The Goodness Paradox

The Strange Relationship Between Peace and Violence in Human Evolution

By: Richard Wrangham

Narrated by: Michael Page

Throughout history, even as daily life has exhibited calm and tolerance, war has never been far away, and even within societies, violence can be a threat. The Goodness Paradox gives a new and powerful argument for how and why this uncanny combination of peacefulness and violence crystallized after our ancestors acquired language in Africa a quarter of a million years ago.

Words allowed the sharing of intentions that enabled men effectively to coordinate their actions. Verbal conspiracies paved the way for planned conflicts and, most importantly, for the uniquely human act of capital punishment. The victims of capital punishment tended to be aggressive men, and as their genes waned, our ancestors became tamer. This ancient form of systemic violence was critical not only encouraging cooperation in peace and war and in culture but also for making us who we are: Homo sapiens.

©2019 Richard Wrangham (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Important! Fascinating. Narrated wonderfully.

Wrangham does not disappoint. He leads us to creatively face the possibility that we, humanity, could disappoint, could cause our own extinction; but we need not. Evolved human nature, evolved biology, evolved psychology, are not necessarily destiny. Ideally read alongside Jerod Diamond's 2019 book, Upheaval.

A fascinating exploration of the complex ramifications of a brutally simple premise

This book is yet another example of Richard Wrangham’s remarkable talent for explaining in clear lucid prose the myriad downstream effects of one turn in our developmental history. Highly recommended.

Brilliant

I recently read Catching Fire and immediately jumped into this one. I feel much more at peace with humanity after reading these two great works. Thank you, Richard Wrangham, for sharing this work!

A deep exploration into the origins of us

Richard Wrangham digs deep and far back into human prehistory and history, and puts forward an extremely interesting explanation of why humans and human societies are the way they are.

wise new views about why we're nice and why we're

wrangham takes us through key issues in human evolution, dealing with motivations for violence and how our cultural resistance to it can lead to paradoxical results. it's even possible that we have evolved to have leaders who have been genetically influenced by previous outcomes.

this is going to require considerable thinking, but thanks to this book, we have a lot more data to support our thinking about who we are and where we're going.

Michael Page's reading is superb, with utter clarity plus an ear for how to interpret what is said.