The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. The reason why they both bother me so much is that I can’t help feeling that their genetic determinism smells a little too much like eugenics. More than a decade into our home education experience, Macauley’s book fairly represents what we have been trying to do. I don’t dispute the reality of progress in certain contexts, but I have my doubts about how to conceptualize and measure it.

It would be an excellent tool for use in an undergraduate logic course to provide examples of bad reasoning for students to analyze. I don’t believe some governments somewhere ever declared “let’s make people miserable for our own sake”. Indeed, nearly every aspect of our lives (and our deaths) is distorted by a misinformed sense of what kind of animal Homo sapiens really is.

Then, about 10,000 years ago, some forgotten genius invented agriculture, and thus delivered our species from animal desperation into civilized abundance, leisure, sophistication, and plenitude.

Also, adding to the silliness factor, at one point the author used as part of his "evidence" an experience in which he looked at animals and is sure he knew what they were thinking because of the looks on their faces. We rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a mounting sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction, and restlessness. There are 18 pages of endnotes, which might sound like a lot, but when compared to the 16 pages of index that pad the book, it begins to wane in significance.Forecasting life expectancy, years of life lost, and all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 250 causes of death: reference and alternative scenarios for 2016–40 for 195 countries and territories.

Given hunter-gatherers generally only work about 20 hours a week, they can hardly be blamed for looking at us askance. Jack Dorsey, cofounder and CEO of Twitter “Engaging, extensively documented, well-organized, and thought provoking. Ryan’s narrative is interesting for those that wish to gain a better understanding of the type of society we came from.Upon his first encounters with the native people he “discovered” in the West Indies, Columbus was struck by their kindness, generosity, and physical beauty. The author admits that he will have to cherry pick examples to make his points, but it was done to such an extreme I thought a cherry tree would've made for a more apt cover photo. In this interview, Chris offers a challenging perspective on how humans have strayed from egalitarian tribal living, instead adopting customs that don’t match our biological drives and social needs. In his own journals, he was even more complimentary: “They are the best people in the world and above all the gentlest—without knowledge of what is evil—nor do they murder or steal… they love their neighbors as themselves and they have the sweetest talk in the world… always laughing.

The book is a litany of the problems of civilization that has domesticated us into less than who we could be, living in “zoos of our own design,” which truly distinguishes humans from other animals (p. I came to the book expecting to find common ground with Ryan, but couldn’t get past the effluviant mess that was intended to pass for deep thinking.

Some of these complaints will flow poorly as they were taken from various chapters and moments in the book, while others were more general issues with the book as a whole. The popularity and persistence of scientific narratives often have more to do with how well they support dominant mythologies than with scientific veracity. I highly recommend against the audio book, unless you want to hear the author use an obnoxiously childish tone when discussing things he doesn't like or disagrees with, completely undermining any legitimacy his claims might have. You know, civilisation has had a bit over 200 years in Australia, while Aboriginal society was here for something like 60,000 years – and man, have the civilised stuffed this place up! When humans lived in roving hunter-gatherer bands, they were generally egalitarian, with no entrenched power structures locking them into a certain lot in life.