"Page0042" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bloom Howard - The Lucifer Principle (htm))

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death.  She offers a carnivore the options of dying by starvation or of

killing for a meal.

Nature is like a sculptor continually improving upon her work,

but to do it she chisels away at living flesh.  What's worse, she has built

her morally reprehensible modus operandi into our physiology.  If you

occasionally feel that you are of several minds on one subject, you are

probably right.  In reality, you have several brains.  And those brains

don't always agree.  Dr. Paul D. MacLean was the researcher who first

posited the concept of "the triune brain."  According to MacLean, near

the base of your skull you'll find  the stem of the brain, poking up from

the spinal column like the unadorned end of a walking stick.  Sitting

atop that rudimentary stump is a mass of cerebral tissue bequeathed us

by our earliest totally land-dwelling ancestors--the reptiles.8  When

these beasts turned their backs on the sea roughly 300 million years ago

and hobbled inland, their primary focus was simple survival.  The new

landlubbers needed to hunt, to find a mate, to carve out territory  and

to fight in that territory's defense.  The neural machinery they evolved

took care of these elementary functions.  MacLean calls it the reptile

brain.  The reptile brain still sits inside our skull like the pit at the

center of a peach.  It is a vigorous participant in our mental affairs,

pumping its primitive, instinctual orders to us at all hours of the day

and night.

Eons after the first reptiles ambled away from the beach, their

great, great grandchildren many times removed evolved a few

dramatic product improvements.  These upgrades included fur, warm

blood, the ability to nurture eggs inside their own bodies, and the

portable supply of baby food we know as milk.  The remodeled

creatures were no longer reptiles.  They had become mammals.

Mammals' innovative features gave them the ability to leave the lush

tropics and make their way into the chilly north.  Their warm blood

allowed them, in fact, to survive the rigors of the occasional ice age.

But warm blood exacted its costs.  It demanded that mammal parents

not simply lay an egg and wander off.  It forced mammal mothers to

brood over their children for years.  And it required a tighter social

  iverse.  She presents her children with a choice between death and

4 

4

4

un

death.  She offers a carnivore the options of dying by starvation or of

killing for a meal.

Nature is like a sculptor continually improving upon her work,

but to do it she chisels away at living flesh.  What's worse, she has built

her morally reprehensible modus operandi into our physiology.  If you

occasionally feel that you are of several minds on one subject, you are

probably right.  In reality, you have several brains.  And those brains

don't always agree.  Dr. Paul D. MacLean was the researcher who first

posited the concept of "the triune brain."  According to MacLean, near

the base of your skull you'll find  the stem of the brain, poking up from

the spinal column like the unadorned end of a walking stick.  Sitting

atop that rudimentary stump is a mass of cerebral tissue bequeathed us

by our earliest totally land-dwelling ancestors--the reptiles.8  When

these beasts turned their backs on the sea roughly 300 million years ago

and hobbled inland, their primary focus was simple survival.  The new

landlubbers needed to hunt, to find a mate, to carve out territory  and

to fight in that territory's defense.  The neural machinery they evolved

took care of these elementary functions.  MacLean calls it the reptile

brain.  The reptile brain still sits inside our skull like the pit at the

center of a peach.  It is a vigorous participant in our mental affairs,

pumping its primitive, instinctual orders to us at all hours of the day

and night.

Eons after the first reptiles ambled away from the beach, their

great, great grandchildren many times removed evolved a few

dramatic product improvements.  These upgrades included fur, warm

blood, the ability to nurture eggs inside their own bodies, and the

portable supply of baby food we know as milk.  The remodeled

creatures were no longer reptiles.  They had become mammals.

Mammals' innovative features gave them the ability to leave the lush

tropics and make their way into the chilly north.  Their warm blood

allowed them, in fact, to survive the rigors of the occasional ice age.

But warm blood exacted its costs.  It demanded that mammal parents

not simply lay an egg and wander off.  It forced mammal mothers to

brood over their children for years.  And it required a tighter social

  iverse.  She presents her children with a choice between death and