of them. Admiral Luis Maria Mendia, one of the leaders in Argentina’s “Dirty war,” convinced victims

of them. Admiral Luis Maria Mendia, one of the leaders in Argentina’s “Dirty war,” convinced victims to board a plane under the pretext of a freedom flight, and then once in flight, were thrown out of the plane, adding sheer terror to the brutality of their death. Accounts such as these litter the pages of history. They reveal that the desire to impress with excess is part of human nature. What we have learned in this chapter is that our biology hands us the tools for excess, and hands some of us more than our fair share. This does not mean that we will or must use such tools. It also doesn’t mean that the tools were designed for excess. Some are endowed with genes that predispose to sensation-seeking and risk-taking, others to brain circuitry and chemistry that create an insatiable desire for reward. Different environments either encourage this biology or discourage it, a topic that occupies chapter 4. As the eighteenth century poet William Blake remarked “The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom... for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough.” To more deeply understand how our desires runaway to excess, we need to understand how the mind facilitates this process. We need to understand the role of denial. We need to understand how individuals and groups dehumanize the other and self-deceive themselves into believing that those unlike them represent a threat to their purity and power. We need to understand how desire and denial combine to pave the way to excessive harms. Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire sl HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012827