In Her Genes (Paperback)

." . . to an extraordinary degree, the predilection of the investing sex - females - potentially determine the direction in which the species will evolve. For it is the female who is the ultimate arbiter of when she mates and how often and with whom." (Hrdy, 1981, 18) Thus, the hand on men's evolutionary steering wheel is female, it begins its work during courtship and pregnancy, and it steers all of us between our conception and death. This book also tattles on women who lie and defends itself with information from statistical physics and developmental biology. That is, fibs, alibis, and half-truths can be seen as the oldest "adaptations" and my collection of stories affirms the utility for men of women's fibs. I also recognize the contributions that come from a sorcerer's apprentice, "genomic imprinting," a tool that manages the conflicts between a father's demand for larger, louder offspring and the mother's for kids who are cheap to keep. After 200 years, impulsive people again have the majority in America and swap votes for governmental favors. I doubt that passionate warnings from Spengler, Hayek, Brimerlow, Bork, Steyn, Hanson, Codavilla, Copley, or Krauthammer will end it. And Spengler and Toynbee may have been correct but for reasons they didn't know, reasons that underlie not only personal development but also the conflicts between rural and urban dwellers and the growth and collapse of cultures. As Alfred Lotka put it: ..". the drama of life is like a puppet show in which stage, scenery, actors and all are made of the same stuff. The players, indeed, 'have their exits and their entrances, ' but the exit is by way of translation into the substance of the stage; and each entrance is a transformation scene. So stage and players are bound together in the close partnership of an intimate comedy; and if we would catch the spirit of the piece, our attention must not all be absorbed in the characters alone, but must be extended also to the scene, of which they are born, or on which they play their part, and with which, in a little while, they merge again." (1925/1956, 183-184)