Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend
Have you ever met a person who left you wondering, 'How could someone be so twisted? So evil?' Prompted by clues in her sister's diary after her mysterious death, author Barbara Oakley takes the reader inside the head of the kinds of malevolent people you know, perhaps all too well, but could never understand. Starting with psychology as a frame of reference, Oakley uses cutting-edge images of the working brain to provide startling support for the idea that 'evil' people act the way they do mainly as the result of a dysfunction. In fact, some deceitful, manipulative, and even sadistic behaviour appears to be programmed genetically - suggesting that some people really are born to be bad. But there are unexpected fringe benefits to 'evil genes'. We may not like them - but we literally can't live without them.Oakley deftly ties together the big picture implications of revolutionary neuroscientific and genetic discoveries, showing the eerily similar behavioural tics of Mao, Stalin, Hitler, and Slobodan Milosevic. The dramatic recent scientific findings presented in "Evil Genes" shed light not only on dictators far afield, but on politics at home, as well as business, religion, and everyday life. In fact, history itself has been shaped by the strange confluence of genes and environment that science is just now beginning to understand.Oakley links the latest findings of molecular research to a wide array of seemingly unrelated historical and current phenomena, from the harems of the Ottomans and the chummy jokes of 'Uncle Joe' Stalin, to the remarkable memory of investor Warren Buffet. Throughout, she never loses sight of the personal cost of evil genes as she unravels the mystery surrounding her sister's enigmatic life - and death. "Evil Genes" is a tour-de-force of popular science writing that brilliantly melds scientific research with intriguing family history and puts both a human and scientific face to evil.Product Details
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Borne out of a quest to understand her sister Carolyn's lifelong sinister behavior (which, systems engineer Oakley suggests, may have been compounded by childhood polio), the author sets out on an exploration of evil, or Machiavellian, individuals. Drawing on the advances in brain imaging that have illuminated the relationship of emotions, genetics and the brain (with accompanying imaging scans), Oakley collects detailed case histories of famed evil geniuses such as Slobodan Milosevic and Mao Zedong, interspersed with a memoir of Carolyn's life. Oakley posits that they all had borderline personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder, a claim she supports with evidence from scientists' genetic and neurological research. All the people she considers, Oakley notes, are charming on the surface but capable of deeply malign behavior (traits similar to those found in some personality disorders), and her analysis attributes these traits to narcissism combined with cognitive and emotional disturbances that lead them to believe they are behaving in a genuinely altruistic way. Disturbing, for sure, but with her own personal story informing her study, Oakley offers an accessible account of a group of psychiatric disorders and those affected by them. Illus. (Oct.)
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Review
"A highly-readable, entertaining, ground-breaking, must-read study with notable insights on the rise and fall of empires; but more importantly, it offers, perhaps for the first time, a distinctly plausible mechanism for explaining the origin and persistence of social inequality." -- Glenn Storey, President, Iowa Society of the Archeological Institute of America, Associate Professor of Classics and Anthropology, University of Iowa, and editor of Urbanism in the Preindustrial World: Cross-Cultural Approaches.
"A magnificent tour through the sociology, psychology, and biology of evil. No one should pass up the experience of stepping through the portals of this fascinating book to answer Oakley's crucial question: Why are there evil people, and why are they sometimes so successful?" -- Dr. Cliff Pickover, author of A Beginner's Guide to Immortality and The Heaven Virus.
"Professor Oakley has done that rare thing: written a scientific book that is at once informative and eminently readable. She has taken 'evil' out of the realm of the religious and metaphysical, placing it instead where it belongs--inside ourselves...." -- Michael H. Stone, MD Professor of Clinical Psychiatry: Columbia
"Remarkable--and difficult to put down ... a wonderfully readable tapestry of family autobiography, historical biography, and biological psychology. Without oversimplifying their psychosocial complexity, Evil Genes explores new research on the genetics and neurobiology of personality disorders. Shining this light on some of the most problematic figures of our era, it challenges our assumptions about the roots of terrorism, genocide, crime, corruption--and even the sinister sides of politics, business, and religion." -- Terrence W Deacon, Professor of Biological Anthropology and Neuroscience, University of California, Berkeley, and author of The Symbolic Species.
"Whatever you might believe about the role of genetics versus environment, Evil Genes will take you somewhere you haven't been. Barbara Oakley brilliantly reveals the falseness of one of the ego's evil little lies: That all our behavior is decided by us." -- Gavin de Becker, Bestselling Author, The Gift of Fear
"...Oakley interweaves many ideas to present a fascinating treatise on the nature of evil in the world. Using an exceptionally easy and readable style, Oakley challenges us to think about evil--the interaction of complex forces of nature and the painful events of history, in a unique way." -- Kenneth R Silk, MD Professor of Psychiatry, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI
"A fascinating scientific and personal exploration of the roots of evil, filled with human insight and telling detail." -- Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor, Harvard University, and author of The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, and The Stuff of Thought.
"As a forensic psychologist who has spent much of my career delving into the darkest recesses of the criminal mind, I have often wondered what roles genes and environment play in subsequent psychopathic behavior. Barbara Oakley's outstanding Evil Genes provides the answers." -- Helen Smith, PhD, author of The Scarred Heart: Understanding and Identifying Kids Who Kill
"This story is not only good science writing, it's also achingly personal, as Oakley recounts the story of her selfish sister and relates it to what science is revealing about the way our brains work and how genes influence even our ability to tell right from wrong. It's not often that a book about science can also break your heart - Oakley's achievement is astonishing." -- Orson Scott Card, award-winning author of Ender's Game, Enchantment, and Empire.
