Spite
The Upside of Your Dark Side
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Narrated by:
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Chris Clarkson
About this listen
Spite angers and enrages us, but it also keeps us honest. In this provocative account, a psychologist examines how petty vengeance explains human thriving.
Spite seems utterly useless. You don't gain anything by hurting yourself just so you can hurt someone else. So why hasn't evolution weeded out all the spiteful people?
As psychologist Simon McCarthy-Jones argues, spite seems pointless because we're looking at it wrong. Spite isn't just what we feel when a car cuts us off or when a partner cheats. It's what we feel when we want to punish a bad act simply because it was bad. Spite is our fairness instinct, an innate resistance to exploitation, and it is one of the building blocks of human civilization. As McCarthy-Jones explains, some of history's most important developments - the rise of religions, governments, and even moral codes - were actually redirections of spiteful impulses.
Provocative and engaging, Spite shows that if you really want to understand what makes us human, you can't just look at noble ideas like altruism and cooperation. You need to understand our darker impulses as well.
©2021 Simon McCarthy-Jones (P)2021 Basic BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Our Political Nature is the first book to reveal the hidden roots of our most deeply held moral values. It shows how political orientations across space and time arise from three clusters of measurable personality traits. These clusters entail opposing attitudes toward tribalism, inequality, and differing perceptions of human nature. Together, these traits are by far the most powerful cause of left-right voting, even leading people to regularly vote against their economic interests.
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A Trivial Version of Haidt's "The Righteous Mind"
- By Curt Doolittle on 10-29-13
By: Avi Tuschman
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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
- Unabridged
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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
By: Steven Quartz, and others
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What It Means to Be Moral
- Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life
- By: Phil Zuckerman
- Narrated by: Paul Brion
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life, Phil Zuckerman argues that morality does not come from God. Rather, it comes from us: our brains, our evolutionary past, our ongoing cultural development, our social experiences, and our ability to reason, reflect, and be sensitive to the suffering of others.
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Praise for Faith No More
- By Amazon Customer on 12-08-19
By: Phil Zuckerman
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Civilized to Death
- The Price of Progress
- By: Christopher Ryan
- Narrated by: Christopher Ryan
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Most of us have instinctive evidence the world is ending - balmy December days, face-to-face conversation replaced with heads-to-screens zomboidism, a world at constant war, a political system in disarray. We hear some myths and lies so frequently that they feel like truths: Civilization is humankind’s greatest accomplishment. Progress is undeniable. Count your blessings. You’re lucky to be alive here and now. Civilized to Death counters the idea that progress is inherently good, arguing that the "progress" defining our age is analogous to an advancing disease.
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Congintive Dissonance
- By Konnor C on 12-06-19
By: Christopher Ryan
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Virus of the Mind
- The New Science of the Meme
- By: Richard Brodie
- Narrated by: Richard Brodie
- Length: 4 hrs and 36 mins
- Abridged
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Virus of the Mind is the first popular work devoted to the science of memetics, a controversial new field that transcends psychology, biology, anthropology, and cognitive science. Memetics is the science of memes, the invisible but very real DNA of human society. Here, the author carefully builds on the work of scientists Richard Dawkins, Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Dennett, and others who have become fascinated with memes and their potential impact on our lives.
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The "Memes Explain Everything" Meme.
- By Nelson Alexander on 02-20-10
By: Richard Brodie
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Creating Freedom
- The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future
- By: Raoul Martinez
- Narrated by: Steve West
- Length: 17 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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A manifesto for deep and radical change, Creating Freedom explores the limits placed on freedom by human nature and society. It explodes myths, calling for a profound transformation in the way we think about democracy, equality, and our own identities.
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The BEST book, I've listened to in a long time
- By G. Newton on 04-16-17
By: Raoul Martinez
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The Secret Knowledge
- On the Dismantling of American Culture
- By: David Mamet
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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For the past 30 years, David Mamet has been a controversial and defining force in theater and film, championing the most cherished liberal values along the way. In some of the great movies and plays of our time, his characters have explored the ethics of the business world, embodied the struggles of the oppressed, and faced the flaws of the capitalist system. But in recent years Mamet has had a change of heart.
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Mamet's Rubicon
- By Kirk on 08-13-11
By: David Mamet
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The Moral Animal
- Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
- By: Robert Wright
- Narrated by: Greg Thornton
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Are men literally born to cheat? Does monogamy actually serve women's interests? These are among the questions that have made The Moral Animal one of the most provocative science books in recent years. Wright unveils the genetic strategies behind everything from our sexual preferences to our office politics - as well as their implications for our moral codes and public policies.
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Ridiculously Insightful
- By Liron on 10-25-10
By: Robert Wright
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You Are Now Less Dumb
- How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself
- By: David McRaney
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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You Are Now Less Dumb is grounded in the idea that we all believe ourselves to be objective observers of reality - except we’re not. But that's okay, because our delusions keep us sane. Expanding on this premise, McRaney provides eye-opening analyses of 15 more ways we fool ourselves every day. This smart and highly entertaining audiobook will be wowing listeners for years to come.
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Not a lot of guidance
- By A. Yoshida on 02-08-14
By: David McRaney
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Makers and Takers
- By: Peter Schweizer
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 5 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In Makers and Takers, Peter Schweizer broadens his scope to examine the damaging effects of liberal philosophy on ordinary Americans. Drawing on national polls and academic studies, as well as the revealing testimony of liberals themselves, Schweizer shows that liberals are, on the whole, less honest, less generous, lazier, and more materialistic than their conservative counterparts.
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Excellent!
- By Eileen J. O'Connor on 03-08-16
By: Peter Schweizer
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Someone Has to Say It
- The Hidden History of How America Was Lost
- By: Tom Kawczynski
- Narrated by: Jeff Winston
- Length: 5 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Starting at the turn of the last century, this book lays out systematically how Americans have lost control of our government, of our civil society, of our schools, of our companies, and in many cases, even our families.
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Great and inspiring book
- By K. E. Davila on 07-09-20
By: Tom Kawczynski
What listeners say about Spite
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Ronnie
- 05-03-22
An interesting book
Spite was a interesting book. There was a bit of political bias in my personal opinion that kind of took away from the overall story, but the author did try to focus on the scientific reasoning behind this writing. the performance was well done and a lot of the examples were easy to understand and put for front into one's mind. it was a really good story to listen to and went by pretty quickly. I'm not sure if I agree with every point that was made in this book but I do say that the perspective is very well put together.
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- Anonymous User
- 12-22-23
If you know humans are social creatures, you don’t need this book.
I’m spiteful so I thought this book was going to be useful. Besides the stories of petty and severe spite, the reason why spite exists wasn’t surprising to me. That’s a big issue because the first quarter of the book spends considerable effort to spell this out when really it could be paraphrased as “spite exists because most human societies function on fairness.”
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