Why are we attracted to fat and sugar when it is not good for us. If it was unhealthy, why wouldn’t natural selection have factored it out? Cross-cultural research shows that, on average, regardless of culture, men are more violent than women. Why is this? Why are men so interested in sports? As it turns out, human beings do have a nature. Ninety to ninety five percent of our history was formed in our life as hunter gatherers. Whatever habits we formed there carries over into the last 10,000 years of human history. Evolutionary mismatches help to explain that much of human conflict can be explained by what I call the Darwinian Unconscious. So many of our problems arise because industrial capitalist societies force us to adapt to situations that are far from our long existence as hunter gatherers.

Recommended Reading:  Buss, David, Evolutionary Psychology, Any Edition, Alan and Bacon

Your instructor: Bruce Lerro has been a night-school college teacher for 27 years. He has taught in alternative college settings, in prisons, in the Air Force and in the Navy. Bruce has taught in community colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area. Bruce has written eight books, including three on the application of Russian Lev Vygotsky’s work on world history. Bruce is also a pen-and-ink artist.

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