In this article, Louis Menand critiques genetic determinism and ties it to a reemergence of polytheism. Menand argues that there is not, if you think about it, that much difference between saying “The gods are angry” and saying “He has the gene for anger.” Both are ways of attributing a matter of personal agency to some fateful and mysterious impersonal power. Menand concludes with a brief discussion of the idea of cultural polytheism.
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