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Steven Pinker quote ✍️

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George Williams, the revered evolutionary biologist, describes the natural world as “grossly immoral.” Having no foresight or compassion, natural selection “can honestly be described as a process for maximizing short-sighted selfishness.” On top of all the miseries inflicted by predators and parasites, the members of a species show no pity to their own kind. Infanticide, siblicide, and rape can be observed in many kinds of animals; infidelity is common even in so-called pair-bonded species; cannibalism can be expected in all species that are not strict vegetarians; death from fighting is more common in most animal species than it is in the most violent American cities. Commenting on how biologists used to describe the killing of starving deer by mountain lions as an act of mercy, Williams wrote: “The simple facts are that both predation and starvation are painful prospects for deer, and that the lion's lot is no more enviable. Perhaps biology would have been able to mature more rapidly in a culture not dominated by Judeo-Christian theology and the Romantic tradition. It might have been well served by the First Holy Truth from [Buddha's] Sermon at Benares: “Birth is painful, old age is painful, sickness is painful, death is painful...”” As soon as we recognize that there is nothing morally commendable about the products of evolution, we can describe human psychology honestly, without the fear that identifying a “natural” trait is the same as condoning it. As Katharine Hepburn says to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.
Steven Pinker The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Hu… evolution predation

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Answer Clues
NATURAL 263 clues
DIVINE 212 clues
NATURE 180 clues
ANIMALS 92 clues
DHARMA 77 clues
EVOLUTION 58 clues
REFLECTION 58 clues
PHILOSOPHY 31 clues
DRUIDS 23 clues
BUDDHISM 10 clues
INSPIRATIONAL 5 clues
PREDATION 3 clues

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Unscramble STEVEN6-letter words that start with S6-letter words that end in N6-letter words containing TE6-letter words containing EN6-letter words with S and T
Often perfumed powder
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Hint 1 meaning
A soft mineral of a soapy feel and a greenish, whitish, or grayish color, usually occurring in foliated masses. It is hydrous silicate of magnesia. Steatite, or soapstone, is a compact granular variety.
Hint 2 anagram
LATC
Hint 3 another clue
BABY DOCTOR FOR SHORT
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