The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think (31 page)

Of course, not only women express their status through jewelry.
Even if a fellow doesn’t yearn to look like Mr.
T, who regularly wore twenty pounds of gold chains around his neck, men of all sorts spend serious money on bling fashioned from costly gems and metals.
In a professional sports championship, for example, the real trophy is the ring given to each player.
One football player described the ideal ring as the “ten table ring,” meaning that people in a restaurant could see the ring from ten tables away in every direction.
The Green Bay Packers 2011 Super Bowl rings certainly met this goal—each contained more than one hundred diamonds.

Now that you have announced your status and your deep feelings for your loved one, you will need to retain your mate by finding a way to ensure that he or she continues to love you.
But how?
De Beers has a handy suggestion: “Say you’d marry her all over again with a diamond anniversary ring.”
If you really want to prove your enduring love, that special anniversary ring comes with a matching diamond necklace, earrings, and bracelet.
And if giving your loved one diamonds for your anniversary is becoming too blasé and predictable, De Beers also offers the “eternity ring” (a symbol of continuing affection and appreciation) and the “trilogy ring” (representing the past, present, and future of a relationship).
De Beers can really kill a lot of birds with one stone—or rock, in their case.

Jewelry solves more than the needs of mate acquisition, mate retention, and status.
There are friendship bracelets, best-friend necklaces, and forever-friends rings to keep us in touch with our BFFs, not to mention class rings to keep us all connected with the old crowd from County High School or State U.
If you’re a parent, what better way to express your love than with a graduation ring for your child, who should likewise buy his or her parents some jewelry for any one of the many special occasions throughout the year (Tiffany & Co.
offers a special Mother’s Day butterfly brooch for $7,900, but if you’re feeling strapped for cash, you could just pick up a Tiffany “Yours Mom” heart charm for only $1,275).
And to bling out the self-protection subself, “intuitive jewelry artist” Robyn A.
Harton offers a collection of affordable jewelry to protect us from negative energy, crime, radiation, injury, demons, and the “evil eye,” as well as pieces for “all-purpose general protection.”

Jewelry also becomes a surprising elixir that can fight disease, as when a necklace or bracelet stores important medical information or when we derive special healing powers from an energy bracelet.
Zepter Luxury International, for example, offers magnetic jewelry to heal us from “all types of ailments from arthritis to circulation problems, migraine headaches to frozen shoulders.”
Although it might seem silly to think that a piece of jewelry can make people healthier or feel better, the reality is that millions of people are desperate to find ways to fulfill the evolutionary need of disease avoidance.
And whichever direction they turn, there’s usually some kind of parasite eager to take their money.

A PILL WITH THAT, SIR?

Recent decades have witnessed an infestation in American homes.
Rather than taking traditional forms like vermin or locusts, these critters take the form of pills.
From Abilify, Adderall, and Ambien to Zofran, Zoloft, and Zyprexa, prescription drugs have invaded our bathroom cabinets like squirmy centipedes in basement walls.
Whereas in 1929 the average American filled less than two prescriptions per year, by 2006 each child got four, each adult got eleven, and
each senior citizen got twenty-eight.
The 2012 United Healthcare prescription drug catalog offered choices from among 1,080 different pills, with yearly sales in the United States totaling $307 billion—almost enough money to pave the entire US interstate system in gold.

Given all the pills people are popping, you’d think there was some serious new affliction going around.
And there is!
A massive outbreak of pharmaceutical parasites exploiting our ancestral tendencies.

Part of the dramatic pharmaceutical growth stems from the explosion of direct-to-consumer advertising (the “ask your doctor” ads).
These ads attempt to bypass the power of the traditional middleman in the pill business (the doctor) by empowering us regular folks to play doctor ourselves.
Instead of waiting for your doctor to diagnose you with something, the ads bait you into performing self-diagnoses and encourage you to prescribe your own treatment.

