5 Books That Explore Our Humanity

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MNN.COM Lifestyle Arts & Culture
5 books that explore our humanity
By
Helen Jupiter
Fri, May 31 2013 at 2:42 PM
0
Like
Related Topics:
Animal Research, Healthy Eating, Michael Pollan
In his latest book, Michael Pollan notes that anthropologists describe cooking as a defining
human activity, and that Claude Lvi-Strauss actually referred to it as the act with which
culture begins. The way we prepare and share our food is just one of the many pieces to the
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06/01/2013 07:52 PM
puzzle of our humanity, along with our relationship to morality, how we experience and
express empathy and compassion, the biases both implicit and explicit that drive our
behavior, and the ways in which we reach back through history for insights on how to better
live our modern lives. The following five books all explore one aspect of our humanity, each
complex and significant in its own ways.
***
"Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation"
By Michael Pollan
Publisher: Penguin Press HC
Michael Pollan has written a lot about both agriculture and "the opposite
end of the food chain the eating end." With his latest book he delves
into "the middle links of the food chain, where the stuff of nature gets
transformed into the things we eat and drink." Cooked explores how
the four classical elements and building blocks of cooking fire, water,
air, and earth transform the stuff of nature into delicious dishes and
drafts. We follow Pollans journey as he learns from culinary masters
how to grill with fire, cook with liquid, bake bread, and ferment
everything from cheese to beer. Of course, the theme of transformation
throughout the book is much more multifaceted than simply appreciating how air transforms
grain and water into a fragrant loaf of bread. Pollan also addresses how the American
relationship with cooking has been transformed over the past five decades. Cooking is no
longer obligatory, and that marks a shift in human history, one whose full implications we're
just beginning to reckon. Today, the typical American spends a mere 27 minutes a day on food
preparation, and another four minutes cleaning up. That's less than half the time spent
cooking and cleaning up in 1965, when I was a boy. The problem with this, in Pollans view, is
that our growing distance from any direct, physical engagement with the processes by which
the raw stuff of nature gets transformed into a cooked meal is changing our understanding of
what food is, and subsequently damaging the health of our bodies, our families, our
communities and our land. Pollan also notes an interesting cultural development, what he
calls the Cooking Paradox: That while we're cooking less and buying more prepared meals
every year, we're also talking about and watching cooking more. "When you consider that 27
minutes is less time than it takes to watch a single episode of 'Top Chef' or 'The Next Food
Network Star,' you realize that there are now millions of people who spend more time
watching food being cooked on television than they spend actually cooking it themselves."
Pollan notes that anthropologists describe cooking as a defining human activity, and Claude
Lvi-Strauss actually referred to it as the act with which culture begins, so its no surprise that
Cooked seeks to shepherd us back into the kitchen and inspire us to spend more time
cooking our own transformative meals.
***
"Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success"
By Adam M. Grant PhD
Publisher: Viking Adult
Are you a giver, a taker or a matcher? Takers tend to be self-focused,
evaluating what other people can offer them, and givers are otherfocused, paying more attention to what other people need from them.
Conventional wisdom might lead us to believe that givers are the good
guys who finish last, but as organizational psychologist and Wharton
professor Adam Grant shows in his recent book Give and Take: A
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Revolutionary Approach to Success, it really isnt that simple. Every time

