The Human Swarm
How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall
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Narrated by:
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Sean Patrick Hopkins
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By:
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Mark W. Moffett
About this listen
The epic story and ultimate big history of how human society evolved from intimate chimp communities into the sprawling civilizations of a world-dominating species
If a chimpanzee ventures into the territory of a different group, it will almost certainly be killed. But a New Yorker can fly to Los Angeles - or Borneo - with very little fear. Psychologists have done little to explain this: for years, they have held that our biology puts a hard upper limit - about 150 people - on the size of our social groups. But human societies are in fact vastly larger. How do we manage - by and large - to get along with each other?
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.
©2019 Mark W. Moffett (P)2019 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Fascinating...a delightfully accessible and ingenious series of lessons on humans and our societies." (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)
"In the past quarter century, there has emerged a genre of Big History that includes such epic books as Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens. Mark Moffett's The Human Swarm is destined to be included in future lists of such books that not only add to our understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we're going, but change our perspective of how we fit in the larger picture of life on Earth. A magisterial work of monumental importance." (Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of The Moral Arc)
"This is a book of amazing ideas, many of them counterintuitive. Mark Moffett's astounding stories of animal societies persuaded me that the future of human cities have been foretold by the ants. Read this manifesto if you like to have your mind changed." (Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired Magazine and author of The Inevitable)
"[Moffett] intrigues by setting human societies in the context of those of the animal kingdom. This fine work should have broad appeal to anyone curious about human societies, which is basically everyone." (Publishers Weekly)
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In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits, denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts.
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Don't bother. Outdated science & poor logic...
- By ejf211 on 03-31-10
By: Steven Pinker
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Sex and War
- How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World
- By: Malcom Potts, Thomas Hayden
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Human beings have been battling one another since time immemorial. But why war and terrorism? Why are men almost always the killers, and why are war and sex so inextricably linked? Why do we kill members of our own species intentionally, when few other animals do so?
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This is the Berkley view point on terriorism
- By J.T. on 08-22-11
By: Malcom Potts, and others
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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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The Better Angels of Our Nature
- Why Violence Has Declined
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 36 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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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 Dawn of Everything
- A New History of Humanity
- By: David Graeber, David Wengrow
- Narrated by: Mark Williams
- Length: 24 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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A trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state", political violence, and social inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.
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exactly what I've been looking for
- By DankTurtle on 11-10-21
By: David Graeber, and others
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The WEIRDest People in the World
- How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
- By: Joseph Henrich
- Narrated by: Korey Jackson
- Length: 19 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church.
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Lots of mispronounced words
- By Phillip Falk on 10-24-20
By: Joseph Henrich
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Transcendence
- How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time
- By: Gaia Vince
- Narrated by: Gaia Vince
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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How four tools enabled humanity to control its destiny What enabled us to go from simple stone tools to smartphones? How did bands of hunter-gatherers evolve into multinational empires? Listeners of Sapiens will say a cognitive revolution - a dramatic evolutionary change that altered our brains, turning primitive humans into modern ones - caused a cultural explosion. In Transcendence, Gaia Vince argues instead that modern humans are the product of a nuanced coevolution of our genes, environment, and culture that goes back into deep time.
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Far too much bias and unsupported conclusions
- By Kurt Leyendecker on 10-01-20
By: Gaia Vince
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Evolutionary Psychology
- An Audio Guide
- By: Robin Dunbar, John Lycett, Louise Barrett
- Narrated by: Miranda Nation
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Evolutionary Psychology is a uniquely accessible yet comprehensive guide to the study of the effects of evolutionary theory on human behaviour. Written specifically for the general listener and for entry-level students, it covers all the most important elements of this interdisciplinary subject, from the role of evolution in our selection of partner, to the influence of genetics on parenting. This audiobook draws widely on examples, case studies and background facts to convey a substantial amount of information.
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Themeltingpotblogpost
- By Anonymous User on 10-14-17
By: Robin Dunbar, and others
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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 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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Our Political Nature
- The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us
- By: Avi Tuschman
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 17 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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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
What listeners say about The Human Swarm
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Roman
- 05-15-20
Great presentation, Highly recommend
I liked the facts, but repeating most of them 3-4 times, 1/2 length perhaps could do.
By the end it all built up to insightful conclusions about our nature and prospects of human societies - strained.
Highly recommend.
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5 people found this helpful
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- MindinMotion
- 09-09-19
Two books long
This could easily have been two books; One on zoology and one on anthropology. Both would have been a bit long. The zoology section carries too much information for the title of the book. The anthropology/political section reminded me of the excellent 'Clash of Civilizations' by Huntington, which is still a good read after 25 years.
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1 person found this helpful
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- mathieu a.
