Review of American Mania: When moreIs Not Enough by Peter Whybrow

George S. Howard

Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame,Indiana.

Big Brother was the villain in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New

World. In Peter Whybrow’s Fast New World (American

Mania: When More Is Not Enough), the pace of modern life

emerges as the villain. Huxley’s work is a fantasy of hu-

mankind’s dystrophic future, whereas Whybrow traces the roots of

our frenetic, unhealthy present. Sadly, Whybrow’s tome is a work of

nonfiction. Each of us now plays our role in this unhealthy and

unhappy morality tale.

The signs of our pervasive maladies are well known to clinicians:

exhaustion from overworking, anxiety about our material and social

futures, an emotional blunting produced by crossing too many time

zones and spending too many nights away from home, the spectacle

of our overweight and underexercised bodies, and a pervasive de-

pression resulting from our overworked successful lives.

Our bodies evolved in a world where sugar, salt, animal meat, and

edible fats were usually rare luxuries. Their infrequent occurrence

allowed humans whenever able to safely devour them immediately.

Unfortunately, we now live in a world where salts and sugars are

included in most of our foods. Similarly, fast foods are routinely

loaded with animal fats to render their taste virtually irresistible. Our

evolutionary press to immediately devour such rare luxuries leaves

us ill-equipped to resist ubiquitous temptations in a world over-

populated by McDonalds, Duncan Doughnuts, Cheesecake Factories,

and the like. Thus, the problems that result from being chroni-

cally overweight—heart disease, high blood pressure, hypertension,

diabetes—grow more ominous and prevalent with each passing day.

One might effectively deal with the problems of diet and exercise,

if only we weren’t so overwhelmed by our frantic, American life-

styles. The pace of modern life continues to accelerate everywhere.

Yet, Whybrow argues that in this domain Americans are clearly the

world leaders. Unthinkingly committed to killing ourselves on the

treadmill of the headlong pursuit to success, we will model to the rest

of humankind the horrors of our frantic new world. Whybrow holds

out hope that reason might intervene and we might yet turn away

from the pursuit of success that now slowly kills us. Sadly, this ray of

hope rings hollow for me because Whybrow might have done too

good a job in convincing the reader of how badly evolution equips us

to reverse these problems.

The Nature Channel frequently credits evolution with creating ‘‘the

perfect killing machine’’ in forming the shark. Similarly, Whybrow

depicts our genetic endowment as one perfectly suited to fall victim

to the consequences of our own success. Perhaps in trying to show the

roots of our problematic lifestyles, he sowed the seeds of our inability

to overcome the latest challenge to our species. This might represent

‘‘the dark side’’ of all evolutionary theories. Perhaps, humanity is

equally imprisoned by the same inexorable laws of evolution as are

all other biological species. Why not consider the terrible question,

‘‘Cousin to the cockroach and the whooping crane, how could we

direct our own evolution?’’ Or, stated more bluntly, how could hu-

mans possess the hubris to believe they might direct the course of

their evolution when no other evolved species can do so?

Let’s be clear—Whybrow does not champion the triumph of evo-

lution over the human will. In fact, he often hints at the forces that

might foil evolution’s (perhaps) inexorable drift. For example, when

contrasting Adam Smith’s vision of markets with the markets in our

Fast New World, Whybrow observes,

. . . the capitalist enterprise has become disconnected from the

community activities and social liberties that gave it birth: that the

profiteering of the turbocharged corporations of the Fast New

World and the unbridled self-interest of those intent on building

mass markets are destroying the local economies and the inter-

personal networks that are vital to healthy communities. In our

headlong pursuit of immediate material prosperity; we are

DOI: 10.1089/eco.2010.0072 ª MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC. . VOL. 2 NO. 4 . DECEMBER 2010 ECOPSYCHOLOGY 257

neglecting the vital social infrastructure—the social capital of

family and community—that shapes understanding and empathic

behavior in youth, and sustains America’s promise to future gen-

erations. Simply put, reward-driven markets do not work in the way

that Adam Smith predicted and intended when their locus of con-

trol becomes detached from the communities they serve. (p. 213)

It is clear from the notes section that Whybrow has read the

sources that might underlie a viable alternative to the thrust of our

Fast New World. Were he to trace the outlines of a better way for all of

us to live (cf. Bill McKibbin, Staying Human in an Engineered Age;

Paul Gilbert The Compassionate Mind), it would round out the im-

plications of American Mania beautifully.

Whybrow’s analysis of why and how we have lost our way in this

Fast New World rings true to me. Perhaps that contribution alone

should merit unconditioned praise. Sadly, the thought I can’t help

thinking is, ‘‘So what should we do to find our way home? How might

we create a Sane New World?’’

Address correspondence to:

Dr. George S. Howard

Department of Psychology

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame, IN 46556

E-mail: ghoward@nd.edu

Received: October 20, 2010

Accepted: October 20, 2010

HOWARD

258 ECOPSYCHOLOGY DECEMBER 2010