Why read Ultrasociety?

Book cover of Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth

Book description

Cooperation is powerful. There aren’t many highly cooperative species—but they nearly cover the planet. Ants alone account for a quarter of all animal matter. Yet the human capacity to work together leaves every other species standing. We organize ourselves into communities of hundreds of millions of individuals, inhabit every continent,…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Ultrasociety as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Richard Heinberg

Author

Turchin’s book is one of the best sources I found for understanding the development of human social power during the past 11,000 years. As he succinctly puts it, “competition within groups destroys cooperation; cooperation between groups creates cooperation.” Societies grew bigger to compete more successfully for resources, but doing so required that they become more internally cooperative. Necessity was the mother of social innovation, and the result was kingdoms, then empires. Turchin is one of the foremost proponents of group (or multi-level) selection, still a controversial idea in biology, but, in my view, an essential frame for understanding human evolution.

From Richard's list on The best books for understanding power.