This is like sending your disease-avoidance subself—your inner compulsive hypochondriac—to the candy store, where every twitch, hiccup, or social aberration can be alleviated with a scoop into yet another bin full of colorful pills.
Tired?
Moody?
Coughing?
Sneezing?
Depressed?
Anxious?
Hyper?
Cholesterol too high?
Cholesterol too low?
Can’t get it up?
Can’t get it down?
Whatever ails you, there is a pill that promises to meet your need.
“Do you fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning?”
comedian Chris Rock recalls hearing in one ad, then quips, “Yeah, I got that.”
Need help with your sleep?
No worries, here’s a little something to help you fall asleep, and another pill to stay asleep, and a little something extra to help you wake up in the morning.
And if you’re a little anxious about all the pills you’re taking, here is something else to calm you down a bit.

It’s true that drug companies produce some drugs that can treat serious illnesses and save or prolong lives.
But make no mistake about it: they are in the business of peddling pills.
And like our friends in the diamond business, pharmaceutical corporations make money by selling more rather than less of their product.
Although purported to help us, prescription drugs are ironically the fourth-leading cause of death in the United States.
Adverse reactions from properly prescribed and properly administered drugs cause about 106,000 deaths
per year.
A person is ten times more likely to die from taking legal medication than from experimenting with dangerous illegal drugs, which kill about ten thousand people per year.
Perhaps the war on drugs should be redirected.

Even if you’re uncertain whether pharmaceutical companies are the good guys or the bad guys, you’d probably agree that those who blatantly counterfeit medicines are definitely on the parasitic end of the exploitation continuum.
The malicious fake-meds industry rakes in an estimated $75 billion a year—that’s more money than the profits made from heroin and cocaine.

Counterfeit drugs look like the real thing but contain no active ingredients.
They oftentimes kill by failing to treat life-threatening illnesses, most notably in developing nations where recent setbacks in treating malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis have been attributed to counterfeit medical supplies.
But lethal additives and seemingly harmless fillers can also cause drugs to act differently in a patient’s system, potentially resulting in death.
Not only is it not much fun when that asthma medicine doesn’t contain any active ingredients, but it’s even less fun when a familiar-looking headache medication lands you in the emergency room.

WHAT “THEY” DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT

Given so many shady dealings in the world of modern medicine, it’s easy to become cynical and a little paranoid when it comes to pharmaceuticals.
If you’re convinced that real or fake pill pushers are out to get your money, you’ll be glad to know there are like-minded people who can help.

Meet Kevin Trudeau.
Like a growing number of people, Trudeau believes that the drug companies are hiding and suppressing information about natural ways to cure disease.
He asserts that even if you’re sick, you don’t need all those pills the drug companies are hawking.
What you need instead is Trudeau’s book
Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About
.
The book reveals how you can “easily cure” not only arthritis, acid reflux, phobia, depression, obesity, chronic fatigue
syndrome, attention deficit disorder, and diabetes but also multiple sclerosis, lupus, AIDS, cancer, herpes, and muscular dystrophy.
This might sound too good to be true, but take a look at Trudeau on television in his infomercials, being interviewed by paid actors who are constantly astounded by the effectiveness of his cures.

Some naysayers have criticized Trudeau for having absolutely no medical training.
But his proponents would argue that this simply proves that he is not a pawn of the pharmaceutical companies.
Trudeau has also been criticized for his inability to provide evidence to back up many of his claims.
For example, he cites a twenty-five-year research study involving a natural cure for diabetes at the University of Calgary.
Critics have been outraged that the study doesn’t seem to exist.
What critics fail to understand, according to Trudeau, is that the university had no choice but to destroy its findings to prevent reprisals from the pharmaceutical industry.

The book “they” don’t want you to know about has so far sold over 5 million copies, and you can receive your own copy for a mere $29.95 plus $11.95 shipping (oh, and another $19.95 handling fee “they” don’t want you to know about, a “free” newsletter subscription that will result in an additional $30 charge, and constant harassment by Trudeau’s henchmen, who will call you daily to sell you additional products, as well as more harassment by all the other swindlers who will get your contact information from a “mooch list” that Trudeau will sell them).

