| They Fuck You Up by Oliver James "If we are as heavily dominated by our genes as is frequently claimed, then neither personal nor social change is possible. If the poor are poor, the mad mad and the bad bad largely because of their genes, there is little point in increasing spending on education for the poor, or in talking therapies or enlightened prison regimes." (page 8) "In general, boy infants get more reactions from parents and are given toys that require active problem-solving and parental involvement. Later on, boys are encouraged to explore and play alone whereas girls are kept closer through fear for their safety, making them more used to having to conform to adult expectations. Fathers play more roughly with sons and expect higher standards of achievement, whereas they encourage dependence and passivity in daughters. Both parents interrupt daughters and listen to sons more. Subsequently, at school, the sexes tend to segregate themselves along gender lines so that opposite-sexed ways of behaving are less likely to be learnt. Teachers expect boys to be more aggressive and girls to be cooperative." (page 36) "In simple terms, the good news for firstborns is that their parents tend to be thrilled by their arrival and lavish undivided attention upon them. The bad news is that when a sibling comes along the relative neglect that results is more of a shock to the system, and the special demands to succeed are not served with extra helpings of love; indeed, if anything these tend to go to laterborns. Most of what is true of firstborns is also true of only children, with the difference that they do not have the blow of losing their parents to a sibling. Onlies tend, therefore, to be even more high-achieving than firstborns because they never cease to be the conduit for all parental ambitions." (page 43) "Whereas professional revolutionaries such as Leon Trotsky, Karl Marx and Fidel Castro are liable to be laterborns, establishment politicians tend to be firstborn. Scientists who are laterborn, like Charles Darwin, are more likely to develop radical theories than are firstborns." (page 43) "...the greater the gap between siblings, the less the likelihood that a younger sibling would be politically revolutionary or scientifically radical - a large gap created less need for the laterborn to reject the status quo in order to get parental attention." (page 44) "On the whole, firstborn traits such as leadership, assertiveness and competitiveness are associated with masculinity, whereeas laterborn ones such as displaying affection, coorperation and flexibility are more stereotypically feminine." (page 44) "In general, we are more likely to pursue a similar profession to one of our parents and, if we are prodigiously good at a subject from a young age, it was one in which our parents were either accomplished or wished they had been." (page 51) "You may be able to hothouse a prodigy, but genius comes from early adversity." (page 53) "People who put money before family or community or emotional fulfilment as motives are considerably more likely to report feeling unhappy, anxious and depressed." (page 63) "Parents have a huge effect on what sort of peers their children spend time with, and subsequently on how susceptible they are to peer influence." (page 71) "Children of authoritative, empathic parents are themselves more empathic, making them better able to take on board another person's point of view, whereas lack of parental empathy generally results in self-centredness." (page 101) "Parents routinely use their children as recipients of their own intolerable feelings, as well as vehicles for desirable aspirations." (page 107) "The more unequal the society, the more violent, and the same applies to regions within a nation." (page 131) "If we have had no exposure whatever to human speech before the age of six we cannot learn it at all, making the first six years a Critical period for acquiring language. By contrast, there is a Sensitive period up to puberty for learning any second language once a first has been acquired." (page 147) "Psychopaths are impulsive, greedy for sensation, prone to criminality and breaking norms of decent behaviour, and have a weak conscience. If we are psychopathic our emotions are not deeply felt. We do not experience guilt, remorse or empathy. Towards others we are promiscuous, manipulative, grandiose, egocentric, forceful and cold. In the popular imagination all psychopaths are drooling maniacs or cold killers, but in reality this is just the tiny minority who become serial killers or sexual criminals, some of whom are masters of disguise and take great pleasure in a game of evading detection." (page 204) "The key to changing the impact of our past on our present is not suppression of reality but insight." (page 240) "...intelligence is vastly over-rated as an explanation for levels of career success. Motivation is far more significant." (page 275) |