Author:: [[Nicholas A. Christakis]] DateFinished:: 3/20/2023 Rating:: 7 Tags:: # Blueprint  ## 🚀The Book in 3 Sentences - Humans have a innate capacity to form good societies if put in the right context. - The capacity to form good societies come from our genes which write a blueprint for how to form a society that follows the social suite. - By expanding our ingroup to that of humanity as a whole we can form more kindhearted good societies. ### 🎨 Impressions - This book is a woozy. It's definitely more on the academic side compared to some of the books I have read. And Christakis likes to write. A lot. His stories are insanely long for the points he's trying to get across. So my biggest complaint would be the story length. - However, Christakis is clearly very intelligent. His thoughts are well articulated and insightful. ### 📖Who Should Read It? - Evolutionary psychologists - Those interested in a more academic side of psychology ### ☘️ How the Book Changed Me - The one major way this book changed me was emphasizing even more how I shouldn't stick rigidly to certain belief patterns or groups. When I do so I become a less empathetic, kindhearted human being. # Summary ## Introduction **Can we love the groups we are a part of without disliking or worse hating those outside of our them?** This is the central question Christakis wishes to explore in his book Blueprint. He believes that all humans are genetically coded to create good societies, but when we are put in certain contexts can veer toward bad behavior. One of those contexts is when environments become too polarized. Every human has in their DNA the ability to join groups, surrender their own individuality, and feel so aligned with a collective interest they do things against their own individual interest that shock them. **This fact is more scary than ever.** Christakis explains that "Analyses reveal that both political polarization and economic inequality are at century-long peaks." This polarization is one of the greatest fears discussed in Haidt and Lukianoffs book The Coddling Of The American Mind during [[The Coddling of the American Mind#CHAPTER 6 The Polarization Cycle|Chapter 6 The Polarization Cycle]]. Haidt and Lukianoff explain we shouldn’t align to heavily politically because it can bias towards our groups beliefs even if they go against our individual values. Christakis believes seeing individuals as merely parts of a larger group, like political party, is dehumanizing because it demerits the incredible individual differences between people. He argues real personal identity **“springs from the capacity of human beings to resist these influences and counter them with free acts of their own invention.”** So how can humans have the capacity for incredible good inside of us as well as the capacity for terrible acts? Christakis explains that genes affect not only the structure and function of our bodies; not only the structure and function of our minds and, hence, our behaviors; but also the structure and function of our societies. ## CHAPTER 1 The Society Within Us [[The social suite]] ## CHAPTER 8 Friends and Networks Friends seem like the one relationship we make that has no survival imperative. Relationship with parents is needed to survive the childhood years of life and relationship with a mate is required to reproduce. But Christakis argues that the pull to make friends has been ingrained into our DNA. Friendships are fostered off of exchange of some sort, exchange of ideas, ideas, connections or some other resource. But the best friendships [[The quality of a friendship of character can be defined by how much you are willing to do for each other without reciprocation|But the best friendships are defined by how much you would be willing to do for your friend without reciprocation]]. In hunter gather times you needed to know your friend had your back when times got tough. In other words, they needed to be willing to help you when there was nothing in it for them. Kin could sometimes be competitors for resources and some tasks like hunting large prey can require group sizes above what would be feasible with just kin. **In effect, we have evolved with an urge to want deep friendships.** [[Individuality is essential for the formation of healthy friendships]]. ## CHAPTER 11 Genes and Culture [[Evolution of culture is the primary method through which humans have evolved rather than evolution of genes]]. ## CHAPTER 12 Natural and Social Laws [[AIs are the first tool humans have ever made that could fundamentally change the social blueprint]] ## Highlights Natural selection has equipped us with the capacity and desire to join groups, and to do so in particular ways. For instance, we can surrender our own individuality and feel so aligned with a collective that we do things that would seem against our personal interests or that would otherwise shock us. ([Location 76](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=76)) - Note: This tendency to surrender our individuality to the collective is used as fuel for Haidt and Lukianoffs argument in The Coddling Of The American Mind for why we shouldn’t align to heavily politically because it can bias towards our groups beliefs on a subject prematurely. People in crowds often act in thoughtless ways—shouting profanities, destroying property, throwing bricks, threatening others. This can come about partly because of a process known to psychologists as deindividuation: people begin to lose their self-awareness and sense of individual agency as they identify more strongly with the group, which often leads to antisocial behaviors they would never consider if they were acting alone. ([Location 