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Perseus Publishing June, 2000
The authors are a couple of youthful professors: Burnham, an economics professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and Phelan, a professor of biology at UCLA. The book is endorsed by the celebrated sociologist, E.O. Wilson.
The authors introduce the book with the sentence, "Consider this book an owner's manual for your brain." This is a light self help book that runs contrary to those light psycho-babble books that suggest that people trust their inner-child. Its message is that humanity should not trust its impulses. This is apparent in looking back across the ages at the barbarity of people of a great variety of creeds. It is also apparent to people who have grown and realized that they were mistaken in some of their choices.
The book, Mean Genes, works it way through the impulse to spend and to get into debt, how to prosper amid temptations that commercial interests throw your way, about suppressing gut responses in favor of making choices based on learning and self-discipline.
The book describes the way our brain is set up to be attracted to artificial stimulants that we should avoid, the impulse to eat when we should be limiting our food intake, and the craving for excitement that leads us to take unnecessary risks. Our "thrill seeking genes," they write, are "taking us for a ride" and our sexual impulses are getting us into trouble with our spouses. The authors describe genetic influence on our interpretations of physical beauty in others. Genetically, it concludes, we are still cave men and women living in ultramodern homes.
The authors could have added another impulse to combat:being seduced by fake drama. This includes soap operas and other formula presentations that merely waste our time and give us fat heads.
The authors appear to me on solid ground in their biological interpretation of behavior, but they are also very close to attributing purpose to biological evolution. Our impulses are not ordered to strike in specific ways or at specific targets. Instead, the targets change. We are not programmed for the kind of wars that the authors describe Chimpanzees as participating in. For example, the aim of humanity's aggressions have changed with social circumstances from raiding and then to conquests.
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