The Imperial Animal

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: An absoulutely fascinating look at the origins of present day human behavior through the eyes of an emerging science. The study of Darwinian anthropology and psychology are so commonplace now and filled with contradictory perspectives, that is refreshing to see the courage and logic of where much of it began. After thirty years, this work has yet to be outdone.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: An absoulutely fascinating look at the origins of present day human behavior through the eyes of an emerging science. The study of Darwinian anthropology and psychology are so commonplace now and filled with contradictory perspectives, that is refreshing to see the courage and logic of where much of it began. After thirty years, this work has yet to be outdone.

Rating:
Summary: One of the millestones of human consciousness
Review: It has been said that Copernicus' treatises on the actual heliocentric nature of the solar system were written more for the friends of his on his unique level of understanding and education. They were more or less accidentally leaked to the Catholic Church years later; hence the unexpected nature of their reaction. The historian of science Giorgio de Santillana wrote in THE CRIME OF GALILEO that it was the European academic community (owing its legitimacy to proving inaccurate Aristotlian interpretations of astronomy to be correct) and not the Catholic Church, that gave Galileo the most resistance. And it was they who were instrumental in politically influencing the Church itself in its damnation of his theories. Darwin's book ORIGIN OF SPECIES was said to have been scoffed at before all but disappearing... before becoming the focal point of the intellectual wars in Europe and America in the latter half of the 19th century. And Einstein was a postal clerk for years before his theory of relativity was taken seriously.

All of this, combined with Schoepenhauer's theory about the three stages of an emerging truth (first it is ignored, second, it is violently opposed, third, it is accepted as self evident), serve to me as explanation as to why this book, THE IMPERIAL ANIMAL by Tiger and Fox, was not only met with disdain by a number of sociologists and cultural anthropologists upon publication, but has never been previously reviewed on AMAZON.COM and is not referred to among psychoanalytical or sociopolitical minded intellectuals or even everyday people and the Media during the course of any given day. And yet, in much the same way Freud and Jung made words like "ego", "unconscious", "introvert", and "sibling rivalry" a part of the everyday language of people who say they don't even believe in the social relevance of psychology, this one book is responsible for us looking at the prehistoric world of man and thinking, now with a flipness that makes references both colloquial and unconsious, that it has something to teach us about who we are in the here and now.

This book is considered a classic amongst anthropologists and the equivalent of the life-altering books and theories I've mentioned above to Evolutionary psychologists. It may be singlehandedly responsible for people using anaolgies of prehistoric times to explain the inclinations and dilemmas of modern man, in all aspects. Listen to the writers themselves as they talk about the climate in which they wrote this book thirty years ago in the introduction wriiten in 1998:

"We could mention several areas in which our scorned ideas of 1971 have become commonplaces of today's academic and public dialogue. Tiger's term 'male bonding' seems to have passed into the language much as 'inferiority complex' did... It heartens us, for instance, that on opening almost any serious health book today we come across passages like this: 'Even if we are not 100 percent sure that a high fiber diet helps prevent most of the diseases listed, common sense directs us to eat in a manner more closely resembling that of our ancestors, who were rarely bothered by these problems (William Manahan, M.D., "Eat For Health", 1988).'...This splendid advice is attributed to 'common sense'. All we can say is that today's common sense is yesterday's ridiculous theories."

Tiger and Fox as sociobiological thinkers make clear that an overwhelmingly significant portion of all interpersonal and cultural human behavior stems from biological imperatives. We are, as the end result of our biology, destined to have a language of behavioral traits established in us that create much of what is called culture. And though it definitively is not created by culture, it actually is the biggest impact ON culture in all its permutations throughout time and around the world. It is what they call the "biogrammar" of human kind. It is borne via the million or so years of evolution that brought us to a refined state of hunter-based society in the jungle savannahs around the world, and then combined with the alterations of and additions to that paradigm with the birth of agricultural society- which lead to civlization as we know it.

The book is profoundly humbling and disheartening. It attacks and obliterates the cultural hubris regarding the uniqueness of mankind that you would not know exists as the foundation of your psyche until they reveal it, regardless of your philosophical or theological views. Even the enlightened evolutionary/biochemical view that turns out to be a contradiction in the minds of most laypeople like me- that we share most of the same genetic material with apes and other primates but none of the behavioral implications of that scientific fact- is blown apart in just a look at the essential nature of all political systems:

"These are some of the features of baboon and macque social structure... whatever the details of the system, certain underlying processes are obvious despite the diversity of surface structures, and can be easily summarized.

-the system is based on hierarchy and competiton for status...

-the males dominate the political system, and the older males dominate the younger.

-females can be influential in sending males up the status ladder, and their long term relationships to one another are critical for the stability of the system...

-cooperation among males is essential; coalitions of bonded males act as units in the dominance system.

-the whole structure is held together by the attractiveness of the dominants and the attention that is constantly paid them.

-Because of this, charismatic individuals can upset the the hierarchical structure, and by the same token, retain power."

What they show to be the aspects of the basic social environment of the baboon, are also, *at the very least*, the running themes of the past several centuries of western history.

