The Social Animal

“This behavior is a good example of the limits of pure reason,” Damasio writes in his book Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. It’s an example of how lack of emotion leads to self-destructive and dangerous behavior. People who lack emotion don’t lead well-planned logical lives in the manner of coolly rational Mr. Spocks. They lead foolish lives. In the extreme cases, they become sociopaths, untroubled by barbarism and unable to feel other people’s pain.

Human culture exists in large measure to restrain the natural desires of the species.

He knew he liked hearing evidence that confirmed his own opinions, so he asked Erica and the others to give him the counterevidence first, and not bury it

If the outer mind hungers for status, money, and applause, the inner mind hungers for harmony and connection—those moments when self-consciousness fades away and a person is lost in a challenge, a cause, the love of another or the love of God.

Men consistently rate women with attractive bodies and unattractive faces more highly than women with attractive faces and unattractive bodies.

Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know. Epistemological modesty is the knowledge of how little we know and can know.
Epistemological modesty is an attitude toward life. This attitude is built on the awareness that we don’t know ourselves. Most of what we think and believe is unavailable to conscious review. We are our own deepest mystery.
Not knowing ourselves, we also have trouble fully understanding others.

Women are sexually attracted to men with larger pupils. Women everywhere prefer men who have symmetrical features and are slightly older, taller, and stronger than they are.

They serve no nutritional purpose, but they do serve as signaling devices and set off primitive light shows in the male brain. Men consistently rate women with attractive bodies and unattractive faces more highly than women with attractive faces and unattractive bodies. Nature does not go in for art for art’s sake, but it does produce art.

David Buss surveyed over ten thousand people in thirty-seven different societies and found that standards of female beauty are pretty much the same around the globe. Men everywhere value clear skin, full lips, long lustrous hair, symmetrical features, shorter distances between the mouth and chin and between the nose and chin, and a waist-to-hip ratio of about 0.7. A study of painting going back thousands of years found that most of the women depicted had this ratio. Playboy bunnies tend to have this ratio, though their overall fleshiness can change with the fashions.

Composure Class rose once again to the fore. The people in this group hadn’t made their money through hedge-fund wizardry or by some big financial score. They’d earned it by climbing the meritocratic ladder of success. They’d made good grades in school, established solid social connections, joined quality companies, medical practices, and firms. Wealth had just settled down upon them gradually like a gentle snow.