Time & Perspective Quote by Barbara Ehrenreich

Ehrenreich’s line is a cold shower aimed at a culture that likes its evolution stories comforting: brains beat brawn, cooperation beats cruelty, progress has an upward arc. She yanks that arc downward. “Natural selection” is doing double duty here, not as a biology lecture but as a moral alibi people reach for when they want to call the world “just the way it is.” By specifying “as it has operated in human history,” she narrows the claim to the record we actually have: empires, raids, genocides, conquest disguised as destiny. The point isn’t that humans are uniquely evil; it’s that the traits rewarded by real-world competition have often included a willingness to kill, organize killing, and live with the psychic bookkeeping afterward.

The phrasing matters. “Not only the clever” nods to our favorite self-image: humans as ingenious problem-solvers. Then “but the murderous” lands like a rebuke, forcing cleverness to share the stage with violence as a survival strategy. That “but” is the hinge where liberal faith in enlightenment gets pinched. In Ehrenreich’s hands, intelligence isn’t salvation; it’s an amplifier. The most dangerous species isn’t the strongest predator, it’s the one that can innovate tools, coordinate groups, rationalize atrocities, and call it necessity.

Contextually, it fits her larger project: puncturing upbeat ideologies that launder power. Whether she’s critiquing war, inequality, or feel-good narratives about human nature, Ehrenreich keeps returning to the same suspicion: the stories we tell about “nature” often exist to make brutality seem inevitable, and therefore forgivable.