Using superlatives to describe this book is pointless. Its impact and influence speaks for itself- in fact our culture as it is today speaks for it. It has the power to shake the foundations of your faith in absolutely everything, which cannot be put into words. But with this idea of the "biogram" and the biogrammatical language of humankind being a fact to be worked with, the way aviators work with the fact of gravity or Oscar Petrson works with the 88 unchangeable keys of the piano... Its power to illuminate and encourage is equally as strong.

It is pretty amazing.

Rating:
Summary: One of the millestones of human consciousness
Review: It has been said that Copernicus' treatises on the actual heliocentric nature of the solar system were written more for the friends of his on his unique level of understanding and education. They were more or less accidentally leaked to the Catholic Church years later; hence the unexpected nature of their reaction. The historian of science Giorgio de Santillana wrote in THE CRIME OF GALILEO that it was the European academic community (owing its legitimacy to proving inaccurate Aristotlian interpretations of astronomy to be correct) and not the Catholic Church, that gave Galileo the most resistance. And it was they who were instrumental in politically influencing the Church itself in its damnation of his theories. Darwin's book ORIGIN OF SPECIES was said to have been scoffed at before all but disappearing... before becoming the focal point of the intellectual wars in Europe and America in the latter half of the 19th century. And Einstein was a postal clerk for years before his theory of relativity was taken seriously.

All of this, combined with Schoepenhauer's theory about the three stages of an emerging truth (first it is ignored, second, it is violently opposed, third, it is accepted as self evident), serve to me as explanation as to why this book, THE IMPERIAL ANIMAL by Tiger and Fox, was not only met with disdain by a number of sociologists and cultural anthropologists upon publication, but has never been previously reviewed on AMAZON.COM and is not referred to among psychoanalytical or sociopolitical minded intellectuals or even everyday people and the Media during the course of any given day. And yet, in much the same way Freud and Jung made words like "ego", "unconscious", "introvert", and "sibling rivalry" a part of the everyday language of people who say they don't even believe in the social relevance of psychology, this one book is responsible for us looking at the prehistoric world of man and thinking, now with a flipness that makes references both colloquial and unconsious, that it has something to teach us about who we are in the here and now.

This book is considered a classic amongst anthropologists and the equivalent of the life-altering books and theories I've mentioned above to Evolutionary psychologists. It may be singlehandedly responsible for people using anaolgies of prehistoric times to explain the inclinations and dilemmas of modern man, in all aspects. Listen to the writers themselves as they talk about the climate in which they wrote this book thirty years ago in the introduction wriiten in 1998:

"We could mention several areas in which our scorned ideas of 1971 have become commonplaces of today's academic and public dialogue. Tiger's term 'male bonding' seems to have passed into the language much as 'inferiority complex' did... It heartens us, for instance, that on opening almost any serious health book today we come across passages like this: 'Even if we are not 100 percent sure that a high fiber diet helps prevent most of the diseases listed, common sense directs us to eat in a manner more closely resembling that of our ancestors, who were rarely bothered by these problems (William Manahan, M.D., "Eat For Health", 1988).'...This splendid advice is attributed to 'common sense'. All we can say is that today's common sense is yesterday's ridiculous theories."

Tiger and Fox as sociobiological thinkers make clear that an overwhelmingly significant portion of all interpersonal and cultural human behavior stems from biological imperatives. We are, as the end result of our biology, destined to have a language of behavioral traits established in us that create much of what is called culture. And though it definitively is not created by culture, it actually is the biggest impact ON culture in all its permutations throughout time and around the world. It is what they call the "biogrammar" of human kind. It is borne via the million or so years of evolution that brought us to a refined state of hunter-based society in the jungle savannahs around the world, and then combined with the alterations of and additions to that paradigm with the birth of agricultural society- which lead to civlization as we know it.

The book is profoundly humbling and disheartening. It attacks and obliterates the cultural hubris regarding the uniqueness of mankind that you would not know exists as the foundation of your psyche until they reveal it, regardless of your philosophical or theological views. Even the enlightened evolutionary/biochemical view that turns out to be a contradiction in the minds of most laypeople like me- that we share most of the same genetic material with apes and other primates but none of the behavioral implications of that scientific fact- is blown apart in just a look at the essential nature of all political systems:

"These are some of the features of baboon and macque social structure... whatever the details of the system, certain underlying processes are obvious despite the diversity of surface structures, and can be easily summarized.

-the system is based on hierarchy and competiton for status...

-the males dominate the political system, and the older males dominate the younger.

-females can be influential in sending males up the status ladder, and their long term relationships to one another are critical for the stability of the system...

-cooperation among males is essential; coalitions of bonded males act as units in the dominance system.

-the whole structure is held together by the attractiveness of the dominants and the attention that is constantly paid them.

-Because of this, charismatic individuals can upset the the hierarchical structure, and by the same token, retain power."

What they show to be the aspects of the basic social environment of the baboon, are also, *at the very least*, the running themes of the past several centuries of western history.

Using superlatives to describe this book is pointless. Its impact and influence speaks for itself- in fact our culture as it is today speaks for it. It has the power to shake the foundations of your faith in absolutely everything, which cannot be put into words. But with this idea of the "biogram" and the biogrammatical language of humankind being a fact to be worked with, the way aviators work with the fact of gravity or Oscar Petrson works with the 88 unchangeable keys of the piano... Its power to illuminate and encourage is equally as strong.

It is pretty amazing.