91](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=91)) Analyses reveal that both political polarization and economic inequality are at century-long peaks. ([Location 110](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=110)) - Note: This is why it’s more important than ever to question our group making tendencies. One of the most dispiriting questions I have encountered in my own laboratory research is whether the affinity people have for their own groups—whether those groups are defined by some attribute (nationality, ethnicity, or religion) or by a social connection (friends or teammates)—must necessarily be coupled with wariness or rejection of others. Can you love your own group without hating everyone else? ([Location 115](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=115)) My vision of us as human beings, which lies at the center of this book, holds that people are, and should be, united by our common humanity. ([Location 127](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=127)) Seeing people only as members of groups is, he says, “inherently reductionist and dehumanizing, a collectivist and ideological abstraction of all that is original and creative in the human being, of all that has not been imposed by inheritance, geography, or social pressure.” Real, personal identity, he argues, “springs from the capacity of human beings to resist these influences and counter them with free acts of their own invention.” ([Location 143](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=143)) - Note: Defining humans by their groups dehumanizes them and takes away the nuance of their individual beliefs. How can people be so different from—even go to war with—one another and yet also be so similar? The fundamental reason is that we each carry within us an evolutionary blueprint for making a good society. ([Location 167](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=167)) Genes affect not only the structure and function of our bodies; not only the structure and function of our minds and, hence, our behaviors; but also the structure and function of our societies. ([Location 169](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=169)) ##### CHAPTER 1 The Society Within Us One purpose of play is for children to ape adult behaviors and practice grown-up roles. ([Location 201](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=201)) Societies themselves might even be seen as just scaled-up versions of such children’s games. ([Location 215](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=215)) - Note: This is why play being reduced in modern American society as stated by Jonathan Haidt is so harmful. Children don’t practice being aduktsz At the core of all societies, I will show, is the social suite: (1) The capacity to have and recognize individual identity (2) Love for partners and offspring (3) Friendship (4) Social networks (5) Cooperation (6) Preference for one’s own group (that is, “in-group bias”) (7) Mild hierarchy (that is, relative egalitarianism) (8) Social learning and teaching ([Location 376](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=376)) More important, from the point of view of using this sometimes controversial metaphor, when I use it here, I do not mean that genes are the blueprint. I mean that genes act to write the blueprint. A blueprint for social life is the product of our evolution, written in the ink of our DNA. ([Location 421](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=421)) ##### CHAPTER 2 Unintentional Communities Leadership—as part of what I call mild hierarchy—is clearly important in the success and survival of these isolated social groups, especially when the leader works to foster solidarity and, perhaps ironically, to reduce hierarchy and ensure egalitarianism and cooperation within the group. ([Location 965](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=965)) - Note: In normal experiments, where people are naturally put in a situation where they must create there own society, like in a shipwreck, the majority of the time the blueprint of social structure is followed. The exceptions tend to be when there is a distinct lack of resources in the survival situation. In 1914, seasoned polar explorer Ernest Shackleton is said to have placed an advertisement in a London newspaper: “MEN WANTED for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success.” ([Location 969](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=969)) - Tags: #blue However, on January 18, just forty-five days after the Endurance departed from South Georgia Island, the water surrounding the ship froze. ([Location 974](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=974)) - Tags: #blue How did these men, confined and isolated for almost two years, organize themselves into a functional community and interact on a day-to-day basis? How did their social arrangements contribute to their success? ([Location 988](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=988)) - Tags: #blue Many have echoed Worsely and attributed this success in building a cohesive and cooperative group to Shackleton, who asserted that whether they lived or died, they would do it together. Shackleton required that all men, regardless of profession or status, yield to his authority and contribute to all forms of labor. Meals and meetings were strictly scheduled and mandatory, labor was allocated in a clear and fair manner, and food rations were split equally among the men (though, tellingly, Shackleton often gave his designated allotment to his crew). The men also taught and learned from one another, like the Grafton crew had, evincing