Harvard psychologist proves that morality is an illusion, denounces mankind for being immoral

That’s the message given by NYTimes book reviewer John Horgan in his take on Robert Trivers’ The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life. Trivers, who actually teaches at Rutgers these days, fills his book with examples of “how our genes’ relentless drive to self-replicate underpins even our most apparently magnanimous impulses,” according to Horgan, as well as cluing us in on the infinite games organisms play on one another, most of them involving someone getting eaten or otherwise eliminated.*

But after explaining why we humans are nothing but ruthless gene-replication machines, Trivers gets all Sixties on our asses for, well, for replicating our genes: “Although he indicts many nations for denying their sins, he is especially incensed by Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and the United States’ treatment of American Indians, blacks, the Vietnamese, Iraqis, Afghans and other groups.” But why? Is a lion wicked for eating a zebra? And if not a lion, how about something less glorious—a tapeworm, perhaps, or an AIDS virus? If there is no evil in Nature, and man is simply a part of Nature, how can man be evil? Why should we be condemned for being what we cannot help being? Or perhaps he is mad, not that we are murderers, but that we are hypocrites, clothing our naked aggression with pious protestations of morality—claiming to conquer, not in the name of ourselves, but rather in the name of humanity. If we were honest murderers, would he be satisfied?