Evil Genes
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“Professor Oakley has done that rare thing: written a scientific book that is at once informative and eminently readable. She has taken ‘evil’ out of the realm of the religious and metaphysical, placing it instead where it belongs—inside ourselves, as in the famous Pogo cartoon: ‘we have met the enemy, and he is us!’ Her book is filled with many examples, some drawn from close personal experience, of the complicated ways genetics and environment interact to predispose toward evil. The genetic side of the story has been neglected far too long. Evil Genes makes an important and timely addition to the literature on this most fascinating topic. Professor Oakley's book aims at, and deserves, a wide readership.”
—Michael H. Stone, MD
Professor of clinical psychiatry, Columbia University
“A magnificent tour through the sociology, psychology, and biology of evil. No one should pass up the experience of stepping through the portals of this fascinating book to answer Oakley's crucial question: Why are there evil people, and why are they sometimes so successful?”
—Dr. Cliff Pickover
Author of A Beginner's Guide to Immortality and The Heaven Virus
“This book conveys an enormous amount of complex, up-to-date scientific information in an extremely ‘digestible’ manner. Dr. Oakley manages to illustrate how, although our genetic makeup is not our destiny, there are clearly people who have an unfortunate dose of risk genes. These people often have impoverished social and emotional experience and can cause suffering to those around them. Although firmly grounded in science, this book is also compassionate and forces the reader to examine their own beliefs and prejudices in the light of what is currently known about the nature and nurture of ‘evil.’”
—Essi Viding, PhD
Department of Psychology
University College London
“A highly readable, entertaining, groundbreaking, must-read study with notable insights on the rise and fall of empires; but more importantly, it offers, perhaps for the first time, a distinctly plausible mechanism for explaining the origin and persistence of social inequality.”
—Glenn Storey
President, Archaeological Institute of America, Iowa Society
Associate professor of classics and anthropology, University of Iowa
Author of Urbanism in the Preindustrial World: Cross-Cultural Approaches
“As a forensic psychologist who has spent much of my career delving into the darkest recesses of the criminal mind, I have often wondered what roles genes and environment play in subsequent psychopathic behavior. Barbara Oakley's outstanding Evil Genes provides the answer.”
—Helen Smith, PhD
Author of The Scarred Heart: Understanding and Identifying Kids Who Kill
“Blending brisk studies of notorious evildoers with her own difficult family history, Dr. Oakley skillfully weaves together a panoramic mix of history, psychology, and the complications of human behavior to make a stimulating, provocative, and accessible read.”
—Adam LeBor
Author of Milosevic: A Biography and
Complicity with Evil: The United Nations in the Age of Modern Genocide
“Oakley has dealt Hitler, Stalin, and all of their kind—past, present, and future—a telling blow with her perceptive exposition of their psychopathy. A courageous, groundbreaking exploration not only of evil in the modern world, but of her family's darkest secrets.”
—Dmitri Nabokov, son of Vladimir Nabokov
Principal English translator of his father's Russian works
A major theme of Vladimir Nabokov's writing (in short stories such as
“Tyrants Destroyed” and novels such as Invitation to a Beheading and Bend Sinister)
is the psychological aberrations so brilliantly brought to light in Evil Genes.
“A fascinating book that manages to make the neurosciences intelligible to a layperson. Its argument that at least some of human evil is encoded on our genes is hard to refute, and this reader wasn't tempted to do so.”
—Dr. Colleen McCullough, AO (Order of Australia)
Author and neuroscientist
“Einstein once said that all important new science would be found at the interstices of existing disciplines; if you need proof of that, this book is it. Starting with a background in the military, linguistics, and electrical engineering, Oakley deftly moves through psychology, functional brain imagery, and molecular biology to weave a compelling and provocative case for a genetic base for evil. ‘Scientific nonfiction’ and ‘page turner’ aren't two phrases I'd expect in the same sentence, but for the remarkable Evil Genes, they fit.”
—William A. Wulf, President Emeritus
National Academy of Engineering
“Through a fascinating blend of state-of-the-art science, political biography, and personal catharsis, Evil Genes constructs a provocative blueprint for our understanding of the ‘successfully sinister’ among us.”
—David J. Buller, Presidential Research Professor
Northern Illinois University
Author of Adapting Minds
“Many of us encounter people whose reactions are puzzling. They are easily hurt and offended. Even when someone is being generous, or kind to them they might react with anger, revengefulness, defensiveness, suspiciousness, or aloofness. These are difficult people to have as friends, relatives, colleagues, and even as patients. Dr. Oakley has written a comprehensive and compassionate explanation for why some people are like this that will be fascinating to anyone who has encountered this type of person and cared enough to wonder ‘why?’”
