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Showing posts from November, 2021

Driving in the Shadow of Dhauladhars – A Himachal Holiday

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For long psychologists denied human nature. Human behaviour, they believed, is the result of nurture, i.e., conditioned response to environmental stimuli. Pecking pigeons of Skinner and salivating dogs of Pavlov held the clue to the riddle of human behaviour, they opined. Growth of evolutionary psychology brought a tectonic shift in this understanding. Behaviour of an individual is a manifestation of their biology. Biology is shaped by evolution and endows a species with nature. Behaviour, the expression of this nature, emerges from interaction of nature with nurture, i.e., environment of the individual. We Homo Sapiens, the modern humans, evolved about two hundred thousand years ago. We have been hunter-gatherers for most of our history. Agriculture was invented only about ten thousand years back. With it came settled lifestyle. For 95% of our time on earth we were wanderers. I often wonder. Is our wanderlust rooted in our genes? Akin to the fear of our species for heights and lov