- 05-14-21
weird.
very interesting concept on paper - thinking about human societies biologically.
in practice hard to follow especially because the books makes so many statements outside the realm of biological expertise (sociology, anthropology, psychology etc) - it feels like there are too many personal opinion tangents and they are not labeled as such.
the performance felt somewhat mechanical. the sound is very clear but there is a lack of emotional engagement from the reader that made it harder than other books in the space to listen through. sapiens is an easier listen, so is the weirdest people in the world, or the righteous mind.
still i am glad I did go through it there are many interesting perspectives.
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- Whitesheep
- 12-14-22
Great big picture view
While I don’t agree with all the implications drawn, the overall narrative weaves together a rich group of current scientific threads.
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- Jonathan M Tweet
- 09-20-19
Important information fills gaps
_The Human Swarm_ by Mark W Moffett is the book I didn’t know I needed. It covers a topic that’s been missing from the discussion of human society, and the perspective it offers fills gaps in what I’ve learned from other books. Moffett covers the topic of anonymous societies—animal groups in which other animals are identified as “members” even by individuals that don’t know them personally. An Argentine ant, for example, can be accepted by other Argentine ants of its super-colony even hundreds of miles away from its origin, using scent as a marker of belonging. Likewise, Mohawk Indians were able to identify and welcome each other even when they didn’t know each other, thanks to their distinctive hairstyles. Moffett identifies a sort of social organization that is unusual in the animal kingdom but not unique to humans. A more common arrangement is a flock, herd, or nesting colonies, where individuals that don’t know each other get along, but that’s because no individuals are excluded. In intimate bands or families, by contrast, only individuals who know each other are welcome. For a small number of animal species, however, a society consists of individuals that can identify each other as “insiders” without knowing each other personally. This social organization is found among Argentine ants, scrub jays, and humans.
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Moffett’s mentor was E O Wilson, the ant expert who revolutionized our understanding of human nature with his book _Sociobiology_ (1975). It’s humbling and exhilarating how much we can learn about human society by comparing and contrasting ourselves to ants. For my purposes, Moffett’s description of Argentine ants was worth the price of the book. Unlike other ant species, Argentine ants form super-colonies with multiple queens. In Argentina, these ants super-colonies are kept in check by the one thing that can stop them: other super-colonies of Argentine ants. In California, where the Argentines are an invasive species, they spread almost without limit. Again, their only limit is another invasive super-colony. The comparison to humans is elementary.
One of the revolutionary findings of contemporary psychology is that humans are “groupish”, as Jonathan Haidt puts it in his seminal book _The Righteous Mind_ (2012). Freud taught that humans are inherently selfish, but intellectuals of his day had no clear understanding of human evolution or prehistory. Now we understand that humans are innately social, a trait that we can trace back tens of millions of years to our early simian ancestors. Morality, as modern researchers contend, is an adaptation that helps us get along in groups of our peers. Moffett’s insights help us see this “tribalism” on the scale of anonymous societies. Sure, it’s easy to understand why people prefer their friends and kin over strangers, but this book illuminates the human practice of preferring people we don’t know provided they have the right hair styles, modes of dress, manner of speech, or other societal markers. This book unifies Haidt’s modern-day insights, the globe-spanning analysis of Francis Fukuyama’s _The Origins of Political Order_ (2011), and other big-picture books about the nature of human society and the human animal.
_The Human Swarm_ does an admirable job of surveying the topic on all levels: ants that are more or less specialized, spiders that impersonate ants to predate them, chimpanzee bands with their distinctive pant-hoots, bands of humans who know each other as kin, groups of human bands that cooperate across societal boundaries, groups of human bands that split to create new boundaries, and today’s bewildering mix of human populations. Just the information about whales and scrub jays make this book worth your time. Moffett knows that he is filling in the blanks left by previous ethologists and anthropologists, and this book is a trove of both big ideas and delightful details. Perhaps the most important information for understanding human societies is the material on non-state societies and the bands that compose them. Here we see the many ways that humans have marked membership in their societies and the xenophobia toward outsiders that was the default perspective.
Disclosure: E O Wilson is a fan of my children’s book, Grandmother Fish, so any friend of his is a friend of mine.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Sisyphus
- 05-23-21
The journey from chimp to human
This was one of those fascinating “guns germs and steel“ reads.
The author brings remarkable new information and his own compelling analysis to make a great book about our ever evolving human social structures.
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- John Alberts
- 08-28-19
Social Universals
A natural history of social organization that compares human social behavior to that of other species. The book argues that social behavior is part of our nature and that fact has implications which affect what we can make it ourselves.
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- William S. Lamb
- 01-20-20
An important book in today’s world
Thoroughly researched. Makes a compelling case for an explanation for many of the nuances of us versus them thinking in the world today.
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- Mutant Daddy
- 03-01-21
Textbook
This could be a rather dry college freshman textbook, I suppose.
Has a few good nuggets, but often seems to be droning on about humans as if they were rather one-dimensional, not the richly exasperating animals we know and love.
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- Jeremy Glave
- 05-16-19
decent
I don't know if I would have compared this to Jared diamond or Harare thought it was a decent book
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10 people found this helpful