Too Smart for Our Own Good

* Book: Too Smart for Our Own Good. Craig Dilworth.

URL = http://www.craigdilworth.com/description_too_smart_for_our_own_good.html

Description

"We are destroying our natural environment at a constantly increasing pace, and in so doing undermining the preconditions of our own existence. Why is this so? This book reveals that our ecologically disruptive behaviour is in fact rooted in our very nature as a species.

Drawing on evolution theory, biology, anthropology, archaeology, economics, environmental science and history, this book explains our ecological predicament by placing it in the context of the first scientific theory of humankind’s development, taking over where Darwin left off.

The theory presented is applied in detail to the whole of our seven-million-year history. Due to its comprehensiveness, and in part thanks to its extensive glos¬sary and index, this book can function as a compact encyclopædia covering the whole development of Homo sapiens. It would also suit a variety of courses in the life and social sciences. Most important, Too Smart makes evident the very core of the paradigm to which our species must shift if it is to survive.

This book:

1. Provides the first and only theory of humankind’s development
2. Provides the first classification of human instincts: into the survival, sexual and social instincts
3. Provides the first explicit distinction between individual, group and species territoriality
4. Explains that economic and political (military) power have their respective biological bases in individual and group territoriality
5. Is the first to define domestication as genetic adaptation to technology
6. Is the first to define biological systems as open systems in which entropy increase is counteracted
7. Provides the most inclusive characterisation of different kinds of population check yet presented
8. Clarifies the preconditions for human life on earth
9. Shows how economic growth is only possible given a surplus
10. Provides a scientific characterisation of the distinction between static and dynamic equilibrium in systems
11. Provides an understanding of the importance of the anthropological, archaeological and economic findings of the past 50 years to understanding humankind’s development
12. Provides the first formulation of the principle of ecology in terms of systems."

(http://www.craigdilworth.com/description_too_smart_for_our_own_good.html)

Review

Ronnie Wright:

"Let me warn you though that it will not leave you all warm and fuzzy and filled with hope, as the author’s conclusion is that, along with the title, we are “too dumb to do anything about it.” All evidence so far would indicate that he is correct, and if you read the book you will know why. Drawing on evolution theory, biology, anthropology, archaeology, economics, environmental science and history, this book explains the ecological predicament of humankind by placing it in the context of the first scientific theory of our species’ development, taking over where Dar-win left off. This book is very dense with information starting from the time we climbed out of trees and walked upright across the African plains right through to modern times and our evolv-ing environmental, energy, water and food crises (to name a few). It makes it obvious that we have exhibited a habit of overpopulation, with resource shortages (like food) as a result, fol-lowed by increased technology, a surplus of resources (like food) due to that technology, over-population because of an abundance of resources, and again resource shortages as a result of population increase. This process has been repeated throughout all of human history and is be-ing repeated once again. The author calls this the vicious circle principle." (http://www.craigdilworth.com/reviews_too_smart_for_our_own_good.html)