From the Publisher
Foreword by David Sloan Wilson, author of "Evolution for Everyone."
Customer Reviews
Finally, an explanation for "evil" that moves us away from blaming the Devil
Having had to deal with narcissists, a schizophrenic, and really "mean girls" in one family, I can tell you stories---but I won't. It's too painful for me to remember the details to write them down.
I will merely say this: I am so thankful that Barbara Oakley wrote this book. It does for lay people who have questions about evil in human nature what the many, many writers in the all the neuro-hyphenated fields (e.g., neuropsychology, neurolinguistics, neurobiology, etc.) have only touched on because they were more interested in more general explanations of the findings of their fields: Oakley's book grapples head on with and focuses entirely on the age-old problem of human "evil." And it does it finally without falling back on old theories about Satan, or beliefs about whatever other bad scapegoat spirit or bad nurturing parent we can think of, which never gets us anywhere. It makes use of many of the new findings that have become available through the genome project's completion and through new methods of brain scanning and imaging.
Scott Peck in his book People of the Lie tried to explain how sometimes there are simply evil people, but at that time and with his religious and educational background, his only explanation seemed to boil down to individual pacts with the devil and, on a more general level, sociological factors that incubate evil behaviors in some group sense.
I read Peck's book early on as I suffered greatly because of some very evil behaviors from the people I had tried so desperately to love and care for, only to be treated more cruelly by them and then to be "judged" by a society that likes to blame the other people in a family for somehow causing a person to become "evil." Peck's book helped me to feel that someone really did understand that some people just are what they are and are not that way as a result of someone else's neglect or "bad nurturing." But the pact-with-the-devil explanation ultimately did not satisfy me. I could tell that each of the three very nasty and the two coldly cruel people I was dealing with had never "decided" to be the way they were in some deal with the devil, nor could I explain their behaviors away entirely with some story of early trauma or abuse, or neglect on my part, in their lives. Their lives were no happier than my own really, so their meanness did not really get them much. It became as apparent to me that they were the way they were largely because they just couldn't help it any more than my gay cousin could help being gay.
And it did so without my having to think of eerie "bad seeds" or having to keep the madwoman in the attic so I could hide the horrors of my own possible inherited "insanity."
So, to make shorter work of this long rambling piece that is not aimed at addressing the details of Oakley's book, I will simply say that I want every social worker, every therapist, every psychologist, psychiatrist, and teacher, and every smug all-knowing neighbor in any town to read it. The harm these "evil" people do to those who try to help them is very painful and long-lasting. The harm that all the people I mentioned do with their smug judgments about the people who live with these "evil" people is also just as devasting.
As Oakley points out, our society has a "blind spot" that sometimes causes people to put the blame for evil behaviors on innocents instead of where it belongs. And that blind spot gets us nowhere and often encourages the behavior of these people by giving them excuses not to address their problems, if indeed they have the capacity to deal with them. The blind spot prevents us from really dealing with the problem of evil effectively as it affects an entire society also.
If more people read this book, we could begin to erase the American blind spot caused by our long-standing acceptance of the notion that all is nurture and nurture can cure all. If we would get more behind the research into this topic, we can maybe finally make some headway in eliiminating some of the evil in the world--or at least learn to deal with it better.
Happliy, there are other books like Why Is It All About You? and The Sociopath Next Door, the other two that I've read recently which provide some other insights about the nature of "evil." I am sure there are also many more, too, like the Demasios' Descarte's Error and Pinker's How the Mind Works and his Stuff of Thought, to name a few more. But Oakley's work is the one I recommend the most for people who have suffered at the hands of the "evil" people they have loved or even at the hands of an 'evil" person who has had some power over them at school, at work, or simply in a social setting.
I know that those who have never really been touched by such people will not really understand what Oakley describes because, as she points out, people think as much with their emotions as with their intellects. If you are engaged with her subject only intellectually, her book may be interesting and thought provoking for you. But if you have been touched by the "evil" of a person affected strongly by "evil genes," you will have many of the bricks of emotional guilt and the emotional scarring that society has placed on you lifted and you will be relieved to learn that you're not the "crazy" one after all.
(I am, of course, well aware that the use of the word "evil" is repugnant to many in our politically correct society. But I admire Oakley for addressing the subject with whatever vocabulary she could find without having to wait for the precise words that would appease all readers. She knew that the topic was a phenomenon that shifts its shape and size and can't be easily named with our current linguistic tools. It's better to address it perhaps a little less precisely than many would want than never to address the topic at all.)
So That's It!
This book answers so many questions. I'll never look at manipulative people the same. It's all here. If you have someone in your life who keeps you off balance, making you feel confused and angry, wondering what you've done from one day to the next...you need to read this. You may find some explanations that fit your situation.
Her writing is clear and although there is some technical stuff...it's easy to get through. Some the best parts dish on people who we know must have something wrong with them...but until now couldn't describe it.
I only wish she had gone into the current political mess. Maybe next time!
Evil Genes
I have not read a book for a long time , but this book is worth while reading, it is very easy to understand and is very hard to put down,
I haven't quiet finished reading but I am able to understand and accept why there are people that are just born evil.
I like to thank Barbara Oakely for putting the time and the effort into this book.
I have Friends that are wanting to read it, I am wondering if it is available in the German language.
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