But wait—that’s not all!
It turns out that Trudeau is somewhat of a modern miracle worker, capable of fulfilling many more needs than just curing your medical ailments.
His other books include
Debt Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About
and
The Money-Making Secrets “They” Don’t Want You to Know About
, as well as
Your Wish Is Your Command
(a fourteen-CD lecture from an undisclosed location in the Swiss Alps that will give you the “hidden key” to take complete control of your personal and financial wishes).
And there is also the perennial best seller
Free Money “They” Don’t Want You to Know About
.
This last book will direct you to a search engine that will charge $18 per search to find your “free money.”
And if you earn more than $500 a month, you won’t qualify for 89 percent of the programs “they” don’t want
you to know about, which are just government grants some people are too lazy to Google.

Trudeau also doesn’t want you to know about his extensive criminal record.
After getting out of prison for fraud and larceny, Trudeau entered the fight against obesity by joining forces with Nutrition for Life, which the attorney general of Illinois together with seven other states successfully prosecuted as a pyramid scheme.
Trudeau’s literary inspiration came in 2004, when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) made him the only person in history to be banned for life from selling anything on television (he had been pitching multiple products that included a “hair farming system” that was supposed to “finally end baldness in the human race” and a “breakthrough that in 60 seconds can eliminate addictions”).
The FTC only allowed him to promote his own books via infomercials, which are supposedly under the protection of the First Amendment.
But that hasn’t been working out so well either—in 2011 Trudeau was fined $37.6 million for defrauding the public.
Trudeau claims that “they” are scheming to keep his books off of shelves, so better get one quickly, because they’re bound to be scarce soon.

PROTECTION FROM DEEP RATIONALITY PARASITES

From con men to company men, many conspirators seek to exploit our deeply rational tendencies.
Some of us don’t mind being exploited some of the time, especially when the exploiters are symbiotic partners who give as well as take.
But many of us are duped into being on the short end of one-way parasitic relationships, which can lead to a loud sucking sound coming straight from our wallets.
Like the cuckoo or the saber-toothed blenny, human social parasites take advantage of our ancestrally successful biases.

How can you determine if you’re dealing with a symbiotic partner intent on helping you or a social parasite bent on exploiting you?
It can be difficult.
Bernie Madoff’s clients, for example, didn’t know they were being duped until it was too late.
Social parasites are expert deceivers, carefully diverting our attention and strategically concealing information.
But you can do three things to protect yourself.

Know Thy Enemy

If you begin to feel like something is a little fishy, ask a simple question: Is the other person really what he or she appears to be?
Exploiters like Bernie Madoff and Kevin Trudeau will often tell you that they are just like you.
But before taking them at their word, it pays to look a little closer.
The cuckoo also attempts to have the egg it sneaks into another bird’s nest mimic the eggs of the intended foster parent.
But the cuckoo’s egg will rarely be completely identical to that of the targeted bird.
If the victimized bird were to take a closer look, it would recognize the fake.
In fact, many successfully spot the parasitic egg and throw it out of the nest before any damage can be done.
Likewise for us humans.
Even if someone seems to be just like you, unless he is your identical twin, your interests don’t completely overlap.
Taking a closer look at an opportunity that seems too good to be true will likely reveal that it is.
If it still sounds like a great deal, ask what the other person gains from your benefit.
If the answer is the feeling of satisfaction from helping you, this is a clear warning that you’re dealing with a bad egg.

Know Thy Situation

If you are feeling compelled to spend a lot of money, sign on the dotted line, or make some big decision, ask yourself, Have I been primed to feel this way right now?
Exploiters will often first prime in their unsuspecting targets the specific subself most vulnerable to their pitch.
Before trying to sell you a “rare” diamond ring costing two months of your salary, for example, a deep rationality parasite might activate your mate-acquisition subself, for which the opportunity to part with thousands of dollars for a scarce rock might seem perfectly reasonable.
But the same decision might seem ludicrous to your other six selves, who are being shut out of the current decision-making process by a manipulative exploiter.
Even if at that moment it feels like the smartest decision in the world, the best advice is to wait and sleep on it.
By giving yourself a little more time, you enable your other subselves
to weigh on the decision.
What seemed like a no-brainer one day might look foolish the next.
And by waiting, you’ll avoid being played for a fool.