“I raise this question: can it be doubted that three kilogram brains were nearly fatal defects in the evolution of the human race?
A second query: what source was there, save for our overelaborate nervous circuitry, for the evils we were seeing or hearing about simply everywhere?
My answer: there was no other source. This was a very innocent planet, except for those great big brains.
During my lifetime, there wasn’t a day when, somewhere on the planet, there weren’t at least three wars going on.
And the Law of Natural Selection was powerless to respond to such new technologies. No female of any species, unless, maybe, she were a rhinoceros, could expect to give birth to a baby who was fireproof, bombproof, or bulletproof.
The best that the Law of Natural Selecion could come up with in my time was somebody who wasn’t afraid of anything, even though there was so much to fear.”
-Kurt Vonnegut, Galapagos
