On Consumerism, Sex, Advertising, and Human Nature

Peacock (Pavo cristatus), displaying his tail,...

“The Ferrari is exactly the same in the human context,” says evolutionary psychologistGad Saad, “as the peacock‘s tail is on the peacock.”

Saad is an evolutionary behavioral scientist at Concordia University and author of the book The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal about Human Nature, in which he argues that most consumer behavior can be explained by evolutionary psychology.  Watch his interview,

Reason.tv‘s Zach Weissmueller sat down with Saad to discuss why most Ferrari owners are men, whether or not advertising executives manipulate our minds, the strong political opposition to the evolutionary sciences from across the spectrum, and the evolutionary significance of Sir Mix-a-lot‘s “Baby Got Back.”

About 10 minutes. Interview by Zach Weissmueller. Shot by Sharif Matar; edited by Weissmueller.

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Why Globalization Matters?

“It was by making myself a Catholic that I won the war of the Vendee [the war of counter-revolution in western  France], by making myself a Muslim that I established myself in Egypt, in making myself Ultramontane [a devotee of the papacy] that I won men’s hearts in Italy. If I were to govern a Jewish people, I would re-establish Solomon’s Temple.” Napoleon Bonaparte

It is with Napoleon’s astonishing remark that I decided to give you some light of what Globalization refers to and why I choose to write about it as one of the two pillars of my research.

The term Globalization (also referred to as Globalisation) refers to what many different historians considered a process of interrelation (or unification) of the world. It was a process of cultural, political and economic relations that for the first time in history united all mankind.

It has been the aim of historians to identify When does Globalization begun and How it begun.  But also, it has been their aim to question if Globalization as a process has already concluded or if it is an ongoing process in the 21st. Century.  As well, historians are still trying to explain if Globalization should be judged (or not) as the result of only positive (good) results in regard to increasing the wealth, culture and technology of the world; while other historians argue that Globalization has also resulted in poverty, losses, conquest and cannibalization.

Globalization has been studied from different approaches in Social Sciences. Sociologists and Anthropologists have focused on the cultural effects that the transfer of technology, mass migrations, institutions and products has had in different regions of the world. Political Theorists studied how Globalization affects the institutions, norms and hierarchical authorities in specific regions and how changes in other regions may have had altered the status quo. Economists study how globalization increased the commerce and transactions between regions and territories through trade, investments, and flows of capital just to mention a few.

In this blog I’ll aim to discuss Globalization as a process and a result of the interconnectedness of human’s psycho-epistemology in specific contexts and periods of history.  My mission is to study how human behavior is not determined by nature and how human free will (action that results from rational or irrational reasonings chosen between opportunity costs) has shaped the course of history until the present.

Continue reading “Why Globalization Matters?”