Inheritance

The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World

De: Harvey Whitehouse

Narrado por: Harvey Whitehouse

The ancient inheritance that made us who we are—and is now driving us to ruin.

Each of us is endowed with an inheritance—a set of evolved biases and cultural tools that shape every facet of our behavior. For countless generations, this inheritance has taken us to ever greater heights: driving the rise of more sophisticated technologies, more organized religions, more expansive empires. But now, for the first time, it’s failing us. We find ourselves hurtling toward a future of unprecedented political polarization, deadlier war, and irreparable environmental destruction.

In Inheritance, renowned anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse offers a sweeping account of how our biases have shaped humanity’s past and imperiled its future. He argues that three biases—conformism, religiosity, and tribalism—drive human behavior everywhere. Forged by natural selection and harnessed by thousands of years of cultural evolution, these biases catalyzed the greatest transformations in human history, from the birth of agriculture and the arrival of the first kings to the rise and fall of human sacrifice and the creation of multiethnic empires. Taking us deep into modern-day tribes, including terrorist cells and predatory ad agencies, Whitehouse shows how, as we lose the cultural scaffolding that allowed us to manage our biases, the world we’ve built is spiraling out of control.

By uncovering how human nature has shaped our collective history, Inheritance unveils a surprising new path to solving our most urgent modern problems. The result is a powerful reappraisal of the human journey, one that transforms our understanding of who we are, and who we could be.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2024 Harvey Whitehouse (P)2024 Dreamscape Media

Great thesis and supporting evidence

the author speaks quickly and quietly so you have to listen carefully to understand all the points he makes. Fantastic information but it's like drinking from a fire hose. Still worth the listen.

Rich analysis based on decades of research

Whitehouse's analysis is very persuasive and clear. One advantage of having him read the book himself is that his enthusiasm and humor come across vividly. He has studied conformism, religiosity, and tribalism across many cultures, including historical cultures, and he makes a good case for how they have developed in specific historical and cultural contexts that can be compared. Some may object to his use of evolutionary psychology and quantitative methods, but I thought it helped to show how powerful rituals and "fusion" among specific groups, sometimes in positive ways and often in disturbing ways.

My one caveat is that his last section, on ways that conformism, religiosity, and tribalism might be harnessed for worldwide progress in combating climate change and violence is unabashedly utopian. While it seems possible that they might be adapted for good ends, it also seems all too plausible that they could be adapted more widely for totalitarianism.