Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

44 | HOW THE MIND WORKSthe fertility doctor who artificially inseminated patients with his ownsemen, the donors to the sperm bank for Nobel Prize winners, and otherkooks, no human being (or animal) strives to spread his or her genes.Dawkins explained the theory in a book called The Selfish Gene, and themetaphor was chosen carefully. People don't selfishly spread their genes;genes selfishly spread themselves. They do it by the way they build ourbrains. By making us enjoy life, health, sex, friends, and children, thegenes buy a lottery ticket for representation in the next generation, withodds that were favorable in the environment in which we evolved. Ourgoals are subgoals of the ultimate goal of the genes, replicating themselves.But the two are different. As far as we are concerned, our goals,conscious or unconscious, are not about genes at all, but about healthand lovers and children and friends. :The confusion between our goals and our genes' goals has spawnedone muddle after another. A reviewer of a book about the evolution ofsexuality protests that human adultery, unlike the animal equivalent,cannot be a strategy to spread the genes because adulterers take steps toprevent pregnancy. But whose strategy are we talking about? Sexualdesire is not people's strategy to propagate their genes. It's people's strategyto attain the pleasures of sex, and the pleasures of sex are the genes'strategy to propagate themselves. If the genes don't get propagated, it'sbecause we are smarter than they are. A book on the emotional life ofanimals complains that if altruism according to biologists is justj helpingkin or exchanging favors, both of which serve the interests of one's genes,it would not really be altruism after all, but some kind of hypocrjisy. Thistoo is a mixup. Just as blueprints don't necessarily specify blue buildings,selfish genes don't necessarily specify selfish organisms. As we shall see,sometimes the most selfish thing a gene can do is to build a> selflessbrain. Genes are a play within a play, not the interior monologue of theplayers.PSYCHOLOGICAL CORRECTNESSThe evolutionary psychology of this book is a departure from the dominantview of the human mind in our intellectual tradition, which Toobyand Cosmides have dubbed the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM).The SSSM proposes a fundamental division between biology and cul-