Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society

As we learned from Avengers: Endgame, there are over fourteen million ways things can go wrong and only one way they can go right. This is why instead of writing dystopias, I try to write good worlds, where things may not be perfect, yet people's basic needs are met. A desire to learn more about what makes a society good is what drew me to read Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society, by Nicholas A. Christakis. It's a long book full of ideas, and it took me a couple of weeks to finish. (I don't remember the exact date I started.) It starts off by discussing the history of communities. By examining the fate of people stranded by shipwrecks for an extended time (thus founding an unintentional community) or the history of intentional communities founded in the 19th or 20th centuries, the author looks to determine what traits make them successful or not successful. Communities where there is minimal hierarchy and a love of learning do well, but those that try to break familial bonds don't do so well. Christakis identifies eight traits as part of what he calls the social suite:

1. The ability to have and recognize individual identity
2. Love for partners and offspring
3. Friendship
4. Social networks
5. Cooperation
6. Perference for one's own group (in-group bias)
7. Relative egalitarianism
8. Social learning and teaching

The rest of the book is devoted to exploring the basis for these traits, many of which can be found in other animals.

It's worth pointing out that experiments show that when leaders are removed from a group, chaos and frayed social networks can result. But although leaders are necessary, too much hierarchy is unstable. Although my Season Avatars world is modeled on Victorian England, there are far fewer social classes in Challen than there were in the real world. Something else to consider is that preference for one's group is unfortunately linked to bias against others, even when the groups are artificially constructed. Forcing groups to work together on joint projects of mutual benefit leads to decreased hostilities. It's helpful to belong to many different groups to foster connections between them and to include all sorts of people in your group.

Although human cultures may seem quite different from each other, they also share many similarities. Cooperation is key to human success. As society becomes more and more global, we all need to draw on the principles of the social suite in order to survive and improve our world.