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THE ROAD FORWARD

Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good.

—ABRAHAM LINCOLN

A unified theory of human behavior must meet several demanding criteria. It must be valid across different cultural settings, simple and parsimonious, and empirically testable and falsifiable. It must work across levels of analysis from individual to societal, and it must be action-oriented (that is, practical in the sense of being both teachable and usable) and consilient with the findings of the various social and natural sciences, especially human biology.

To what extent does our four-drive theory meet these criteria? Have we come ...

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