The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

As social creatures, we are eager to show people we care so that we can benefit in times of need when we need them to care for us. E.g.: When someone is sick, we are more likely to cook something for them even if we could have just bought it from a store and given it to them.

Religion is the best illustration of the elephant in the brain. We do not worship because we believe. We worship because it helps us as social creatures.

As a rule of thumb, whenever communication is discreet—subtle, cryptic, or ambiguous—it’s a fair bet that the speaker is trying to get away with something by preventing the message from becoming common knowledge.

Collective enforcement, then, is the essence of norms. This is what enables the egalitarian political order so characteristic of the forager lifestyle.

Now, our competitions for prestige often produce positive side effects such as art, science, and technological innovation.16 But the prestige-seeking itself is more nearly a zero-sum game, which helps explain why we sometimes feel pangs of envy at even a close friend’s success.

There are good reasons to believe, for example, that our capacities for visual art, music, storytelling, and humor function in large part as elaborate mating displays, not unlike the peacock’s tail.