Nobody likes a know-it-all, the old saying goes. Well,
Robert Wright better take heed. Because in this age of
intellectual specialization, Wright is one member of the
intelligentsia who definitely breaks the mold. After all, how
many former journalists can claim to have published a defining
book in a new scientific field (evolutionary psychology); been
hailed as an important author by no less an authority than the
New York Times; provoked the great biologist Stephen Jay Gould
into a public debate in the pages of the New Yorker; been given
the opportunity to write a prominent political column for
Michael Kinsley and his online magazine, Slate; been called a
“genius” by former President Bill Clinton; written
extensively on the information age and its social ramifications;
spent the last couple of years interviewing some of the top
scientists in the world for an internet documentary project; and
published a highly acclaimed book detailing an original theory
of cultural evolution? And as if politics, science, biology,
psychology, and technology weren't enough, Wright is now working
on a book tentatively titled The Future of Religion. He may not
know it all, but I certainly wouldn't want to play high-stakes
Jeopardy with him.
Despite his prolific pen and wide-ranging intellectual
interests, there are, in fact, some key threads that connect and
integrate all the dots in Wright's eclectic world. First, all of
his work is concerned with the deeper questions of human
motivation—universal questions that get at the core of the
human condition, questions that by their very nature are
scientific, political, psychological, and religious.
And one of those interdisciplinary threads is the highly charged
issue of morality, an issue so fundamental to human behavior
that it cuts across intellectual boundaries and implicates
almost all fields of endeavor. Wright's breakthrough 1997 book
on evolutionary psychology was actually called The Moral
Animal.
Second, all of Wright's work is motivated by an interest in
both biological and cultural evolution. His follow-up to The
Moral Animal, called Nonzero: The Logic of Human
Destiny, approached the issue of morality by examining the
unique ways in which it is interwoven into the very pattern of
our evolutionary history. Indeed, it is Wright's unique ability
to convey a big-picture, bird's-eye view of human culture that
has earned him a place among a small but influential group of
new visionaries who are taking a close look at the evolutionary
challenge faced by our species at this moment in history, a
challenge that could just as well be described as a moral
crisis.
So while morality might not be the hippest word right now in
the postmodern sensibilities of our cultural intelligentsia,
it's heartening to know that there are those who are approaching
this ever-thorny subject in innovative ways. Though Wright
himself is much more an optimist than a prophet of doom, he does
feel strongly that a worldwide moral transformation is an
absolute necessity if we are to ensure a vibrant and viable
future for human life in the twenty-first century.
–Carter Phipps