The Spirit in the Gene

From famines and deforestation to water pollution, global warming and the rapid rate of extinction of plants and animals - the extent of the global damage wrought by humankind is staggering. Why have we allowed our environment to reach such a crisis? What produced the catastrophic population explosion that so taxes the earth's resources? Reg Morrison's search for answers led him to ponder our species' evolutionary success. His book describes how a spiritual outlook combined with a capacity for rational thought have enabled Homo sapiens to prosper through millennia. He depicts these traits as part of our genetic makeup - and as the likely cause of our ultimate downfall against the inexorable laws of nature. Several million years ago, small bands of apes walked erect on the dangerous plains of East Africa. Morrison marvels that they not only survived, but migrated to all corners of the earth and established civilizations. To understand this feat, he takes the reader back to a critical moment, when these hominids developed language and with it the unique ability to think abstractly.
He shows how at this same time, they began to derive increasing advantage from their growing sense of spirituality. He depicts spirituality as an evolutionary strategy that helped rescue our ancestors from extinction and drive the species toward global dominance. Morrison concludes that this genetically productive spirituality, which has influenced every aspect of our lives, has led us to overpopulate the world and to devastate our own habitats. The text offers a startling view of human adaptation running its natural course.