Welcome to the “What We’re Reading” ongoing series where Volunteers talk about the books they’ve been reading at site. Here you’ll find PCVs sharing their thoughts, reflections, and reviews on books of any genre. Leave us a comment below if you’ve also read any of these books!
Bianca Palese, 134 TESS
Contrary to my usual approach, I tried to avoid knowing anything about the author before I began reading this book. I didn’t want my judgment of the author’s life or career to validate or invalidate what they had to say about the meaning of existence. However, I think the title of the book is a little misleading. I interpreted “The Meaning of Human Existence” as akin to the meaning of life and was expecting something a bit more philosophical than what you get here, which really ought to be titled “The Origin of Homosapien Social Behavior”.
I was never all that interested in science, and despite the book jacket trying to sell this as a unified analysis of science and the humanities, this is a biology book by a biology professor, Dr. Edward O. Wilson. To answer the question I thought would be posed, Wilson says there is “no demonstrable destiny or purpose assigned to us” or in other words, no meaning to life. We exist due to chance and natural selection over millions of years. He says everything you’d expect a scientist to say and in that respect, this book is quite a bore.
I had trouble focusing while reading this. Despite the author’s attempt to dumb down his admittedly impressive research in evolutionary biology, I just didn’t follow. I also don’t think that every tangent Wilson went on was central to answering the overall question of the book. There were many pages spent talking about ants and other insects for some vaguely relevant reason. Every time I thought he was done talking about them, I went to the next chapter and we were back to marveling at ants. Did you know that all worker ants are females, the queen can choose the sex of their offspring, and the few male ants allowed to be born are programmed to die after mating? I think I’d like to be reincarnated as an ant because it sounds like Girl Boss Central.
My favorite part of this book was when Wilson explained the importance of gossip and storytelling in evolution because it fostered the development of the brain to allow more complex societies to emerge later on. Now when people accuse me of having a gossiping problem (I’m looking at our former assistant editor Dano), I can simply tell them that I’m just more evolved. I also learned the word eusocial, which is seven letters and has many vowels, making it valuable in a game of Scrabble.
Another part that piqued my interest is towards the end where Wilson touches upon the ethical dilemmas facing the new technologies that allow people to choose the genetics of their babies. Natural selection can now be replaced by artificial selection, never mind it’s only currently available to society’s elite. What will our population look like in 100 years if scientists can genetically modify embryos to be healthier, stronger, and more “beautiful”?
Wilson ends the book by describing our species as dysfunctional, which is an easy point to defend if you read the news on any given day. He argues that our hereditary tribalism predisposes us to engage in ethnic, religious, and ideological wars. But I think that this fails to recognize what I would call a moral evolution that humans have only experienced in the last 250 years. Starting with the anti-slavery movement and continuing to present-day humanitarian action, people care more about distant “tribes” today than ever in history. This newfound altruism doesn’t always lead directly to any selfish benefits, yet we feverishly care about the plights of people we’ll never meet.
The Peace Corps is proof of this. Was humanity genetically destined for a moral awakening, that happened to be heavily propagated by the religious groups that Wilson repeatedly dismisses? I don’t know all the answers but I wasn’t convinced that every achievement mankind has made is the result of the genetic legacy of our pre-human past. I think an understanding of the humanities is necessary to truly answer the topic question. Wilson recognizes that early in the book but he doesn’t deliver.
If you like evolutionary biology, ants, and rhetorical questions, then this book is for you. I encourage readers to explore it with an open mind and challenge their preconceived notions by the end. Make sure to leave a comment on this article letting me know your thoughts!
Sticky Rice 
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