Moral rigidity and its intimate link to in-group boundaries may have evolved so as to make us behave, and be seen, as trustworthy yet cautious team members in social environments mired by intergroup competition.
Religious systems that lose their adaptability become dangerous to the societies in which they exist, and to themselves, because they absolutize the relative.
Radicalization is an inherently relational concept. One can only be radical in relation to someone who is not. Similarly, one cannot be extreme without an accepted center norm. But the center is not a fixed state. It shifts and changes across time, place, circumstance, and culture.
Crucially, the pattern of heightened reactivity and credulity toward potential threats characteristic of the conservative mind is not associated with fearfulness or timidity, but with confidence in the ability to triumph through force.
There are many sectors of the economy where for-benefit corporations are a better structure than either for-profit corporations and not-for-profit corporations as currently structured.
The failure of laissez-faire and centralized planning, revealing the need for the Third Way of entrepreneurship and all other forms of positive social change, should exist at all scales of governance.
Positive systemic change must be the target of selection. Alternative social practices must be oriented toward the target of selection.
Maintaining optimism in the face of what is an overwhelming climate crisis is absolutely necessary, even vital.
Climate change is the quintessential Tragedy of the Commons problem of our time. But there are cultural strategies that may offer solutions.
Only by understanding the psychology of sacred values can we predict the willingness to sacrifice for those values.
Fossil fuel companies have an incentive to prevent policies that would keep them from selling their assets. We should not be surprised, therefore, that these companies have taken steps to prevent such an outcome.
The fact that evolutionary selection pressures so often result in social pathologies might be hard to accept, but once faced squarely it can lead to an optimistic point of view.
Creating a truly functional, equitable, stable and sustainable nation certainly won’t be easy but a “blueprint,” can be found in our evolutionary past. What will it take? Those with the most power recognizing the realities of white supremacy, finding what’s needed to upscale this blueprint, and having the courage and vision to do so.
Peter Turchin discusses his new book "Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth". Ultrasociety chronicles 10,000 years of human history from an evolutionary perspective, shows how warfare paradoxically caused us to become the greatest cooperators on earth, and begins to point the way toward a future without war.