Who am I?: 16 Basic Desires that Motivate Our Actions Define Our Persona [Paperback]

The answer to "who am I?", for this author, is: Steven Reiss, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Ohio State University.

The answer to "*what* am I?", for this author, is (whether he admits to it or not): An evolutionary psychologist, and consequently we humans are merely an expression of our genes. Both physically *and* psychologically.

The justification for this statement is clearly stated on page 25:

"Our basic desires have an evolutionary origin, but they are significantly modified by culture, beliefs, and individual experiences in ways that are still not well understood. What we desire is largely determined by our genes, but how we fulfill our desires is largely determined by culture and experience."

Notice that even the *way* we fulfil our desires is partly governed by genetics. In fact, for Reiss, genetics are the *true* key to everything else (page 24):

"... even if the average strength of the 16 basic desires were found to vary across cultures, I expect that the definitions of the 16 basic desires presented in this book would be proven to be universal. I base this expectation partially on the genetic origin of the desires."

One of the problems with this "it all depends on your genes" attitude is that this is basically a dead end definition. In order to expand on the notion we have to take unproven and frequently unprovable jumps into the dark. And the end result is frequently non-sense, nonsense, or both. As in these three assertions on page 19:

1. "nearly everyone wants success (indicating desire for power)"

There's only one definition of "success", and that is "success = power"?
Well, I suppose if we're all just troop carriers for our genes then that kind of thinking makes some kind of sense. Not a lot of good when you're dealing with individual human beings, though.

2. "animals who hoard food are motivated by the desire to save"

Since the author has "Saving ... the desire to collect things" as one of his 16 definitions I suppose that a squirrel hoarding nuts so it will have a food supply through the winter is acting on exactly the same genetically determined motivation that leads a human being to collect, say, stamps (referring to a true philatelist as distinct from someone who collects stamps simply as an investment)?

Interesting idea - but perhaps not exactly rational.

3. "animals' common practice of licking themselves clean falls under the desire for order"

And does it have nothing to do with the fact that cleanliness is an aid to health, or that an undue amount of dirt may conceal the animal's scent, and/or its ability to effectively detect smells in its environment? Not to mention the fact that "order" may be an entirely human concept.

Whilst the list of 16 allegedly basic desires makes an interesting talking point, so-called evolutionary psychology has not gained any substantial measure of support within the scientific community, and this book offers nothing that makes such ideas any more credible than they were before.

My second concern is about people who use expressions like: "We instructed the computer" (page 27).

Computers are not "instructed" (as you would give instructions to another human being), they are "programmed" - with the clear implication that someone else (a human being) did the programming.

This distinction is vital, in a context such as this.
What Reiss is clearly attempting to depict as a totally computer-controlled, neutral process - the selection of 16 basic desires from a short list of 328, "based on root meanings" - is nothing of the kind.

A computer only "understands" 0 and 1, on and off - it hasn't the faintest idea what a "root meaning" is, and it has no power to do anything other than run the program fed into it, using the data fed into it - all done by *human beings*, and therefore HIGHLY selective. And for honesty's sake should be acknowledged as such.

My only complaint about this book is that it is very wordy, which is so absolutely typical of self-help books. He presents the theory concisely and clearly, then goes on to apply the theory to many different areas of human behavior. This seems excessively detailed and it makes for tiresome reading, so I skimmed much of the second half of the book. At times the book approaches a catalog in unreadability.

By all means get the book and answer the questions to determine your own desire profile. I believe you will learn more about yourself, more quickly, than you have ever done before.