—Regina Pally, MD, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst
Coauthor of The Mind-Brain Relationship
Published 2008 by Prometheus Books
Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend. Copyright © 2007 by Barbara Oakley. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a Web site without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Inquiries should be addressed to Prometheus Books
59 John Glenn Drive
Amherst, New York 14228–2119
VOICE: 716–691–0133, ext. 210
FAX: 716–691–0137
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Oakley, Barbara A., 1955–
Evil genes : why Rome fell, Hitler rose, Enron failed, and my sister stole my mother's boyfriend / by Barbara Oakley.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–1–59102–665–5 (paperback : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-61592-002-0 (ebook)
1. Good and evil—Psychological aspects. I. Title.
BF789.E94O35 2007
155.7—dc22
2007027088
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
FOREWORD
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
The Successfully Sinister
Sleuthing with the Sciences
A Revolution in Research
Putting the Puzzle Together
CHAPTER 1: IN SEARCH OF MACHIAVELLI
Richard Christie Founds a New Discipline
The Ubiquity of the Sinister
Perverse Admiration: The Development of a Test for Machiavellianism
CHAPTER 2: PSYCHOPATHY
Antisocial Personality Disorder
But What Is a Psychopath?
The Role of Genes and Environment
The Genetics of Psychopathy
CHAPTER 3: EVIL GENES
Machiavellian Genes
Serotonin Receptors and Behavior
The Long and the Short of It—Serotonin Transporters
Pleiotropy—The Naughty-Nice Aspects of “Evil Genes”
Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor
Warrior or Worrier? The COMT Gene
Monoamine Oxidase A
Other Moody Genes
Emergenic Phenomena
Why We Can't Simply Eliminate “Evil” Genes
CHAPTER 4: USING MEDICAL IMAGING TO UNDERSTAND PSYCHOPATHS
Looking Inside the Brain of a Psychopath
Emotion and Language
Low Response to Threatening Stimuli and Empathy Impairment
Lack of Anxiety
Executive Dysfunction
Emotional Control—Affective and Predatory Murderers
Problems with Abstract Reasoning
Seeing the Human Conscience
Why Does Psychopathy Develop?
Empathy and Mirror Neurons
Successful Psychopaths
CHAPTER 5: INSIGHTS FROM MY SISTER'S LOVE LETTERS
The Early Years
The Missing Decade
Memories of Carolyn
The Letters
CHAPTER 6: THE CONNECTION BETWEEN MACHIAVELLIANISM AND PERSONALITY DISORDERS
The Dimensional Approach to Understanding Personality Disorders
McHoskey's Findings
Borderline Personality Disorder
Borderline Coping Behaviors
The Impact of Borderline Personality Disorder on Others
CHAPTER 7: SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC: THE BUTCHER OF THE BALKANS
The Quintessential Machiavellian: Slobodan Milosevic
Identity Disturbance
The DSM-IV Description of Borderline Personality Disorder
Was Milosevic a Borderline?
The Dimensional Approach to Describing Borderline Personality Disorder
Was Milosevic a Psychopath?
Personal Impact: Milosevic and My Family
CHAPTER 8: LENSES, FRAMES, AND HOW BROKEN BRAINS WORK
Lenses and Frames
Neurological Systems and How They Function to Regulate Emotion
The Cerebral Cortex
The Limbic System
Neural Connections
“Feel Good” Politics: How Machiavellians—and Altruists—Manipulate Emotions
Seeing Subtle Defects in the Emote Control System—Borderline Personality Disorder
Emotional Dysregulation: Limbic System
Impulsivity: Anterior Cingulate and Orbitomedial Prefrontal Systems
Cognitive-Perceptual Impairment: Dorsolateral, Ventromedial, and Orbitofrontal Prefrontal Systems
But What's the Big Picture?
A Link with the Immune System?
Overlapping Personality Disorders
CHAPTER 9: THE PERFECT “BORDERPATH”: CHAIRMAN MAO
Mao as Borderpath
The Early Years
Early Antisocial Tendencies
Markedly Disturbed Relationships
The Confusing Façade—Sympathy with Little Empathy
Impulsivity
Poorly Regulated Emotions
Drug and Sexual Addictions
Cognitive-Perceptual Impairment
Control and the Purges
Sadism
Ability to Charm
Narcissism
Paranoia
Mao's Manipulation
Did Mao Believe in Communism?
Endgame and Aftermath
CHAPTER 10: EVOLUTION AND MACHIAVELLIANISM
Tit for Tat
Throwing Away the Steering Wheel
Blink and You'll Miss It—The Quickness of Evolution
Baldwinian Evolution
Can Culture Create Machiavellians?
Gold Diggers, Stable Sinister Systems, and the Slow-Motion Implosion of Empires
Defining “Machiavellian”
Linda Mealey
CHAPTER 11: SHADES OF GRAY
Narcissism, Deceit, Humbleness, and Conscience
Enron—The Power of Unchecked, Mutually Supportive Machiavellians
Temper, Temper, Temper
Cognitive Function and Dysfunction
Delusions
THE DELUSIONS OF DICTATORS
THE DELUSIONS OF MADMEN
Personality Underlies Ideology
Ambition and Control
The Surprising Attributes
So, Are the Successfully Sinister Really Different?
Naivete
Warren Buffett—Multifaceted Genius
Healthy Cynicism
CHAPTER 12: THE SUN ALSO SHINES ON THE WICKED
Evil and Free Will
Who Are the Successfully Sinister?
