The Dark Side Of Man Paperback – Apr 6 2000

Violence is right up there with sex as a subject of universal and apparently unslakable interest. And if the two are linked, how much more fascinating-and here's a whole book that purports to be about sex and violence, with chapter titles like "Rape", "Murder", "War", and "Genocide".
Alas for the devotees of Real Crime, this book looks at the subject more clinically, but that makes it more interesting, really. If you actually look at the way men behave in certain extreme circumstances, rather than sneaking sidelong glances and then looking away, and talk straightforwardly about what you see, you can come to some surprising and useful conclusions.
I should say that the conclusions are surprising to academic theorists of criminal behavior, but not so surprising to the average person. The average person has always felt that rape is about sex rather than domination, and that if you want to discourage mugging, just let a few victims shoot a few muggers. The average person thinks that war, too, is mostly about ganging up to try and take something that belongs to someone else, and getting into a fight. But this is a book that comes to such commonsense conclusions in a way that should also pass muster with the theoreticians.
However, a book that talks about extremely antisocial behavior as being linked to one particular sex is going to have tough sledding these days. Furthermore, if it embraces the insights and results of human evolutionary psychology it is going to alienate religious fundamentalists as well as swatches of others of the "blank slate" school of human mental development.
Still with me? Well, the book is quite good, and to this reader at least, offered the surprising insights of a couple of paragraphs back. Perhaps too many years of hearing about the Patriarchy and its strategies of domination has kept me from thinking straight about why men do what they do, from flakking junk bonds to building bridges to robbing banks. Mostly, deep down, they do what they do to get women. Not to oppress them, or dominate them, or enslave them in the kitchen, but to have sex with them. Ghiglieri is an anthropologist, and his field studies (of chimps in particular) have given him a detachment that he applies to his own species. He starts with ideological biases, of course, but apparently also an intellectual honesty that lets the data speak to him and change his mind.
He paints a grim picture, but rather than throw up his hands at the intractability of violent behavior, Ghighieri believes that we have the intelligence and, as important, certain countervailing behaviors-the instincts for cooperating and for monitoring cheating-to enable us to contain and channel the always latent violence in our natures. Society foils our impulses in this direction right now (in particular the criminal justice system does), but need not.
So I recommend this book. It's a good read, with statistics but also with stories, and its conclusions do not get out too far ahead of its numbers. (Stats on human behavior, of course, are almost always shaky!). And it will teach you some things you didn't know about chimpanzees, too.

Michael's book is grounded in rock solid science and I just love this book. If you want to understand huMAN nature, this is one of the fine starting points. The subject matter is incredibly controversial and he handles it very well. Rape, violence, genocide, war...all the stuff men are good at are discussed here. The author's reasoning is compelling. This book is among my 100 all time favorites. Buy it, read it...

I
This book says that biology is solid science.Really?
Social biology ,ebolutionary biology,evolutionary psychology are very fragile science and have been abused for sexism,racism biological determinism,etc
And if one theory has the ring of the truth,it is possible to assert that that is truth,by using every fragile logic,biased indirect evidence .and the atmosphere(I myself have done so).
And considering such facts ,Scientists have to be humble.
But History repeats itself.
I'm not surprised that his theory sounds plausible to people who don't know the field well.I myself feel so about guns.
His tactic goes like this
When there are good data,he uses them perfectly and says a is --%,b is --% etc.And he doesn�ft note what unbiased people usually note.And maybe he doesn�ft know the field he looked down.
When there are controversial data or theories,he uses the part of data what are convenient for him( if he wants 'crime is not casused by the poor environment,'he sites only criminal's son tend to be a criminal ,and ignores the fact that criminal's son became criminal much less frequently when brought up by normal family.or goes like 'most authority agree with that'.or something like that.
And when there are obvious unconvinient facts ,data,construals or whatever ,he ignores that ,masks that.and instead uses ,illogical thinkings,personal quotations,and rare cases.and atmosphere.
For example,men kill men for pride and women love such dangerous,with low intelligence,and wanton vilonent guys.And it is an adoptation.according to him.
If men kill men, he earns the reputation that he is violent and he robs the resource easily when in need.And as an evidence he cites Yanomamo tribe's case or mafia and a woman who was attracted by the mafia.He uses this logic again and again,some rich men also do rape ,so most men...some rich men also do kill ,so most men...Yanomamo tribe and mafia are so,so most men...
But with evolutionary logic anyone can conclude opposite theory.
As he says , ,in evolutionary history,men act in union and if he breaks the harmony,he gets the penalty(this holds true to most societies.).Or maybe gets the revenge.violent?so what ? human got the equalizer(the authority also says �eequalizer�f put the leader in different position) .Or maybe he was excluded from the community.
And so how about women? according to the social psychology's experiment,when men are picked a fight by another man,this kind of violent reaction was very unpopular to women.
and if you teachs women that one man is criminal his appearance appeal became lower.And criminal type face was unpopular to women.
And what kind of men ,do women hate most?according to Bass's reserch all over the world he also quoted,typical killer type men ,violent ,low inteligence and can't constrain him,is one of the worst types.You're surprised? but not so surprised if you think well.
And the time that physical power counts much ends before the age of 10 in our world.
So typical killing was not adopted action ,or say worst action .So ?what happened ?human evolves the frontal cortex and among many of the human's brains high noble abilities (which are all very pppular to women,men,human and as a result are chosen),'brake is included .and no matter men became angry ,normal men don't kill and in a well contorolled society ,to meet a killer is hundreds times more difficult than many obviously unadopted actions.
And as a whole Killers have problems in frontal cortex and mineral balance.Which indicate they just couldn't express the abilities they have in themselves and not completely non problem guys as he try to indicate.

And to solve the problem ,we have to fully blossom our noble abilities,not �eeye for eye�f.
Ob course this is also very biased.
But this is evolutionary biology.I can fabricate another theories if his tactic is allowed.
He said one friend pointed out 1000 places to correct.. But still there were another 1000 to improve.It�fs not an exaggeration.I was tired to read this because of this.
And I reccomend to all the readers that they don't swallow all the stories written in this book.Though some of them are interesting ,They may be just his personal briefs,or ideologies..What kind of ideology he has ,I don�ft have to say..
Though I can�ft say his theories(or maybe any other theories) were definitely wrong.The fact that he has to use assertive ways again and again indicats his were in many cases unlikely.

You will probably find that most other reviews of this book say something along the lines of "Interesting arguments, but..." or "Compelling stories, but..." We have grown accustomed to living well and find it almost incomprehensible that man at his basest nature is evil. We therefore try to caveat the common sense conclusions and compelling stories found in Dark Side of Man and say to ourself that things really can't be all that bad. People live better for a variety of reasons - God, parents, friends, a conscious decision to make society a better place. Dr. Ghiglieri shows what may happen to us when resources become scarce and we are forced to address our primary concern - survival. Don't let the politically correct naysayers dissuade you from reading this book. The book is not nearly as fatalistic as some may have you believe. The last chapter shows that we can all live better, be better. We of course are not apes. We can make decisions after all.