Security check
May 22, 2007

Why conservatives had happy childhoods but liberals have more sex.

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Multiple copies of a mystery gene may make us human
September 1, 2006

A newly discovered mystery gene may have helped build the modern human brain.

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Amazon children
January 20, 2006

Children of an isolated Indian group in the Amazon jungle have a seemingly natural understanding of geometry concepts, even though their language doesn’t have words for them, according to a new study.

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Organization of this Site
August 19, 2001

The Bio-Rational Institute website is organized by the five levels on which you interact with the world: yourself, your primary love relationship, your offspring, your money and your society.

The biology of SELF—From addiction to depression, and from anger to ecstasy, emotions have been built into your brain as survival and procreative tools. Understanding the evolutionary foundations of feelings, desires and personality suggests new, more rational strategies to master your inner world.

The biology of LOVE & MATING—Thanks to millions of years of evolution, our desires for love and sex are the strongest of all drives. Understanding the biology of love and mating reveals keys to every relationship question from choosing the right lifemate to achieving lasting harmony in marriage.

The biology of PARENTING—No life goal is as important to most parents than seeing their children survive and succeed. An understanding of how evolution has shaped the drives of both parents and their offspring points to rational new strategies for raising fulfilled, happy and successful children.

The biology of HEALTH—Medicine and health, two of the world’s largest industries, fail us. We get sick too often, we get old too fast, and we die far too early. Evolutionary biology has opened a new window into the problems of disease and aging, and promising new techniques for curing diseases, maintaining optimum health, and dramatically slowing the aging process.

The biology of FREEDOM—The archeological record combined with several thousand years of written history reveals that Homo sapiens has yet to discover a social system that results in permanent peace and prosperity. The new science of evolutionary psychology holds the key to the design of the optimal social system.

An abbreviated autobiography with pictures of the founder is located in About John Pugsley. A sampling of past and current essays that have appeared in Common Sense Viewpoint, John Pugsley’s Journal, and The Sovereign Individual and on this Institute website are filed in the Essay Archive. Finally, browse the Recommended Reading section for brief comments on related books, articles and links to other resources.

We hope you’ll bookmark this website, and come back often to explore the fascinating world of human behavior! Your comments and contributions are welcomed.

The Bio-Rational Institute is the creation of John A. Pugsley, with support from the Eugene B. Casey Foundation, The Center for Independent Thought, Douglas Casey, Robert Kephart, and from many other friends and colleagues.

The roots of emotions
May 1, 2002

What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about the things.
–Epictetus (ca. A.D. 50-130)

In explaining the basis of his insightful book, The Three-Minute Therapy, psychologist Michael Edelstein points out that “Nearly everything in this book flows from a single, simple fact: the way you feel, emotionally, arises from the way you think. Your feelings come from your thinking. For most people, this truth is usually overlooked or denied.”

If the way you feel evokes the way you think, how can you change the way you think? Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is one way to bring your attention to your thoughts, and ‘re-think’. However, the actual mechanism of response to a given thought is dependent on the physical mechanisms and environment within the brain that generates both thoughts and feelings. There is the thought, for example, a sudden memory of a person, a place, or an event, and there is the chain of neurological events that leads to the ‘feeling’ generated by that thought.

What is originally input is a combination of inputs from our five senses, which is then correlated with memories from prior experience, and those are then operated on by the brain to respond through the circuits of the brain that release neurotransmitters and hormones that in turn create the complex proteins that trigger cells to act, glands to secrete things like adrenaline, muscles to contract or relax (sphincter, facial, eyes, stomach, bowel), heart rate to increase or decrease, stomach to secrete or stop secreting digestive juices, bowels to move or stop, etc.

