Out of Order

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"I'm now writing my autobiography, The Making of an Afrocentrist, so I've been thinking about this issue. I would probably put race, class, and religion above birth order. I am more radical than any of my younger siblings. But there is another way to view it. My three sisters were older than me by at least six years, and they did treat me like a little brother. So I think Sulloway's book is provocative."

Sulloway: "There is little or no evidence that social class has much influence on personality. The same is true for race. Having said that, my prediction for a radical in a family of 16 is that he or she would come from a higher birth rank than Asante did. I would have expected him to be more like 14th of 16. But still, the biggest difference of all is between being first and not first.

One of the pioneers of socially responsible business in the United States and author, most recently, of The Ecology of Commerce (HarperCollins, 1993), which stresses market-based solutions that would reward conservation and discourage consumption.

BIRTH ORDER: Second--barely--of three siblings. Born five minutes before a fraternal twin sister.

"My older brother was somebody I didn't want to be, that's for sure. My twin and I were better at everything than he was, and that was traumatizing for him, so his compensatory mechanism was to become a bully, an authority figure, the alpha male. I'm sure that had a big effect on me. I don't like alpha males. I think Sulloway offers a brilliant hypothesis--but one about which nothing can be done in practical terms. Say you're a prospective parent and you've read Sulloway, what are you going to do? Not have a first child?"

Sulloway:"Competition is the primary force driving human development and human behavior. It is helpful for parents to know that it's not their fault; it's a natural process that has been going on for hundreds of millions of years. Younger siblings are always trying to make sure things are determined by a kind of equal Darwinian competition. So it's interesting that, in his work life, Hawken has actually developed a model that works. There's a social intervention--namely, reward or punishment for polluting--but then the rest of it is left up to the competitive marketplace.

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