Each day’s news greets us with yet another example of a man in power standing accused of sexual harassment. But what if his actions (and really all of our actions from the moment we wake up until we go to bed at night) are just reactions? Would that give us a better understanding of the recent rash of mass shootings? Sexual misconduct allegations? Opioid addictions? Or on the flip side, would it mean that doing an act of kindness for others has little to do with our will to do so? That’s exactly the argument that Robin R. Hayes is making in his new book, My Cells Made Me Do it: The Case for Cellular Determinism (Moonshine Cove Publishing), or at least, that we don’t have control over our actions in the ways that we think we do.
Human behavior is a curious and much-studied phenomenon and even in our own lives we often wonder why we do the things we do. In short, it’s because of our cells. Our behavior, the decisions we make, and the actions we take, are nothing more than cellular responses to a variety of stimuli. The ways that our cells are interpreting their immediate environment dictates how we respond to our external environment. Studies of behavior show that often we are unaware of why we make the decisions we do, and that these decisions can be easily manipulated and influenced by subtle environmental cues. What may seem like a decision made freely may indeed not be so. My Cells Made Me Do It explains the phenomenon of behavior as a matter of cellular determinism.
About The Author:
Robin Hayes is a Professor of microbiology at Hartnell College in Salinas, California. He has more than 25 years as a researcher, analyst and educator. Robin has conducted bacterial research at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station, prepared educational material for The Monterey Bay Aquarium and served as the senior analyst for the largest water reclamation project for food crops in the nation.
Visit http://www.celldeterminism.com/ for more information.