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When a population reaches carrying capacity, though, and zero-sum dynamics are once again in play, the incentives of high-ranking men tend to shift in the direction of polygyny. Male-male competition becomes a driving force, as men with wealth and power seek to dominate the reproductive output of multiple women.
Heather Heying • A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life
This process is often talked about in terms such as “reptile brain,” where a sense of severe danger or duress effectively turns off our ability to properly think and instead turns us into instinct-driven animals that might snarl, snap, or freeze without thought.
Stephen W. Porges • Our Polyvagal World
sympathetic nervous system mediating the four F’s of behavior—flight, fight, fright, and sex.
Robert M. Sapolsky • Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping (Third Edition)
Remove the sponge cell from the sponge, prevent it from finding its way back to its brethren, and it dies. Scrape a liver cell from the liver, and in its isolation it too will shrivel and give up life. But what happens if you remove a human from his social bonds, wrenching him from the superorganism of which he is a part?
Howard Bloom • The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History
Beyond Evolutionary Psychology: How and Why Neuropsychological Modules Arise (Culture and Psychology)
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Scientists have known for decades that the brain relegates more habitual jobs (like checking breathing and heart rate) to less thoughtful, more automatic, less energy-draining parts of the nervous system.
Bruce Springsteen • Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship (Goop Press)
It was acting erratically because, it turned out, the pituitary didn’t really have the whole hormonal game plan. It would normally be following orders from the brain,
Robert M. Sapolsky • Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping (Third Edition)
It’s precisely this capacity to shift between scales that most obviously separates human social cognition from that of other primates.5 Apes may vie for affection or dominance, but any victory is temporary and open to being renegotiated. Nothing is imagined as eternal. Nothing is really imagined at all. Humans tend to live simultaneously with the 1
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