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Blueprint
- The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society
- Narrated by: Nicholas A. Christakis
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
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Publisher's summary
Drawing on advances in social science, evolutionary biology, genetics, neuroscience, and network science, Blueprint shows how and why evolution has placed us on a humane path - and how we are united by our common humanity.
For too long, scientists have focused on the dark side of our biological heritage: our capacity for aggression, cruelty, prejudice, and self-interest. But natural selection has given us a suite of beneficial social features, including our capacity for love, friendship, cooperation, and learning. Beneath all our inventions - our tools, farms, machines, cities, nations - we carry with us innate proclivities to make a good society.
In Blueprint, Nicholas A. Christakis introduces the compelling idea that our genes affect not only our bodies and behaviors, but also the ways in which we make societies, ones that are surprisingly similar worldwide. With many vivid examples - including diverse historical and contemporary cultures, communities formed in the wake of shipwrecks, commune dwellers seeking utopia, online groups thrown together by design or involving artificially intelligent bots, and even the tender and complex social arrangements of elephants and dolphins that so resemble our own - Christakis shows that, despite a human history replete with violence, we cannot escape our social blueprint for goodness.
In a world of increasing political and economic polarization, it's tempting to ignore the positive role of our evolutionary past. But by exploring the ancient roots of goodness in civilization, Blueprint shows that our genes have shaped societies for our welfare and that, in a feedback loop stretching back many thousands of years, societies have shaped, and are still shaping, our genes today.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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From the best-selling author of The Intention Experiment and The Field comes a groundbreaking new work---a book that uses the interconnectedness of mind and matter to demonstrate that the key to life is in the relationship between things. We are always connected with others, hardwired at our most elemental level---from the quantum level to the cellular, from personal relationships to business and societal structures.
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Horrible narrator
- By Cotran on 09-19-11
By: Lynne McTaggart
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Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters
- By: Alan S. Miller, Satoshi Kanazawa
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Contrary to conventional wisdom, our brains and bodies are hardwired to carry out an evolutionary mission that determines much of what we do, from life plans to everyday decisions. With an accessible tone and a healthy disregard for political correctness, this lively and eminently readable book popularizes the latest research in a cutting-edge field of study: one that turns much of what we thought we knew about human nature upside-down.
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Not bad but didn't live up to the reviews
- By Ana Mohammed on 01-08-12
By: Alan S. Miller, and others
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The Human Swarm
- How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall
- By: Mark W. Moffett
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this paradigm-shattering book, biologist Mark W. Moffett draws on findings in psychology, sociology, and anthropology to explain the social adaptations that bind societies. He explores how the tension between identity and anonymity defines how societies develop, function, and fail. Surpassing Guns, Germs, and Steel and Sapiens, The Human Swarm reveals how mankind created sprawling civilizations of unrivaled complexity - and what it will take to sustain them.
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Worthless
- By Richard on 11-24-19
By: Mark W. Moffett
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The Science of Good and Evil
- Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule
- By: Michael Shermer
- Length: 2 hrs and 21 mins
- Abridged
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In The Science of Good and Evil, psychologist and science historian Michael Shermer explores how humans evolved from social primates into moral primates, how and why morality motivates the human animal, and how the foundation of moral principles can be built upon empirical evidence. Along the way he explains the implications of scientific findings for fate and free will, the existence of pure good and pure evil, and the development of early moral sentiments among the first humans.
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Read by author
- By Gregory A. Townsend on 04-16-23
By: Michael Shermer
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Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life
- A Psychologist Investigates How Evolution, Cognition, and Complexity Are Revolutionizing Our View of Human Nature
- By: Douglas T. Kenrick
- Narrated by: Fred Stella
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
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Between what can be learned from evolutionary psychology and cognitive science a picture emerges. In Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life, social psychologist Douglas Kenrick fuses these two fields to create a coherent story of human nature. In his analysis, many ingrained, apparently irrational behaviors—one-night stands, prejudice, conspicuous consumption, even art and religious devotion—are quite explicable and (when desired) avoidable.