we interact with another person at work, we have a choice to make:
claim as much value as we can, contribute value without worrying about
what we receive in return, or find some in-between option. We all differ dramatically in our
preferences for reciprocity our desired mix of taking and giving and over the past three
decades social scientists have discovered that the ways in which we give and take have
staggering consequences for success. Grant aims to persuade his readers that we
underestimate the success of givers. A lauded giver and incredible success story himself, Grant
has dedicated over a decade of his professional life to studying how people choose whether to
give, take, or match at work, and much of his book works to establish the difference between
the givers who are exploited and those who end up as models of achievement. Though the
tendency is to stereotype givers as chumps and doormats, Grant shows time and again that
strategic givers can be overwhelmingly successful. He offers studies and stories that illuminate
how giving can be much more powerful and less dangerous than most people believe, and
introduces strategic givers who are enjoying success as consultants, lawyers, doctors,
engineers, and in many other fields. Its an approach to success that has the potential to
transform not just individuals and groups, but entire organizations and communities.
***
"The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the
Primates"
By Frans de Waal
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Respected primatologist and avowed atheist Frans de Waal has spent
more than three decades studying and writing about the behavior and
social intelligence of primates. From politics to empathy, de Waal has
long drawn parallels between primate and human behavior, from
peacemaking and morality to culture. With his latest book, The Bonobo
and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates, he works
to show that rather than coming to us top-down from God or any other
external source, morality is actually built into our species. In de Waals
view, morality springs bottom-up from our emotions and our day-to-day social interactions,
which themselves evolved from foundations in animal societies. Unlike the confrontational
neo-atheism of Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, de Waal really isnt interested in
disproving God's existence or demonstrating that religion poisons everything. "What good
could possibly come from insulting the many people who find value in religion?" he asks. "And
more pertinently, what alternative does science have to offer?" That alternative is the idea that
the greatest enforcer of good behavior isn't the wrath of an omniscient deity or any dogmatic
ethical framework, but rather our emotions. Offering vivid examples of emotionally guided
moral behavior in animals, de Waal argues that religion should not have a monopoly on
morality, and that empathy and reciprocity, the basis of prosocial behavior, appear to have
much deeper evolutionary roots than faith. From bonobos, chimpanzees, and monkeys, to
dogs, elephants and dolphins, de Waal presents decades of research that clearly show that
many animals have a well-developed sense of right and wrong. Like us, primates repeatedly
demonstrate that they understand the value of co-operation in specific tasks, that they have a
strong sense of fair play, an awareness of the permanence of death, and that they use their
own experience and imagination to empathize with others. The main takeaway: What we
think of as our humanity, including the self-control needed for a livable society, comes from
within.
***
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06/01/2013 07:52 PM
"Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People"

By Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald, professors of psychology at
Harvard and the University of Washington, respectively, have been
studying a computer-based assessment called the Implicit Association
Test (IAT), which measures the speed of people's hidden associations,
since 1995. These hidden associations reveal unconscious biases,
described by the authors as "bits of knowledge about social groups
(think race, age, gender, weight), which can influence our behavior
towards members of these groups. The IAT routinely predicts
discriminatory behavior even among participants who earnestly espouse
egalitarian beliefs. But what, aside from seeming to accuse of prejudice those of us who regard
ourselves as unbiased, is the point? In their book Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People
Banaji and Greenwald explore the far-reaching effects of these widespread hidden biases,
from the way that we hire to the medical care we receive. For example, an automatic white
preference has been found to correlate with suboptimal treatment of black emergency room
patients and unfavorable judgment of black job applicants, and scores on the Race IAT predict
such discrimination even better than do overt statements about ones beliefs. Its a difficult
mirror to look into, but Banaji and Greenwald propose that most of todays racial
discrimination stems not from attempts to harm anyone, but rather from selective helping.
Were each part of several groups, defined by race, gender, religion, family, alma mater and so
on, and when we go out of our way to help an in-group member, we dont see that as a bad
thing. But such selective privileging reinforces the status quo. The titles good people are
those of us who strive to align our behavior with our intentions, and the aim of Blindspot is to
explain the science in plain enough language to help well-intentioned people achieve that
alignment. By gaining awareness, we can arguably adapt beliefs and behavior and outsmart
the machine in our heads so we can be fairer to those around us. Want to test yourself? Go to
implicit.harvard.edu and click on Demonstration. Youll have a choice of a dozen or so tests
(included are Weight, Age and Race IATs.
***
"The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional
Societies?"
By Jared Diamond
Publisher: Viking Adult
Scientist and author Jared Diamond is no stranger to controversy, and his
latest book, The World Until Yesterday, may be his most divisive yet. In
his Pulitzer Prizewinning Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond
expounded on the role of geography in human history; In Collapse, he
explored the dangers of disregarding those geographic conditions. With
his newest work, Diamond presents the differences between
contemporary cultures and traditional societies, examining topics close
to our modern hearts, such as child rearing, eldercare, conflict resolution
and risk management. He explores the benefits of multilingualism and healthy diets, and plays
with the idea that the dangers inherent in indigenous life may have contributed to modern
religions origins. Mining material drawn from decades of fieldwork in the Pacific Islands and
other world regions for applicable lessons, Diamond explores the degree to which modern
society draws from earlier and ancient cultures and concludes that we have much to learn
from indigenous peoples.
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