The one thing that defines us all!

The one thing that is common to all people, no matter where they are coming from or how they see the world is the gene structure that defines each and every one of us. Due to our genes we are always defined as humans. But what makes humans human? An ordinary answer to that question would be manifold and include our ability to think, to talk and to reason. Our ability to produce things for use but also for pleasure, like music, make us human and in this regard great musicians, like Beethoven, Bach, or Mozart are even more human than certainly I ever will be. But there is another sense to this question.

Evolutionary Psych: Too young to be this sexy?

Evolutionary psychology is all the rage nowadays. Researchers from around the globe are looking at the interplay between a species’ behavior and its environment, past and present, in an attempt to crack the mysteries of how we came to be as we now are. The appeal is obvious. Darwin seems to have provided a successful explanation of our biological traits. Why not think our psychological traits are to be explained similarly? After all, psychology just is an expression of biology. If reflection on our hunched-back ancestors and their habitat can explain how we came to walk upright, why can’t such reflection also explain our anger over spousal infidelity, why can’t it explain our own infidelity, our altruistic and egoistic behaviors, etc?