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Rather dated and self-aggrandizing
- By Laurie Frick on 07-21-11
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Cool
- How the Brain's Hidden Quest for Cool Drives Our Economy and Shapes Our World
- By: Steven Quartz, Anette Asp
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 10 hrs
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Overall
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In Cool, the neuroscientist and philosopher Steven Quartz and the political scientist Anette Asp bring together the latest findings in brain science, economics, and evolutionary biology to form a provocative theory of consumerism, revealing how the brain's "social calculator" and an instinct to rebel are the crucial missing links in understanding the motivations behind our spending habits.
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Some Useful Ideas
- By Carson on 07-20-17
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Primates and Philosophers
- How Morality Evolved
- By: Frans de Waal
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"It's the animal in us," we often hear when we've been bad. But why not when we're good? Primates and Philosophers tackles this question by exploring the biological foundations of one of humanity's most valued traits: morality.In this provocative book, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that modern-day evolutionary biology takes far too dim a view of the natural world, emphasizing our "selfish" genes.
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Having Just Read...
- By Douglas on 12-14-13
By: Frans de Waal
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Big Gods
- How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict
- By: Ara Norenzayan
- Narrated by: Paul Nixon
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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How did human societies scale up from small, tight-knit groups of hunter-gatherers to the large, anonymous, cooperative societies of today - even though anonymity is the enemy of cooperation? How did organized religions with "Big Gods" - the great monotheistic and polytheistic faiths - spread to colonize most minds in the world? In Big Gods, Ara Norenzayan makes the surprising and provocative argument that these fundamental puzzles about the origins of civilization are one and the same, and answer each other.
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Great read
- By paro on 02-27-24
By: Ara Norenzayan
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Genesis
- The Deep Origin of Societies
- By: Edward O. Wilson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Hogan
- Length: 3 hrs and 8 mins
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Asserting that religious creeds and philosophical questions can be reduced to purely genetic and evolutionary components, and that the human body and mind have a physical base obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry, Genesis demonstrates that the only way for us to fully understand human behavior is to study the evolutionary histories of nonhuman species. Of these, Wilson demonstrates that at least 17 - among them the African naked mole rat and the sponge-dwelling shrimp - have been found to have advanced societies based on altruism and cooperation.
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Simply awful
- By Mike A Klotz on 02-07-20
By: Edward O. Wilson
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Our Inner Ape
- A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are
- By: Frans de Waal
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
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We have long attributed man's violent, aggressive, competitive nature to his animal ancestry. But what if we are just as given to cooperation, empathy, and morality by virtue of our genes? What if our behavior actually makes us apes? What kind of apes are we?
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I loved this book
- By Ruth on 06-22-07
By: Frans de Waal
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How Language Began
- The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention
- By: Daniel L. Everett
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Mankind has a distinct advantage over other terrestrial species: we talk to one another. But how did we acquire the most advanced form of communication on Earth? Daniel L. Everett, a "bombshell" linguist and "instant folk hero" (Tom Wolfe, Harper's), provides in this sweeping history a comprehensive examination of the evolutionary story of language, from the earliest speaking attempts by hominids to the more than 7,000 languages that exist today.
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Hard to endure
- By Michael D. Busch on 09-09-18
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good until Plomin inserted political opinions
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What listeners say about Blueprint
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jonas Blomberg Ghini
- 06-01-19
Many interesting thoughts
There are so many interesting thoughts put forth in this work, I cannot really do them all justice in a short review like this. I will point out a few important facets, however.
For one, I think it is on the one hand obvious, and on the other, revolutionary, that human societies may have specific genetic underpinnings. Going into this, I had a slight expectation that Christakis's words could be construed to support what in the extreme would be eugenics. However, I do not believe this is the case. As far as I can tell, Christakis and the team of scientists he works with, have managed to build a solid case for the proposition that there exists some specific genetic drive to form societies, and that these genetic drives constrain what a "good" society might be. It will always be difficult to avoid the cultural bias towards ones own society, but Christakis does a good job of bringing in very different perspectives and never gives the impression of finding standard Western culture to be superior or somehow "normal". When speaking of "good", he means more as a measure of the extent to which it lets individuals thrive, how long term sustainable the model is, whether it breaks with powerful human tendencies, etc. So there is no moral judgement passed herein.