For example, if I anticipate parachuting from a plane, I may feel either exhilaration or terror, depending on whether I’m genetically programmed for novelty-seeking or for risk-aversion. That programming is resident in my neuro-circuits, and that wiring and the stimulation can be affected by (1) the original circuit layout (genes), (2) the strengthening and weakening of those circuits from use, (3) the availability of nutrients and physiological health from sleep and exercise in the system to be converted into neurotransmitters and hormones, (4) the application of neuro-feedback techniques to strengthen and weaken blood-supply and channeling of signals.

Thus, we can train ourselves to control thoughts through REBT, control nutrients to support certain mechanisms, control building of synapses through neuro-feedback, and build preferred circuits through repeated practice.

Why is it so hard to change?
May 1, 2002

Anger, fear, depression, hate, grief, addiction, jealousy and other such negative feelings are demons that most of us confront throughout our lives. These feelings drive us to behaviors that we know, in our rational thoughts, are in one degree or another self destructive. Our conscious mind argues that we should have the will power and self control to do what we know is in our best interests: to avoid the drug, to turn the other cheek in arguments, to overcome grief, to cheer up, to change bad habits and follow through on our New Year’s resolutions. Yet, in spite of knowing better, we often lose the battle for self control.

When you’re frightened and you feel your scalp tingle, or you’re angry and feel your skin flushing, or you’re sad and feel a lump in your throat, blame it on cellular chemical processes that were designed over millions of years by natural selection.

Every feeling you have is there because your brain has processed input from your senses, or from your memory, and has initiated a cascade of physiological events resulting in physical sensations.

Why are your battles with your inner self hard to win? Your conscious will is at a disadvantage as the primary control center is operated without our conscious awareness. It’s not that our behavior is beyond our control—obviously, we do have the power to make choices—but on too many occasions we do things that we know are against our best interests, yet seem powerless to prevent ourselves. The addict or alcoholic knows the tragic cost of succumbing to another hit or drink, the angry spouse knows that letting rage take over will lead to jail or death or worse, the gambler knows the odds are against him. Yet, in spite of knowing of the potential long-term consequences of destructive actions, we do them anyway. Almost all of us can recognize destructive patterns in our own behavior. Almost all of us have things we’d like to change. We promise ourselves. We make New Year’s resolutions. We chastize ourselves. And millions of us spend billions on professional help trying to change our behavior.

Yet success is rare. Most of us make the same resolutions every year. Most of our friends follow patterns so familiar to us that we laugh. All of us can easily tell our friends what their doing wrong, and explain why this or that action is the root of their problems. All they have to do is change.

But why is it so hard to change?

The answer lies in our DNA. Our DNA holds the program that guides our thoughts, actions and reactions; a program written over millions of generations through natural selection. And while we do have reason, and are beginning to understand how our genetic program creates the feelings that impel us to act, our reason is a weak guardian of our long-term interests in modern society.

Bio-Rationality: A scientific approach to personal fulfillment
August 19, 2001

Professor Edward O. Wilson, the great synthesizer of sociology and biology, postulated that “mankind…shares a single human nature,” a nature that evolved over millions of generations through the process of natural selection.

If our nature is rooted in our genes, it follows that individual fulfillment as well as social harmony can only be optimized if human actions and interactions are consistent with this inherent design. The mission of The Bio-Rational Institute is to explore the evolutionary roots of human behavior and to design personal and social strategies for all areas of our lives that are fully consistent with our biological nature.

Science vs. witchcraft
August 14, 2001

by John Pugsley
Originally published in The Sovereign Individual, June 2001

Gerard Piel, editor of Scientific American, once noted: “The most remarkable discovery made by scientists is science itself.”

The remarkable discovery Piel referred to is the ‘scientific method’—the discovery that the nature of the world around us could be revealed through observation, hypothesis, and the objective testing of each hypothesis. It has become normal procedure in all of the physical sciences.

