circumstances that should make them exceptions. The road to hell is paved with rationalization.
[25] The certainty with which we act now might seem ghastly not only to future generations but to our future selves as well.
[26] Neither the capacity for fancy, rarefied moral reasoning nor for feeling great empathy necessarily translates into actually doing something difficult, brave, and compassionate.
[27] People kill and are willing to be killed for symbolic sacred values. Negotiations can make peace with "Them;" understanding and respecting the intensity of their sacred values can make lasting peace.
[28] We are constantly being shaped by seemingly irrelevant stimuli, subliminal information, and internal forces we do not know a thing about.
[29] Our worst behaviors, ones we condemn and punish, are the products of our biology. But do not forget that the same applies to our best behaviors.
[30] Individuals no more exceptional than the rest of us provide stunning examples of our finest moments as humans.
Two Last Thoughts (674)
[1] If you had to boil this book down to a single phrase, it would be "It is complicated." Nothing seems to cause anything; instead everything just modulates something else. Scientists keep saying, "We used to think X, but now we realize that..." Fixing one thing often messes up ten more, as the law of unintended consequences reigns. On any big, important issue it seems like 51percent of the scientific studies conclude one thing, and 49 percent conclude the opposite. And so on.
Eventually it can seem hopeless that you can actually fix something, can make things better. But we have no choice but to try.
And if you are reading this, you are probably (end page 674) ideally suited to do so. You have amply proven you have intellectual tenacity. You probably also have running water, a home, adequate calories, and low odds of festering with a bad parasitic disease. You probably do not have to worry about Ebola virus, warlords. or being invisible in your world.
And you have been educated. ln other words, you are one of the lucky humans. So try!
[2] Finally, you do not have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate. (675)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (676-678)
APPENDIX 1 — Neuroscience 101 (679-706)
APPENDIX 2 — The Basics of Endocrinology (707-710)
APPENDIX 3 — Protein Basics (711-717)
GLOSSARY OF ABBREVIATIONS (718-719)
ABBREVIATIONS IN THE NOTES (720)
NOTES (721-773)
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS (774)
INDEX (775-790)
AUTHOR NOTE, SUMMARY,
AND BOOK DESCRIPTION
AUTHOR NOTE = Robert M. Sapolsky is a Professor of Biology and Neurology at Stanford and a Research Associate with the Institute of Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya. He is the author of the books, The Trouble with Testosterone; The Primate's Memoir; and Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. The last two books were Los Angeles Times Book Award finalists. He is a regular contributor to Discover magazine and The Sciences. Also he is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation genius grant. Sapolsky lives in San Francisco, California.
SUMMARY = From the celebrated neurobiologist and primatologist, Robert Sapolsky, this book is a landmark, genre-defining examination of human behavior, both good and bad, and an answer to the question: Why do we do the things we do? His 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 evolutionary legacy.
BOOK DESCRIPTION = More than 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. His 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 evolutionary legacy.
And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs — whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered 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: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person's adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual's group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture? And on and on, back to evolutionary factors millions of years old.
The result is one of the most dazzling tours d'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, the book is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.
EDITORIAL BOOK REVIEWS
LIBRARY JOURNAL REVIEW = Sapolsky (biology, neurology and neurological sciences, and neurosurgery, Stanford University; (A Primate's Memoir) takes a far-reaching look at the biological underpinnings of violence and related human behaviors and their antitheses such as altruism and compassion. Sapolsky examines individual acts of harm or help, starting on the level of neurobiology the moment the event occurs. He then takes a step back, focusing on the preceding minutes, days, and lifetime to explore the role of hormones, genes, memories, upbringing, environment, genes, culture, and evolution. When sociobiology and psychology are so intertwined and multifactorial, the effects are nuanced and context dependent. Each piece presents a partial explanation, with no bit of biology offering complete causality. The latter chapters then consider practical implications as applied in the realms of morality, criminal justice, politics, and war and peace. The author does an excellent job of bringing together the expansive literature of thousands of fascinating studies with clarity and humor, though some readers may choose to skim the extensive discussions of brain regions. Appendixes give primers on neuroscience, endocrinology, and proteins that provide background for some of the early chapters. VERDICT A tour-de-force survey of what is known about why we behave the way we do, for students of human interaction in any discipline. -- Wade M. Lee, University of Toledo Library.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW = Sapolsky (Monkeyluv), professor of biology at Stanford, looks at human behavior from myriad interrelated perspectives, endeavoring to explain humans' strange and often contradictory behavior. He predominantly focuses on exploring "the biology of violence, aggression, and competition" through the lenses of neuroscience, anthropology, psychology, genetics, evolutionary biology, political science, and communication theory. Sapolsky takes complex ideas from the scientific literature, including his own research, and attempts to balance the pros and cons of every conclusion. He weaves science storytelling with humor to keep readers engaged while advancing his main point about the complexity and interconnectedness of all aspects of behavior. For Sapolsky, context is everything. For example, in discussing genetics he urges readers to "repeat the mantra: don't ask what a gene does; ask what it does in a particular context." Understanding such complexity can potentially lead toward a more just and peaceful society, Sapolsky says. He recognizes that this ambition may "seem hopeless" but argues that it is essential. Finally, he contends and demonstrates that "you don't have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate." Sapolsky's big ideas deserve a wide audience and will likely shape thinking for some time. Agent: Katinka Matson, Brockman Inc.
