Evil Genes

Evil Genes

Barbara Oakley

Pages: 459, Category: Non-fiction

Publisher: Prometheus Books

Evil Genes, with a byline of “Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole my Mother’s Boyfriend” is a very informative book. The author has accumulated accreditations in a variety of fields including Engineering. She says it has enabled her to approach the problem with several perspectives. The book describes about the causes, ways, means and ends of “successfully sinister” persons of Machiavellian traits among us. She identifies this with a dysfunctional brain, or at least in some of the cognitive areas of it. Several cases involving political figures like Stalin, Hitler, Chairman Mao, Slobodan Milosevic etc are described in detail, establishing that these people suffered from personality disorders, most common among them being Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). The genetic nature of the problem is described and the problematic genes identified. The author also claims that though a good deal of a person’s character can be moulded by upbringing, there is definitely a predisposition to personality disorders in some people. “Nature versus Nurture” is the term employed by the author.

An altogether good book, even by a layman’s perspective. The author’s efforts to bring in a personal touch to the story line seems to be far fetched at some points. She identifies her sister, Carolyn as having the disorder and was incapable of true love and empathy. She stole her mother’s boyfriend and went with him to Europe, a trip her mother had cherished for long.

Some of Mao’s deeds described in the book are indeed blood curdling. He has killed more people than who have died in all the wars (including two world wars) fought in the 20^th century, an incredible 70 million, in two of his notorious purges, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The gruesome details of Maoist China is difficult to believe. It may be true, but our minds would find it extremely difficult to assimilate the fact such cruelty is indeed possible to be inflicted on one’s people by a mentally deranged leader!

Some excerpts from the book are as follows.

“The role of emotion in shaping ‘rational’ thinking is tremendously underrated. Strong evidence shows that human behaviour is the product of both the rational deliberation that takes place in the front areas of the cerebral cortex and the ‘emote control’ – emotional reasoning – that originates in the limbic system. These two neural systems operate in radically different fashions and often are in conflict with one another. As Princeton sociologist Douglas Massey writes: “Emotionality clearly preceded rationality in evolutionary sequence, and as rationality developed, it did not replace emotionality as a basis for human interaction. Rather, rational abilities were gradually added to preexisting and simultaneously developing emotional capacities. Indeed, the neural anatomy essential for full rationality – the prefrontal cortex – is a very recent evolutionary innovation, emerging only in the last 150,000 years of a six-million year existence, representing only about 2.5 percent of humanity’s total time on earth”.

The author also expects the readers to take an online test to see whether we are Machiavellian in thinking. The test is available at www.salon.com/books/it/1999/09/13/machtest.

The books is eminently readable. When we finish reading, we’d get a feeling that we will be better able to judge the real motives of our colleagues and friends and to note the Machiavellians among them.

Overall Rating: 3/5

Measuring the World

Measuring the World

Daniel Kehlmann

Translated from German by Carol Brown Janeway
Publisher: Quercus, London 2007
Pages: 259, Category: Fiction

Towards the end of the 18th century, in the heyday of German enlightenment, two brilliant yound Germans set out to measure the world. The naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt and the mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss. Humboldt explored the savannah and jungle, travelled down the Orinoco river, climbed the highest mountain then known to man and explored every hole in the ground and Gauss, a man born in poverty and recognised as the greatest mathematician since Newton, did not even leave his country to know that space is curved.

Though the publisher claims it to be a German best seller, the weak plot and poorly crafted characters fails to impress. Though the author claims that there is no relation whatsoever between the characters and historical personnae, most of the incidents are recorded in history. The author has peppered some of the occurrences with intimate acts of purely personal call like Gauss' first night with his wife, Johanna. The book failed to impress.

There are some interesting anecdotes though. Gauss, known as the Prince of Mathematics, excelled at a very small age. When the teacher asked the young Gauss to find the sum of all numbers from 1 to 100, he came up with the surprising answer of 5050 in a matter of seconds. His reasoning was, 1+100=101, 2+99=101, 3+98=101, ...... So, there will be 50 times 101 and hence the answer is 5050. Clever, indeed from an 8 year old boy!!

Overall Rating: 2/5