Will I love Blueprint?

At a time when pessimism prevails, reading this book cheered me up, arguing we humans share a goodness that is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history. From shipwreck survivors forming micro-societies (unlike Lord of the Flies) to genetic influences on friendship, Christakis illustrates how the foundations of a good society are embedded in our biology.

This book reminds me that our evolutionary inheritance equips us to build a more connected, cooperative world. I felt uplifted and hopeful about the future after reading it, especially in a time of conflict and polarization.

In clear, captivating prose, Blueprint provides a dazzling body of evidence in support of the need for explanations of human behavior to take account of genes as well as environment, neurotransmitters as well as social norms, our species’ hunter-gatherer past as well as its technology-enabled present.  Distinguished sociologist and physician Nicholas Christakis argues that the genes selected in our evolutionary past produced a group-oriented human nature—the “social suite”—that prizes love for partners and offspring, friendship and cooperation, relative egalitarianism, and social learning and teaching, and recognition of individual identity, as well as in-group bias. Whether shipwrecked sailors or utopian communities,… show more.