BOOK LIST REVIEW = *Starred Review* In the chasm between Hitler and Gandhi, Sapolsky finds not the high moral drama of the soul choosing good or evil but rather down-to-earth biology. When interrogated with scientific tools, that biology accounts for a surprising range of harmful and hurtful human acts. Sapolsky limns a long causative chain linking all sorts of behaviors to the neurology of the brain, the hormones in the blood, the DNA in the genes, and the evolutionary history of the species. But no reader should expect this scientific probing into human behavior to yield precise formulas. Again and again, the reader confronts vexing complications: even the formative influence of genes depends on the environment in surprisingly complex ways. The perplexing uncertainties in human behavior sometimes come into clearer focus when scientists reflect on animal studies (particularly those involving the primates that are Sapolsky's specialty). But the stunning uniqueness of the human species renders animal studies irrelevant for explaining the best and worst of human impulses. No genetic or animal study gives Sapolsky access to the mystery of religious faith, nor resolves for him the conundrum of free will. But tumbling short of omniscience hardly prevents Sapolsky from delivering a remarkably encyclopedic survey of the sciences illuminating human conduct. – Bryce Christensen.
PROFESSIONAL BOOK REVIEWS
[1] Sapolsky weaves science storytelling with humor… His big ideas deserve a wide audience and will likely shape thinking for some time. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
[2] Sapolsky does an excellent job of bringing together the expansive literature of thousands of fascinating studies with clarity and humor… A tour-de-force. -- Library Journal (starred review)
[3] Sapolsky finds not the high moral drama of the soul choosing good or evil but rather down-to-earth biology… A remarkably encyclopedic survey of the sciences illuminating human conduct. -- Booklist (starred review)
[4] The book, Behave, is like a great historical novel, with excellent prose and encyclopedic detail. It traces the most important story that can ever be told. -- Edward O. Wilson.
[5] Read Robert Sapolsky's marvelous book, Behave, and you will never again be surprised by the range and depth of bad human behavior. We all carry the potential for unconscious biases, to be damaged by our childhoods and map that damage onto our own loved ones, and to form the tribal "Us" groups that treat outsiders as lesser "Thems." But to read this book is also, marvelously, to be given the hope that we have much more control of those behaviors than we think. And Behave gives us more than hope — it gives us the knowledge of how to act on that aspiration, to manifest more of our best selves and less of our worst, individually and as a society. That is very good news indeed. – Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better
[6] As wide as it is deep, this book is colorful, electrifying, and moving. Sapolsky leverages his deep expertise to ask the most fundamental questions about being human — from acts of hate to acts of love, from our compulsion to dehumanize to our capacity to rehumanize. -- David Eagleman, PhD, neuroscientist at Stanford, author, presenter of PBS's The Brain
[7] The book, Behave, is a beautifully crafted work about the biology of morality. Sapolsky makes multiple passes at the target, using different time scales and systems. He shows you how all the perspectives and systems connect, and he makes you laugh and marvel along the way. Sapolsky is not just a leading primatologist; he is a great writer and a superb guide to human nature. -- Jonathan Haidt, New York University, author of the book, The Righteous Mind
[8] This is a miraculous book, by far the best treatment of violence, aggression, and competition ever. It ranges from how neurons and hormones interact, how emotions are an essential part of decision making, why adolescents are more likely to be violent than adults, why genes influence cultures and vice-versa, and the ins and outs of "we versus them," all the way to "live and let live" truces in World War I and the My Lai massacre. Its depth and breadth of scholarship are amazing, building on Sapolsky's own research and his vast knowledge of the neurobiology, genetic, and behavioral literature. For instance, Behave includes fair evaluations of complex debates (like over sociobiology) that I was involved in, and tackles controversial questions such as whether our hunter-gatherer ancestors warred on each other. He even takes on "free will" with a clarity usually absent from the writings of philosophers on the subject. All this is done brilliantly with a light and funny touch that shows why Sapolsky is recognized as one of the greatest teachers in science today. -- Paul R. Ehrlich, author of the book, Human Natures.
[9] It is no exaggeration to say that this book, Behave, is one of the best nonfiction books I have ever read. -- David P. Barash, The Wall Street Journal.
[10] A quirky, opinionated and magisterial synthesis of psychology and neurobiology... Darwin would have been thrilled. -- Richard Wrangham, The New York Times Book Review.
RECOMMENDATION: You can re-read this summary according to a reinforcement schedule, such as a few hours later and a few days later and then several times in the next week or two. This strategy can help you take advantage of the power of the spaced-repetition method of memorization. Such deep introspection can strengthen your willpower and change your adaptive self-identity to increase your self-esteem.
REMEMBER ALWAYS:
You are your adaptable memory!
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