The Goodness Paradox
The Strange Relationship Between Peace and Violence in Human Evolution
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Narrated by:
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Michael Page
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By:
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Richard Wrangham
About this listen
Throughout history, even as daily life has exhibited calm and tolerance, war has never been far away, and even within societies, violence can be a threat. The Goodness Paradox gives a new and powerful argument for how and why this uncanny combination of peacefulness and violence crystallized after our ancestors acquired language in Africa a quarter of a million years ago.
Words allowed the sharing of intentions that enabled men effectively to coordinate their actions. Verbal conspiracies paved the way for planned conflicts and, most importantly, for the uniquely human act of capital punishment. The victims of capital punishment tended to be aggressive men, and as their genes waned, our ancestors became tamer. This ancient form of systemic violence was critical not only encouraging cooperation in peace and war and in culture but also for making us who we are: Homo sapiens.
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Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence.
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I'd kill for another book this good
- By Eric on 11-11-11
By: Steven Pinker
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The Creative Spark
- How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional
- By: Agustín Fuentes
- Narrated by: Agustín Fuentes
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of Jared Diamond's million-copy-selling classic Guns, Germs, and Steel, a bold new synthesis of paleontology, archaeology, genetics, and anthropology that overturns misconceptions about race, war and peace, and human nature itself, answering an age-old question: What made humans so exceptional among all the species on Earth? Creativity. It is the secret of what makes humans special, hiding in plain sight.
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What's new?
- By Mark on 05-02-17
By: Agustín Fuentes
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Dog Sense
- How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet
- By: John Bradshaw
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Dogs have been mankind's faithful companions for tens of thousands of years, yet today they are regularly treated as either pack-following wolves or furry humans. The truth is, dogs are neither - and our misunderstanding has put them in serious crisis. What dogs really need is a spokesperson, someone who will assert their specific needs.
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Good book
- By Fair Oaks on 08-31-11
By: John Bradshaw
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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
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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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Sex, Time, and Power
- How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution
- By: Leonard Shlain
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Sex, Time, and Power offers a tantalizing answer to an age-old question: Why did big-brained Homo sapiens suddenly emerge some 150,000 years ago? The key, according to Shlain, is female sexuality. Drawing on an awesome breadth of research, he shows how, long ago, the narrowness of the newly bipedal human female's pelvis and the increasing size of infants' heads precipitated a crisis for the species. Natural selection allowed for reconfiguration of hormonal cycles, entraining women with the periodicity of the moon - and imbuing women with the concept of time.
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Interesting conjecture
- By DJKPP on 10-15-20
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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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The Mind of the Market
- Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics
- By: Michael Shermer
- Narrated by: Michael Shermer
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
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The Mind of the Market will change the way we think about the economics of everyday life. Drawing on research from neuroeconomics, Michael Shermer explores what brain scans reveal about bargaining, snap purchases, and how trust is established in business. Utilizing experiments in behavioral economics, Shermer shows why people hang on to losing stocks and failing companies, why business negotiations often disintegrate into emotional tit-for-tat disputes, and why money does not make us happy.
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Good ideas overshadowed by obnoxious polemics
- By Philo on 09-15-13
By: Michael Shermer
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The Bonobo and the Atheist
- By: Frans de Waal
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In this lively and illuminating discussion of his landmark research, esteemed primatologist Frans de Waal argues that human morality is not imposed from above but instead comes from within. Moral behavior does not begin and end with religion but is in fact a product of evolution. For many years, de Waal has observed chimpanzees soothe distressed neighbors and bonobos share their food. Now he delivers fascinating fresh evidence for the seeds of ethical behavior in primate societies that further cements the case for the biological origins of human fairness.
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Great research on apes, bad research on humans
- By Christian Bonnell on 07-18-14
By: Frans de Waal
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It's a good audiobook, but
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This book is no longer relevant
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What listeners say about The Goodness Paradox
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Midwest Grandpa
- 05-17-19
Important! Fascinating. Narrated wonderfully.
Wrangham does not disappoint. He leads us to creatively face the possibility that we, humanity, could disappoint, could cause our own extinction; but we need not. Evolved human nature, evolved biology, evolved psychology, are not necessarily destiny. Ideally read alongside Jerod Diamond's 2019 book, Upheaval.
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- Anonymous User
- 12-07-23
A fascinating exploration of the complex ramifications of a brutally simple premise
This book is yet another example of Richard Wrangham’s remarkable talent for explaining in clear lucid prose the myriad downstream effects of one turn in our developmental history. Highly recommended.
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- hans sandberg
- 01-11-20
A deep exploration into the origins of us
Richard Wrangham digs deep and far back into human prehistory and history, and puts forward an extremely interesting explanation of why humans and human societies are the way they are.
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- Jonathan
- 12-29-22
Brilliant
I recently read Catching Fire and immediately jumped into this one. I feel much more at peace with humanity after reading these two great works. Thank you, Richard Wrangham, for sharing this work!
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- Orson Scott Card
- 07-26-22
wise new views about why we're nice and why we're
wrangham takes us through key issues in human evolution, dealing with motivations for violence and how our cultural resistance to it can lead to paradoxical results. it's even possible that we have evolved to have leaders who have been genetically influenced by previous outcomes.
this is going to require considerable thinking, but thanks to this book, we have a lot more data to support our thinking about who we are and where we're going.
Michael Page's reading is superb, with utter clarity plus an ear for how to interpret what is said.
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- Maggie
- 07-01-23
Fascinating
This reader annoyed me a little, frequently readin too fast for my tastes, but the content is exceptionally good
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- Melanie Virtue
- 05-05-19
Great book but maybe less suited to an audiobook
As a student of human evolution, I found this book fascinating. The basic premise is that humans have domesticated themselves over the last 300,000 years or so, reducing our reactive aggression (losing one's temper), while increasing our proactive aggression (planning a raid), something which was greatly enhanced by the advent of language. He makes a stark comparison between humans and chimpanzees - if you put 300 chimps in a plane, you'd have many dead at the end of their journey, while humans are capable of sitting calmly next to strangers for hours.
The subject is complex and the points are well argued. I don't think it was quite as easy a read as his earlier book Catching Fire, or Demonic Males, but equally intriguing.
Even just reading about the process of domestication in other species, like foxes, was interesting. It creates unintended side effects such as white patches on one's extremities (white socks on horses, cows etc) and floppy ears (many dogs, rabbits). I found myself disappointed that if we humans are indeed (self) domesticated, then why don't we humans have either?
Having listened to the audiobook I found myself wishing I'd bought the paper version. Either the narrator was too fast, or the topic is too dense to just listen to once and fully grasp. I kept wanting to rewind.
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- Tom Donahue
- 02-07-23
A fascinating trip into the weeds
The last chapter summarizes the book in a clear, precise way. If you’re really interested, listen to the entire book. Some sentences are so long and convoluted they don’t give themselves well to an audiobook, yet they state important principles.
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-29-22
Incomplete
This is a great book!!! However, unlike any books I’ve been able to download prior to and after this book, accessibility to the last few chapters have been impossible. Audible may be responsible for this inconvenience. Please fix it Audible so I can finish listening to it.
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