Sean Goh's Reviews > Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society

Lengthy and spanning a range of topics, from evolutionary biology to sociology.
TL;DR: friendship (non-reproductive long-term bonds amongst non-kin) is almost unique to humans, and Maslow's hierarchy might be inverted (the social needs help to satisfy the basic needs).
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The desire for social connection and interpersonal understanding is so deep that it is with us to the end.
Even though people may have varied life experiences, live in different places and look superficially different, there are significant parts of others' experiences that we can all understand. To deny this would be to abandon hope for empathy.

Some scientists believe that awe is an evolved emotion intended to cause a cognitive shift that reduces egocentricity and makes people feel more connected to others.

We form long-term, non-reproductive unions with other humans. This is exceedingly rare in the animal kingdom, but it is universal in us.

Humans have always made their social environments, while shaping the physical environment is a recent innovation. The one constant in human environments is the presence of other humans.

The ability to make and use a bellows appears frequently in successful stories of castaway survivors.

All over the world, irrigation systems seem to be associated with the emergence of social stratification and a divergence between elites and the populace.

Intentional utopian communities have always struggled with the problem of individuality.

Celibacy reflects a rejection of the real world, because it intrinsically means that the way of life cannot reproduce itself. Paradoxically, the Shakers required connection to the outside world, because that was the movement's only source of new adherents.

Communist societies have also been associated with collective child-rearing, the family is seen as a threat to state ideology because it fosters a sense of belonging to a family unit, and totalitarian ideology requires party or state allegiance to be paramount.

Almost every innovation in child welfare in the US, including orphanages and subsidised child care, has been driven primarily by adult concerns. Of secondary importance were philosophical and pragmatic convictions about what was best for children.

Structure: not only the hierarchy in a group but also the pattern of social relations in the group (are friendships reciprocated? extent of mutual friends)
a shared moral understanding = a unified set of beliefs and a common sense of purpose, was crucial for a sense of belonging.

Groups can have both instrumental leaders (task oriented), and expressive leaders (relationship oriented). Effective leaders have to help minimise group conflict, deal with troublesome individuals before they compromise group harmony, keep work on schedule, make rational decisions in emergencies, deal fairly with conflict, and facilitate communication. Sometimes it is not possible for the same person to do both, hence generals and diplomats (war and peace leaders).

Groups in isolated environments often note the problem of "constant gossip" that adversely affects interpersonal relations.

Collective activities such as games and songs are especially important when groups lack long-standing rituals or shared religious ideologies.

Even the possibility of being able to change social connections can shape communities for the better.

Kissing is most common in Africa and South and Central America. No ethnographers familiar with forager or horticultural groups in sub-Saharan Africa, Amazonia or New guinea have ever reported witnessing romantic-sexual kissing.

It seems that across evolutionary time, that humans evolved to love their offspring first, then their mates, then to feel affection for their biological kin, then their affinal kin (in-laws), and then their friends and groups.

Roughly 85% of human societies have permitted polygyny at some point.
However polygyny deprives many men of partners, and causes many women to have to share their husband and overall household.

By offering a man a high certainty of paternity (through pair bonding), a woman is better able to secure her husband's investment in her children. Mutual attachment solves an evolutionary conundrum.
The drive to love your partner is universal.

Like weddings all over the world, Turkana weddings include dancing, feasting, gossiping, and flirting among unmarried guests.

The 'sneaky fucker' strategy: bystander males taking advantage of alpha males while they are fighting to mate with other inaccessible females.

Our many marriage systems reflect the human capacity for social learning, a key part of the social suite.

"Crazy bastard" strategy: where males at risk of being shut out of reproduction engage in riskier and more violent behaviour to secure a mate, by discounting their futures more steeply.

First law of behaviour genetics: all human behavioural traits are heritable.

Only the cognitive ability to remember the past is needed to make and maintain friendship ties, anticipation of the future isn't necessary.

We are supposed to respond to our friends because they have a need, not because of what they have done for us or what we can expect from them. Real friendships are based on how each party feels about the other, not what each party can do for the other.
Friendship is demonstrated by time-intensive, exclusive behaviours, honest expressions of emotion, and accepting vulnerability.

In Greece male friends tirelessly and publicly accuse one another of being masturbators.

The introduction of formal institutions (banking etc) may weaken traditional friendship ties.
Being less reliant on friends in their community, Americans can afford to be more geographically mobile.

The ability of friendships to be useful during reversal, when an even exchange is not possible, is precisely what makes friendship so valuable as an adaptation in our species.

Friends tended to be significantly more genetically similar than strangers drawn from within the same population. As a benchmark the effect's size corresponds to the coefficient of relatedness expected for 4th cousins.

The sense of togetherness and mutual aid leads to the higher evaluation of the in-group.
When groups are united against a common enemy, negative attitudes abate.

Both altruism and ethnocentrism need each other. In-group altruism in the service of out-group conflict.
All it takes for people to like their own group and dislike others - is for people to be able to simply switch groups.

Societies that stress uniqueness and individuality and that provide fertile terrain for friendship based on the personal and specific can actually be those where our common humanity is more easily recognised.

The possibility of being alone reinforces the ability of a group to be together.
One distinctive reason for animals to form social groups is the enhanced learning that can take place.

Genes can have effects outside of the body (e.g. beavers' dam building, bower birds building nests.

Status can be measured by prestige (benefits one can offer others) as well as dominance (traditional alpha male strength - i.e. costs one can inflict on others)
In most species the trade off between dominance and prestige is usually presented as the shift from bodily to cognitive resources.

When group size was increased, cultural knowledge was more often preserved, improvements more often made, and complexity in tool packages more often maintained. When it comes to cultural innovation and preservation, size matters.

Religions are a cultural feature that secondarily allow unrelated individuals to expand the circle of cooperation, exchange goods, and maintain a division of labour.

As a species, humans have evolved higher order needs (belonging, transcendence) precisely in order to more efficiently satisfy the basic needs of life. (Inversion of Maslow's hierarchy of needs)