*Men need to realise that they can choose to control their stone age impulses.*

OTOH Mollydukes, women could choose to control their stone age
impulses and have sex far more often :)

Just looking through Clive Hamilton's "The Freedom Paradox". In it he talks of first and second preferences, stating that the marketplace tends to lure us in to satisfy us on a first preference basis and that second preference is usually a more considered option.

He writes:
"....For a Kantian, for whom rationality distinguishes humans from other creatures, the essence of a second order preference makes us human because it is those preferences, not our immediate urges, that prove we have free will. Thus the promotion of choice in itself--the prime aspiration of mainstream economics and neoliberal policy--tells us nothing about freedom....I am free only if I have the self-control, the will and the intellectual capacity to choose my preferences."

*but you can certainly train children to believe things and act in certain ways independently of genetics.*

That is debatable, Bugsy. Perhaps some children. In my own case,
for most of my childhood, either the Catholics or the Baptists
tried to indoctrinate me with their training, but my natural
sense of curiostiy and questioning always stayed one step ahead of
them. I did not choose it that way.

The thing is, at all times our brains are affected by our emotional
circuits. We are always feeling something. happy, sad, motherly,
horny, anxious, fearful, etc. The feedback loops are constantly
functioning to achieve homesostasis.

We might not be conciously aware of those feelings at all times,
that does not mean that they do not cloud or influence our
judgements, when it comes to so called free will.

Which was my point really. The will is not as free as people claim
or imagine, for at the subconsious these other inputs affect our
will, aware of it or not

Free-will is not a myth. People are not permanently "bad" or "good". Free-will is a choice everyone has to make throughout their lives whether to be creative, positive and constructive or to be purely self-indulgent. The choices may not easy. They are not dictated by anybody. Free-will may be referred to as the "original sin". This particular definition has to be carefully analysed.

Basing averything on common (or tabliod influenced) perceptions can lead one to an incorrect conclusion.

The issue of free will vs determinism is a vexed one. I strongly doubt that we have as much free will as some right wing pundits would have us think; on the other hand complete determinism is impossible to conclusively prove, scientifically or otherwise (needless to say, I don't believe Bruce Holden has conclusively proven this). By complete determinism, I mean the determinism that says things could not possibly ever be any other way than they are, and no decision could ever be different given the lead up of natural forces to that point in history.

So it all comes down to a matter of degree.

Holden is arguing for a social revolution, and he doesn't go into too many specific details, but I fear that what he has in mind is impractical and unworkable.

I think Brian Holden's argument deserves serious attention.
When I was younger, if I read of a child or any person torturing and murdering another child, my immediate reaction would have been "take the monster out and shoot it".
Since having children of my own, my instant reaction now is "who created that monster?"
When you look at the early lives of some of these people, it's difficult to see how they could have ended up any other way. It doesn't matter if it was 'nature or nurture', the odds were stacked against them from day one.
And it's no good just saying "well, if I'd been in their position, I wouldn't have gone that way".
That makes exactly as much sense as saying "Well even if I had been born to black parents, I would still be white".