References and Recommended Reading

David Graeber and David Wengrow. “The Dawn of Everything”

A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.

For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself.

Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.

The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action.

Wrangham, Richard. “The Goodness Paradox”

The self domestication syndrome

Reactive aggression and proactive aggression

Authoritative, provocative, and engaging, The Goodness Paradox offers a startlingly original theory of how, in the last 250 million years, humankind became an increasingly peaceful species in daily interactions even as its capacity for coolly planned and devastating violence remains undiminished. In tracing the evolutionary histories of reactive and proactive aggression, biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham forcefully and persuasively argues for the necessity of social tolerance and the control of savage divisiveness still haunting us today.

Christikatis, Nicolas. “Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society”

shows why evolution has placed us on a humane path

how we are united by our common humanity

Grant, Adam. “Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know”

Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn. In our daily lives, too many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard. We see disagreement as a threat to our egos, rather than an opportunity to learn. We surround ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions, when we should be gravitating toward those who challenge our thought process. The result is that our beliefs get brittle long before our bones. We think too much like preachers defending our sacred beliefs, prosecutors proving the other side wrong, and politicians campaigning for approval–and too little like scientists searching for truth. Intelligence is no cure, and it can even be a curse: being good at thinking can make us worse at rethinking. The brighter we are, the blinder to our own limitations we can become.

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people’s minds–and our own. As Wharton’s top-rated professor and the bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take, he makes it one of his guiding principles to argue like he’s right but listen like he’s wrong. With bold ideas and rigorous evidence, he investigates how we can embrace the joy of being wrong, bring nuance to charged conversations, and build schools, workplaces, and communities of lifelong learners. You’ll learn how an international debate champion wins arguments, a Black musician persuades white supremacists to abandon hate, a vaccine whisperer convinces concerned parents to immunize their children, and Adam has coaxed Yankees fans to root for the Red Sox. Think Again reveals that we don’t have to believe everything we think or internalize everything we feel. It’s an invitation to let go of views that are no longer serving us well and prize mental flexibility over foolish consistency. If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.

Grant, Adam. “Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World”

“Reading Originals made me feel like I was seated across from Adam Grant at a dinner party, as one of my favorite thinkers thrilled me with his insights and his wonderfully new take on the world.” —Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and The Tipping Point

“Originals is one of the most important and captivating books I have ever read, full of surprising and powerful ideas. It will not only change the way you see the world; it might just change the way you live your life. And it could very well inspire you to change your world.” —Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and author of Lean In

With Give and Take, Adam Grant not only introduced a landmark new paradigm for success but also established himself as one of his generation’s most compelling and provocative thought leaders. In Originals he again addresses the challenge of improving the world, but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?

Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt; how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children; and how leaders can build cultures that welcome dissent. Learn from an entrepreneur who pitches his start-ups by highlighting the reasons not to invest, a woman at Apple who challenged Steve Jobs from three levels below, an analyst who overturned the rule of secrecy at the CIA, a billionaire financial wizard who fires employees for failing to criticize him, and a TV executive who didn’t even work in comedy but saved Seinfeld from the cutting-room floor. The payoff is a set of groundbreaking insights about rejecting conformity and improving the status quo.

Nowak, Martin A. “Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life”

Boulding, Kenneth. Evolutionary Economics. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1981.

Callen, Herbert B. Thermodynamics: an introduction to the physical theories of equilibrium thermostatics and irreversible thermodynamics. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1960. Much of the math of thermodynamics can be applied to relationship dynamics. It is important to make a distinction about the entities (things, organizations, people) of a society and the relationships between them. The entities do not follow a set of thermodynamic equations. The always changing relationships have some characteristics that follow thermodynamic mathematical principles.

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1976. Inheriting the mantle of revolutionary biologist from Darwin, Watson, and Crick, Richard Dawkins forced an enormous change in the way we see ourselves and the world with the publication of The Selfish Gene. Suppose, instead of thinking about organisms using genes to reproduce themselves, as we had since Mendel’s work was rediscovered, we turn it around and imagine that “our” genes build and maintain us in order to make more genes. That simple reversal seems to answer many puzzlers which had stumped scientists for years, and we haven’t thought of evolution in the same way since. Drawing fascinating examples from every field of biology, he paved the way for a serious re-evaluation of evolution. He also introduced the concept of self-reproducing ideas, or memes, which (seemingly) use humans exclusively for their propagation. If we are puppets, he says, at least we can try to understand our strings.

Watanabe, Satosi. Knowing & Guessing: A Quantitative Study of Inference and Information. New York: Wiley, 1969. Interdepence Analysis is used as a basis for Relation Mechanics in the Theory of Society,

Pinker, Steven. “The Language Instinct” Argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language.

Diamond, Jared. The Third Champanzee: The Origin and Future of the Human Animal. Though we share 98 percent of our genes with the chimpanzee, our species evolved into something quite extraordinary. Explores the fascinating question of what in less than 2 percent of our genes has enabled us to found civilizations and religions, develop intricate languages, create art, learn science–and acquire the capacity to destroy all our achievements overnight.

Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Diamond, Jared. Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

Boorstin, Daniel J. The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself

Boorstin, Daniel J. The Creator: A History of Heroes of the Imagination

Boorstin, Daniel J. The Seekers : The Story of Man’s Continuing Quest to Understand His World

Schnaars, Steven. Megamistakes: Forecasting and the Myth of Rapid Technological Change

Tainter, Joseph. The Collapse of Complex Societies

Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A brief History of Humankind

Creveld, Martin van. Seeing Into the Future – A Short History of Prediction

Rational Choice Theory JSTOR

Stuck in the Pleistocene: Rationality and Evolved Social Roles

Buss, David. The Evolution of Personality and Individual Differences. Capturing a scientific change in thinking about personality and individual differences that has been building over the past 15 years, this volume stands at an important moment in the development of psychology as a discipline. Rather than viewing individual differences as merely the raw material upon which selection operates, the contributing authors provide theories and empirical evidence which suggest that personality and individual differences are central to evolved psychological mechanisms and behavioral functioning. The book draws theoretical inspiration from life history theory, evolutionary genetics, molecular genetics, developmental psychology, personality psychology, and evolutionary psychology, while utilizing the theories of the “best and the brightest” international scientists working on this cutting edge paradigm shift. In the first of three sections, the authors analyze personality and the adaptive landscape; here, the authors offer a novel conceptual framework for examining “personality assessment adaptations.” Because individuals in a social environment have momentous consequences for creating and solving adaptive problems, humans have evolved “difference-detecting mechanisms” designed to make crucial social decisions such as mate selection, friend selection, kin investment, coalition formation, and hierarchy negotiation. In the second section, the authors examine developmental and life-history theoretical perspectives to explore the origins and development of personality over the lifespan. The third section focuses on the relatively new field of evolutionary genetics and explores which of the major evolutionary forces–such as balancing selection, mutation, co-evolutionary arms races, and drift–are responsible for the origins of personality and individual differences. Existing as a seminal work in the newly emerging evolutionary psychology field, this book is a “must-read” for anyone invested in the development of psychology as a field.

Need to add Lying by Sam Harris, Katherine Schultz, Chimamanda Adichie