Another, very fascinating thing he brings up is that he and others find evidence in support of good and evil being codependent; if humans had no capacity for evil, we might not have a capacity for good. This can, of course, change over evolutionary time. But as it stands, it seems that we, humans, are a sort of blend of the bonobo's relaxed and favour based society, and the somewhat disturbing xenophobic tendency of the chimpanzee. Our capacity for great kindness towards "our own" necessitates a capacity for depravity against "the other". Knowing this means, as individuals, we may be able to do something about it. This is not to say that we need "balance" on the individual level, that if you help an old lady over the street one day, you have to trip some other old lady another day. It is more just an observation that it seems, as humans, we are still tied quite firmly to the somewhat disappointing idea of in- and out-groups. We have a hard time liking those that aren't us, and only by concerted effort can we overcome this undesirable trait.
Also, as a pro tip to those finding themselves stranded with many others after a shipwreck or plane crash; don't do the "every man for himself" shtick. Turns out, mercy and kindness pays off in terms of likelihood of survival, while the vileness of selfishness goes hand in hand with only a small fraction of marooned making it out alive.
---- Second listen ----
I've not much to add after the second listen; what sticks out the most to me remains the two main points noted above.
That said, Christakis's take on animal culture is interesting. Chimps can learn from each other, and so can orcas, elephants, and other animals. And animals have friends in very similar ways to humans. It all simply means humans are not all that special, we're just a bit better at thinking than other animals are.
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55 people found this helpful
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- Tristan
- 07-22-19
Great book, but skip the first few chapters.
Most of the book is deeply insightful and entertaining. Strangely, however, his first few chapters (entitled "unintentional societies" and "intentional societies") are tedious. In these, he describes the experience of small groups of humans shipwrecked around the world, of communes, and other microcosms of human social life. One might think this would be a great opportunity to tell entertaining stories, but it's mostly just a barrage of details. However, the rest of the book is truly wonderful. I suggest simply skipping the start, and getting to the good stuff.
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- Anonymous User
- 03-30-19
Refreshing view of humanity
A great reminder that our success as a species comes from our ability to cooperate, and in the end we actually do a really good job at it.
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- ryan
- 05-20-19
you're going to want a notepad, lots of info!
so much information and so well explained. great book! I'll be revisiting it to further explore the concepts.
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17 people found this helpful
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- Domenick Zero
- 06-16-19
An optimist view of the human condition grounded in science
Christakis pulls together up to date knowledge of natural and social sciences without disparaging either into a very optimistic view of our future. This is something that I needed in face of what is going on around the world today. I do hope the social blueprint that he describes will right us before we destroy ourselves and our beautiful planet with us.
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15 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-06-19
Phenomenal and Enjoyable Book!
Blueprint is phenomenal, enjoyable, and a must-read for anyone interested in human nature. It's fun to read and accessible to anyone, whether layman or academic. With outstanding breadth and scope, Christakis combines works from evolutionary biology, anthropology, history, medicine, and more (including original research) to create a unified theory that bridges genetics and culture, while sending a strong positive message about our future as a society. The audio book, read by the author, is also excellent.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Clif
- 08-31-19
Hopeful
I love the multidisciplinary approach to Christakis' thesis, drawing on biology, genetics, anthropology, and sociology to distill what is unique about homo sapiens sociality. Christakis' is broadly informed, approachable, fearless and even handed. My favorite read of 2019 (so far).
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9 people found this helpful
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- pablogday
- 07-18-19
Interesting data and insights
I tend to not love the books that quote a statistic every other paragraph, and this book is no different. It is a good read though, it has interesting insights about our evolution and why we are the way we are.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Eric
- 04-09-19
Thought provoking approach to human behavior
Christakis provides a thorough and thought-provoking approach to understanding society and human behavior. I enjoy this book immensely and will listen to it again to get its deeper meaning.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Gavin Watson
- 08-04-19
Awesome book very well presented concepts.
Everyone who is passionate about making our society better should read this book. Every leader and manager will benefit from the concepts here.
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6 people found this helpful