Book Review: This View of Life

Image: The cover of the book is white a large multicolored arrow composed of small symbols of human bodies. It is more concentrated at the top and gets sparser as it goes down. It is on the right side. On the left side, in large black letters says "This view of life, completing the Darwinian Revolution, David Sloan Wilson."

Normally, I don't post reviews of items I only read small sections of. But, I post everything from publishers on my blog as a courtesy and I received a copy of this in the mail even though I did not request it. I don't know if it was an accident or if I had reviewed something else for them and they thought I would like this.  The last book on a similar topic that I read was one I also gave one-star to without finishing. I am overall a completionist and try to finish most things even mildly worth reading. I decided to flip through the book and see where in my queue I wanted to put it. Imagine my dismay when I get two two pages showing tortured hens in battery cages- where about 99% of those on this planet misused for eggs and flesh spend their short, miserable lives. This guy uses an experiment where someone tries to make the chickens as "productive" as possible while keeping them in horrific conditions as some amazing feat in science and as a model for how to create a better society. I think, "surely, a man claiming he has the answers to creating a better society would disparage the practice keeping sentient individuals crammed together in a rusty cage the size of a shoebox stacked on top of one another in an ammonia and feces filled shed." But, no, he barely scratches the surface.

Image: A photo of part of the page of the book showing a black and white image of a battery cage. Several suffering hens are shown with almost no feathers inside a cage approximately the size of a shoebox. You cannot see it in the photo, but the study describes most of the chickens in the cage being dead, presumably under foot of the live ones.

He not only uses the study as an example, he calls them "a beautiful example of within group and between group selection." He uses an image of a group with better breeding selection as an example of the wonderful merits of eugenics in farming. Look! These animals sitting on top of each other in these cages have slightly more feathers and pecked each other slightly less. What a lovely thing. He claims that the reason they attack each other is purely from genetic selection that increased a heritable trait of bullying. Could it possibly have anything to do with their nightmarish conditions of captivity? A non-scientist layman could easily draw such a conclusion. He calls chickens murderers and psychopaths because they attack each other as they go mad in these hellish conditions. I guarantee that if you stuff 8 people into a portajohn and leave them there their whole lives, they're going to fight and suffer immensely regardless of their genetics.

Image: Another photo of a page of the book showing another photo of battery hens that the author seems to think is a positive outcome. At least 8 hens are now shown crammed into a battery cage and they are only missing part of their feathers.

He has little to say about those who put them there aside from claiming he'd pay more for "free range" eggs but again sticks to blaming the hens for fighting in that environment rather than the people who put them in such a terrible place. He seems to know nothing about chicken behavior when they are given a healthy environment that meets their needs. Many sanctuaries have taken in fighting roosters- abused to be the most aggressive and thought to be beyond help and far more dangerous than battery hens- and not only rehabbed them but helped them to live with other fighting roosters in harmony. How? I can guarantee it has nothing to do with eugenics, battery cages, and "free range" sheds.

More perusing of the book led me to find that he also encourages nonhuman animal testing for human disease in ways that are not accurate in predicting human response even outside of the massive ethical concerns. He really seems to want to defend social darwinism, claiming that his type of social darwinism is different than the kind people use to celebrate and justify inequality. There's a lot of "this thing was really bad when (the nazis, etc, insert horrifying tragedy in history) did it, but I know a much better way to do it."

Here's an in depth review by someone with more scientific education in this field than me.

If I wanted advice about how to create a better society, this is one of the last people I would ask.

This was also posted to my goodreads.