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... "the foremost engine of historical change" is not the church, state or economy but family structure.
Sulloway makes a compelling case that firstborns, whatever their age, sex, class or nationality, specialize in
defending the status quo while later-borns specialize in toppling it. Indeed, he says, people with the same
birthranks have more in common with each other than they do with their own siblings.
.....
Sulloway starts not by spinning random hypotheses but by thinking about the Darwinian pressures that foster
sibling competition throughout the natural world.
.....
In one case after another, the influence of birth order is remarkable. Later-borns were more likely than
firstborns were to support each of the 61 liberal causes Sulloway surveyed.
.....
Within Sulloway's sample, young later-borns were more than twice as likely as elderly ones were to embrace the
idea of evolution during the 19th century. But 80-year-old later-borns were more receptive than 30-year-old
firstborns.
.....
"Frank attacks questions that could not be more contingent," says John Tooby, an anthropologist at the
University of California, Santa Barbara - "why some countries ended up Protestant, why France resisted
Darwinism, who ended up in which faction in the French National assembly - and shows that fit into larger
patterns."
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How does this relate to me?
I'm the fourth in a family of five and I'm an atheist.
My sister is the oldest and is "Licensed Evangelist".
My oldest brother (#2 kid) is a devout Seventh-Day Adventist.
My younger brother (#5 kid) worships beer and likes to brawl in bars.
'Nuff said.
Any firstborn atheists out there? You must be a freak.
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* *
* Hakeeb A. Nandalal *
* nanco@trinidad.net *
* *
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