Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society

Christakis (Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives), a Yale professor of social and natural science, proposes that the human capacity for cooperation and empathy derives from an “evolutionary blueprint for making a good society” possessed by everyone. Setting himself against scientists focused on aggression and selfishness as the “dark side of our biological heritage,” Christakis lays out what he considers powerful evidence that biology—not socialization—is ultimately responsible for good deeds. He begins by analyzing how social structures developed among survivors of shipwrecks, extreme circumstances that he treats as real-world experiments. Reviewing dozens of such cases leads Christakis to conclude that these survivors did not “invent wholly new sorts of effective social order,” but followed an evolutionary playbook. His book’s scope also includes other species, including primates and elephants, known to exhibit altruism and self-sacrifice, and massive online gaming communities. Not every reader will come away persuaded of Christakis’s thesis that the “arc of our evolutionary history is long” but “bends towards goodness.” Nonetheless, his thoughtful and comprehensive analysis, a valuable complement to Steven Pinker’s similarly themed The Better Angels of Our Nature, provides much food for thought and a refreshingly optimistic perspective. [em](Apr.) [/em]