Each of us has some chance of making rude gestures at the car that wouldn't let us into the next lane or bashing our brothers in the face when they won't share. All this together composes our distinct human natures. A significant portion of Human Natures examines how an understanding of evolution and our evolutionary history is useful for helping productively approach major societal problems. For example, the evolution of our minds was driven by vision. If all the junk we dumped into the air turned the sky green, we probably would have cleaned it up long ago.
Cultural evolution can happen much faster than biologic evolution.
Our ability to do has far outpaced our ability to understand what we are doing and its implications. But all is not lost. Using as one example the scientific community's response to the threat of nuclear war, Ehrlich posits that we can intentionally change our evolution. This view and most others expressed in the book are less reductionist, more humanist, than those expressed by many evolutionary biologists. At Emory, we encourage interdisciplinary approaches to problems as significant and important enterprises in the academic arena.