What does being a nice person mean to you? Virtue ethicists believe that politeness is the basis of all moral interactions. I think of niceness as a synonym for being a kind, helpful, good-natured, pro-social person, and also as a general way of approaching the world and avoiding interpersonal conflict. But what if being nice doesn't always work so well? What if predatory people use niceness to entrap the unsuspecting? What if being too polite to the wrong person could even get you killed?
Gavin De Becker is a former law enforcement officer who has developed a compelling hypothesis about the "wild brain." De Becker virtually stands alone in the field of risk management because of his unique hypothesis about the psychology of human conflict and predation based on case studies from his career.
Violence, although relatively rare in much of the developed world, is a part of the human condition. It is not going away any time soon. According to De Becker, millions of years of evolution have equipped us with the intuitive ability to detect pre-attack indicators when violence is imminent, or when we are in danger.
Philosophers spend a lot of time using reason. Reason is the much celebrated but slow, plodding, methodical product of left brained thinking. It is wonderful for tackling complex problems and for everyday use, but not great at handling immediate threats to our safety and well being. According to De Becker, we have another, primal, lighting fast mental faculty for avoiding danger - intuition.
Not so happily for us, humans are the only animals in nature who routinely ignore intuitive hits about danger in our environments, often using reason to deconstruct what our intuition is telling us - sometimes with devastating consequences. Here is how to harness the protective gift of intuition that we have inherited from the wild brain of our ancestors.
Gavin De Becker is a former law enforcement officer who has developed a compelling hypothesis about the "wild brain." De Becker virtually stands alone in the field of risk management because of his unique hypothesis about the psychology of human conflict and predation based on case studies from his career.
Violence, although relatively rare in much of the developed world, is a part of the human condition. It is not going away any time soon. According to De Becker, millions of years of evolution have equipped us with the intuitive ability to detect pre-attack indicators when violence is imminent, or when we are in danger.
Philosophers spend a lot of time using reason. Reason is the much celebrated but slow, plodding, methodical product of left brained thinking. It is wonderful for tackling complex problems and for everyday use, but not great at handling immediate threats to our safety and well being. According to De Becker, we have another, primal, lighting fast mental faculty for avoiding danger - intuition.
Not so happily for us, humans are the only animals in nature who routinely ignore intuitive hits about danger in our environments, often using reason to deconstruct what our intuition is telling us - sometimes with devastating consequences. Here is how to harness the protective gift of intuition that we have inherited from the wild brain of our ancestors.