How Can You Tell?
Carolyn
AFTERWORD
FOR PONDERING
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
TEXT CREDITS
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
ENDNOTES
GLOSSARY
INDEX
I would like to take this opportunity to point out that the excerpts from Carolyn's diaries and letters are virtually verbatim, with only a few slight emendations to disguise the individuals in question, for brevity's sake, or to clarify personal shorthand.
There's a glossary in the back if you've set the book down for a day or two and want to refresh your memory about something. And if you're not a science type, don't worry—I'm on your side. I've written the book so you can skim over the sections that might not be your cup of tea.
—Barbara Oakley, Rochester, Michigan,
July 8, 2007
“He is a man with tens of thousands of blind followers. It is my business to make some of those blind followers see.”
—Abraham Lincoln on the covertly proslavery,
and amoral, Stephen Douglas1
The natural world includes millions of species that evolved to survive and reproduce in different ways. These species have long been admired for the sophistication of their bodies—the shape of the bird's wing, the speed of the cheetah, the insect that looks exactly like a leaf. Only recently have we begun to appreciate the sophistication of their behaviors. For centuries and millennia, we have prided ourselves as being set apart from the rest of life by our intelligence. Yet, tune into any of the wonderful nature documentaries that are so widely available today, and you will see animals from insects to primates behaving amazingly like…us.
If we are set apart from the rest of life, it is primarily in our behavioral flexibility. We can adapt to new problems in ways that other species cannot. It is this ability that enabled our ancestors to spread over the globe, displacing other hominids and many other species along the way. Our cultures and individual behaviors are so successfully diverse that humans are more like an entire ecosystem than a single species.
Yet, our unique flexibility has an implication that is only just dawning upon us. If we are more like an ecosystem than a single species, then human cultural and behavioral diversity can be understood in the same way as biological diversity. We have not escaped evolution, as is so commonly assumed. We experience evolution in hyperdrive.
Explaining human diversity from this perspective is so new that it is like the earlier days of exploration. Instead of perilous voyages on ships and encounters with strange tribes on foreign shores, there are voyages to academic disciplines that have been largely disconnected from each other throughout their histories and whose members are often as fierce toward outsiders as any “primitive” tribe. Evolutionary theory can transcend disciplinary boundaries for the study of our own species, as it already has for the biological sciences.
In Evil Genes, our evolutionary explorer is Barbara Oakley, as colorful a character, in her own way, as Indiana Jones. An Air Force brat, she moved ten times by the tenth grade an
d enlisted as a private in the army before entering college on an ROTC scholarship to study Slavic languages and literature. After four years as a communications officer in Germany, she moved to Seattle and alternated between getting a second college degree in electrical engineering and serving as a translator on Russian fishing trawlers, which led to her first book, Hair of the Dog: Tales from Aboard a Russian Trawler. She met her husband during a stint as a radio operator in Antarctica and settled down to a more normal life, working in industry, having two children, and inventing a popular board game called Herd Your Horses along the way. After her children were old enough, she earned her PhD in engineering and as a professor has won teaching awards and performed research on noninvasive pressure sensing and the effects of electrical fields upon cells. As she recounts, Oakley's inquiry that led to Evil Genes was initially sparked by her own family history. If her academic pedigree appears unorthodox, the new evolutionary explorers come from every conceivable background and their discoveries must be evaluated on their own merits. I would not underestimate the abilities of an engineering professor/army officer/Russian translator/game inventor/author/wife/mother. In fact, it's doubtful that someone coming from a standard academic perch could have crossed so many disciplines—and perspectives—to develop such an encompassing, thought-provoking thesis.
Biological ecosystems include the full spectrum of relationships among species, from ruthless exploitation to obligate mutualisms. The human ecosystem is much the same. My own work on altruism, morality, and religion emphasizes the cooperative end of the spectrum. It is gratifying how often goodness succeeds as an evolutionary strategy. It does not always succeed, however, leaving room for the human equivalent of predators, parasites, and competitors. The more ruthless strategies of this segment of the population might succeed for the individuals and groups that employ them, at least over the short term, but at a massive cost to others and society as a whole over the long term. It is on this end of the spectrum that Barbara Oakley concentrates in Evil Genes.
As the humorous subtitle implies, exploitation can take place on any scale, from a single family (Barbara's sister, who stole her mother's boyfriend), to major corporations (Enron) and whole nations (the Fall of Rome and Rise of Hitler). In addition to the scientific merits of her thesis, you will be entertained by the many stories from her personal life and academic explorations. The main title, Evil Genes, might lead you to expect a simple scientific story about genes that directly code for evil behaviors. Nothing could be further from the truth. Oakley is remarkable for the degree to which she appreciates the complexity of the story—replete with genetic, developmental, and environmental interactions—and conveys the complexities in a way that remains entertaining and enlightening. Just as Darwin's books were read by all sectors of the population, not just other scientists, Evil Genes deserves to be read by everyone from high school students to the most distinguished professors. Through this book, you, too, can ponder the big questions about nature and human nature.