The Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System

Rutgers anthropologist Tiger (Men in Groups, etc.), believes that our ethics are biologically rooted in the extended family circle, but that industrialization, a very recent development, has weakened the family, isolated individuals, fostered exploitation and loss of craftsmanship. Today's evils, he argues, stem largely from an impersonal, vast industrial system that thwarts social and parental instincts and mutes our biologically conditioned morality. As many as one-fourth of North American women will never become mothers, he notes, and more people are living alone than ever. A ""psycho-industrial complex'' that holds sway in the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. treats social life and the human psyche as products to be manipulated by Pavlovian conditioning, ideology, advertising or some combination thereof. Tiger offers no solutions, but his evolutionary perspective is innovative and provocative. (August 12)