In medicine, for example, a disease is observed, an hypothesis suggested as to the cause and possible cure. Then comes the most important step: the hypothesis is tested under rigidly controlled conditions in an attempt to disprove it. Subjects are divided into two groups; controls and those on which the cure will be tested. Control subjects are given placebos while other test subjects the actual treatments. To eliminate bias of either the subject or administrator, tests must be “double-blind” so that neither the subjects nor those administering the treatments know which subjects are getting the real treatment and which are getting the placebos.

The scientific method has been phenomenally successful. In the 400-plus years since its discovery it has catapulted mankind out of grinding poverty and disease and into a futuristic world of longevity, abundance and leisure.

During these same four centuries in which science has subdued the plagues of nature, political scientists have pursued cures for mankind’s social ills. To these scientists unending irritation, they have been singularly unsuccessful in ameliorating any of the societal problems, and in particular have had almost no affect on the more pernicious catastrophes of war, crime and political upheaval. The reason all political scientists have failed down through history is because in spite of their claim to be scientists they aren’t practicing science at all; they are practicing witchcraft.

Both science and witchcraft aim to change the course of future events. Scientists study nature and seek ways to achieve their goals consistent with nature’s laws. Witch doctors assume their own powers are so great that nature will follow their dictates: they don’t hypothesize about how nature works, but rather how it ought to work

Karl Marx was a such a witch doctor. He was certain that his design for a communist society would result in a perfect world. No double-blind studies were needed. Lenin and the Bolsheviks imposed Marx’s nostrums by force, annihilating 62 million people in a vain attempt to subvert their human nature. Witch doctor Mao Tse-tung imposed his variation of Marx’s hypothesis, once again without testing, at a cost of 35 million lives. Witch doctor Adolph Hitler imposed his will for Aryan supremacy on a gullible nation, destroying Germany and 21 million people in the process.

In the entire history of mankind none of the political witch doctors ever considered using the scientific method to test their hypotheses before imposing them on the population, nor have they learned from their failures.

Today’s political witch doctors, both those who pontificate political science at the world’s most prestigious universities, and their counterparts who dispense their social medicines through government, remain convinced their witchcraft is so powerful that no testing is necessary. When was the last time you heard a politician propose to scientifically test a new social program before it was imposed on the nation? Have any of the political scientists you read about proposed a double-blind test of gun control laws? Or a scientific test of the effects of drug legalization? Or an objective study to determine what the long-term effects of minimum wage laws or tariffs? Or a double-blind test of de-regulation of industry? Or a test of systems of taxation such as a flat tax, or a sales tax, or a repeal of all taxes?

Think about it. Shouldn’t anyone claiming the title of political scientist demand double-blind tests of any program he or she proposes, including taxation versus no taxation, of regulation versus free markets, of individual liberty versus state control of personal choice?

In truth, such tests have been accomplished surreptitiously, without the sanction of, endorsement by, or acknowledgement of the witch-doctor establishment. By every measure and wherever comparisons are made, the level of prosperity, peace and progress is always directly proportional to the level of freedom enjoyed by individuals. All historical evidence supports the conclusion that there is an causal relationship between the level of state plunder and the level of production, and between the power of the state and the prosperity of the population.

Scientist Jacob Bronowski in his small book, Magic, Science, and Civilization, said: “There has been an irreversible step in the cultural evolution of man; it took place at the beginning of the scientific revolution…and it will never be undone.” It will not be undone, and eventually it will be applied to disprove the erroneous belief that a perfect society can be created by witchcraft rather than science.

Some 200 years after the “remarkable discovery” the Marquis de Condorcet, a French philosopher and mathematician, recognized the inevitable triumph of science over witchcraft. In 1794, as he awaited the guillotine, he wrote: “The time will therefore come when the sun will shine only on free men who know no other master but their own reason; when tyrants and slaves, priests and their stupid or hypocritical instruments will exist only in works of history and on the stage; and when we shall think of them only to pity their victims and their dupes.”

The path to a world in which science finally defeats witchcraft and in which all individuals are sovereign is a long one, but that mankind will tread that path is inevitable.

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