A local food editor recently published an article about visiting her sister in Cleveland. Her various interests on the trip included, of course, exploring the Ohio city’s cuisine. The article contained several pictures, one of which was a homemade sign in the window of a butcher shop. It said: “Attention–our wieners were not involved in any Congressional scandal!”
Who hasn’t had something to say on the titillating matter of disgraced former New York Congressman Anthony Wiener’s tweeting pictures of his private parts to various women he claims to have known only in the world of cyberspace? Except, heretofore, me.
Until I recently read David Brooks’ important new book, The Social Animal, in which he claims that decision making, even success, and assorted other important aspects of being human have less to do with pure rationality than with one’s social, cultural and emotional makeup.
Constructed to read like a novel, the book follows the lives of prototypical male and female protagonists as they intertwine and unfold across the human life cycle. While interspersed within the plot is an abundance of modern brain research Brooks enlists to support his thesis.
One reference, in particular, that I found intriguing involves, as Brooks writes (p. 208): ” . . . a happy life has its recurring set of rhythms: difficulty to harmony, difficulty to harmony. And it is all propelled by the desire for limerence, the desire for the moment when the inner and outer patterns [of our world as we perceive it] mesh.
This desire for harmony, or limerence, can manifest itself in small, mundane ways . . . [as well as in] odd ways. People are instinctively drawn to the familiar. For example, Brett Pelham of the State University of New York at Buffalo has shown that people named Dennis and Denise are disproportionately likely to become dentists. People named Lawrence and Laurie are disproportionately likely to become lawyers. People named Louis are disproportionately likely to move to Saint Louis, and people named George disproportionately move to Georgia.”
So when a guy’s named Weiner–what would you expect?!
