Our Captain, Kirk

So what are we to learn from his insights? In terms of how we live our lives, not much beyond what common sense already tells us: Parents matter and should engage with their children; human teenagers enjoy doing what they are good at, and dislike doing what they are bad at; and so on. That much is harmless; but Ridley’s deeper point is subversive of human freedom and individual accountability. He denies the existence of free will: Our actions are not causes but effects, “prespecified by, and run by, genes.” Indeed, he claims unequivocally, “There is no ‘me’ inside my brain, there is only an ever-changing set of brain states, a distillation of history, emotion, instinct, experience, and the influence of other people—not to mention chance.”

Ridley asserts this as if it would be a good thing to learn that the complexity and richness of human experience could accurately be reduced to merely the acts of so many slaves obeying the lash of chemical overseers acting under the direction of our experience-influenced gene owners. “Nature versus nurture is dead,” Ridley concludes triumphantly. “Long live nature via nurture.”

So what are we to learn from his insights? In terms of how we live our lives, not much beyond what common sense already tells us: Parents matter and should engage with their children; human teenagers enjoy doing what they are good at, and dislike doing what they are bad at; and so on. That much is harmless; but Ridley’s deeper point is subversive of human freedom and individual accountability. He denies the existence of free will: Our actions are not causes but effects, “prespecified by, and run by, genes.” Indeed, he claims unequivocally, “There is no ‘me’ inside my brain, there is only an ever-changing set of brain states, a distillation of history, emotion, instinct, experience, and the influence of other people—not to mention chance.”

Ridley asserts this as if it would be a good thing to learn that the complexity and richness of human experience could accurately be reduced to merely the acts of so many slaves obeying the lash of chemical overseers acting under the direction of our experience-influenced gene owners. “Nature versus nurture is dead,” Ridley concludes triumphantly. “Long live nature via nurture.”