Yes, I confess it
I'm an intellectual degenerate
I have a pathological "ideas-having-sex" fetish
I like to watch
Eyes wide shut
I know, it's awful
'Cause I'm a Darwin Apostle
I know, I'm a known proponent
Of Charles and his followers
A disseminator of the biological gospel
And yet here I am
Confessing like a guest on a talk show
In the midst of this business school-cum-brothel
I blame Matt Ridley
For that tricky biological-cultural-metaphorical
equivalency
Journalism has never been approached so promiscuously
Taking tangentially-related ideas and linking
them up?
Now I can't think of commerce without thinking
of smut!
So let's do this!
Pour some drink in a cup
And let's call this an orgy
'Cause all the speakers are sluts!
Pete Richerson's into cultural group action
With biased transmission of best practices
Even if some of it's random
And genes changing slower than the erosion
of sand
And institutional changes so slow that you
can't plan it
So we're stuck in some bad habits
But one business school at least is ready
to stand up
To received wisdom
And inject some sex into a sleepy system
I came seeking answers
And I ended up splattered in horizontal meme
transfer
Every lecture an intellectual costly signal
enhancer
A pleasure-inducing peacock feather profusion
Full of clever allusions and sword-measuring
movements
Which somehow relates to the consumer-habits
of humans?
I thought I had it
Stern was taking a turn for the activist
And integrating the Darwinistic consensus
into its tactics
And that flash of comprehension produced an
orgasmic
Surge of happiness
But only for a nanosecond, before Geoffrey
[Miller] smashed it
Revealing Natural Selection's cynical, sinister
plan
Happiness is nothing but a barcode destined
to get scanned
A signal of mental health that I use to get
friends
And I knew it had to be true
Because Geoffrey said it in a sad voice
Totally deadpan
And that left the audience cold with no real
options
Someone even turned to homeopathic pill-poppin'
And after that, what's the point?
When every recent development
Just intensifies the competition for wealth
obscene
When all we're envisioning is a field of dreams
And all we can act like is an amalgamation
of selfish genes
So helpless, it seems
What we need is an exodus
An exodus of rebellious business owners
To pack their bags and follow Paul Romer
And start a Utopian city in Ethiopia
And make it pro-social by doing a LOT of homework
Staff the government with nothing but wise
managers
And build a perfect society, like Canada
A population of happy farmers and forest workers
And dog owners with no subliminal aggression
below the surface
Deserters can go and join the circus!
Or, if they return, and their sins are repented
Only a lecture on business ethics
By Herbert Gintis will earn re-entry
Or else we send them back home to the New
England coast
To a place that still lacks an economic Hippocratic
Oath
A Distopia
Governed by "survival of the fittest"
But maybe today is the arrival of revision
We can change the evolution and re-brand it
And emphasize that it's even-handed
And we can look at that side of it
And maybe people one day will actually want
to be-friend it
Not "survival of the fittest"
Let's take it back to Matt Ridley
It's really proliferation of the jiggiest
Reproduction of the most promiscuous
And today has been exceptional
Ten incredible speakers
With brains bigger than chimp testicles
I've never been to a conference where every
theorist is great
Ready to engage in some serious debate
I bet every one of them started kindergarten
three years late
Far from commonplace
This is one competition that is NOT an arms
race
Let the gods be thanked
That means we're safe from the wrath of Bob
Frank
The information has been flowing
So let's keep things going
I just can't wait to see this conference's
offspring growing
[Music]