a key feature of the social suite. Strikingly, the men spent a lot of time on organized entertainment, passing the time with soccer matches, theatrical productions, and concerts. On one occasion, the men etched out a track in the snow, placed bets, and raced on dogsleds in a competition they dubbed the “Dog Derby.” ([Location 1000](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=1000)) - Tags: #blue In his journal from the ordeal, Major Thomas Orde-Lees (who later became a pioneer in parachuting) noted: “We had a grand concert of 24 turns including a few new topical songs and so ended one of the happiest days of my life.” ([Location 1011](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=1011)) - Tags: #blue given the chance, isolated small-scale communities do not invent wholly new sorts of effective social order. No doubt, this relates partly to the fact that the marooned men and women were products of their own culture, which shaped their expectations about what society should look like. ([Location 1055](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=1055)) ##### CHAPTER 3 Intentional Communities While intentional communities have sometimes succeeded in forming social arrangements that temporarily deviate from the social suite, most have not. Few, if any, have achieved anything radically alien. ([Location 1123](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=1123)) - Note: Intentional communities are communities that intentionally break off from the normal social sweet to try something new. Most fail but those that break off only slightly and still follow the eight tenets of universal social structure like the Shakers and Brook Farm survive for longer. ##### CHAPTER 4 Artificial Communities People often think that personality traits such as kindness are fixed. But our research with groups suggests something quite different: the tendency to be altruistic or exploitative may depend heavily on how the social world is organized. ([Location 1796](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=1796)) - Note: The social context we find ourselves in can overrule our personality. The ultimate show of virtue is to be kind even when it is hard. Good people can do bad things (and vice versa) simply as a result of the structure of the network in which they are embedded, regardless of the convictions they hold or that the group espouses. ([Location 1800](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=1800)) Rapidly invented, deliberately designed, or wholly novel social systems that seek to abrogate the social suite cannot be as functional as organically evolved ones. ([Location 2130](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=2130)) - Note: Artificial communities are communities that’s social structures are artificially created. Studies in them have shed light on why certain social structural tendencies have likely evolved in our genes, but artificially created communities generally don’t survive as well as organically created ones. ##### CHAPTER 8 Friends and Networks For people around the world, the test of a real friend is that he or she gives you something without the expectation of a quid pro quo. ([Location 3966](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=3966)) The cognitive adaptations needed to make decisions about whom to help in difficult circumstances would surely be attuned to whether people would be able or willing to repay the debt in the future. In other words, you would need to be able to establish whether a person was a good credit risk. ([Location 3982](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=3982)) Tooby and Cosmides argue that, in foraging societies, infection, injuries, food shortages, bad weather, bad luck, and attacks from other groups were constant threats with major evolutionary impact. As they note: The ability to attract assistance during such threatening reversals in welfare, where the absence of help might be deadly, may well have had far more significant selective consequences than the ability to cultivate social exchange relationships… ([Location 3989](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=3989)) - Note: The ability to form friendships is rooted in our genes because we need people that will help us through difficult circumstances without need for immediate reciprocation when they arise. According to Herman Potzner it might also be about sharing of food. Individuality is crucial to this. The fact that you are irreplaceable to your friends even though you are unremarkable to strangers suggests that there is a deep connection between individuality—another key part of the social suite—and friendship. ([Location 3999](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=3999)) - Note: This could be a reason for why generation Z is so much more anxious and depressed. Our friends lack individuality. They become another number. But why couldn’t people simply rely on kin for support in tough times? ([Location 4000](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=4000)) Kin are sometimes competitors for family resources ([Location 4001](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=4001)) More important, collective tasks, such as hunting large prey and moving safely across terrain, can require group sizes that exceed what might be feasible if restricted to kin. ([Location 4002](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=4002)) ## New highlights added 08-04-2023 at 10:26 PM Our species evolved cognitive systems for the fast detection and maintenance of alliances, but this system can be hijacked or deployed to form the basis of vile actions. Yes, we generally prefer to be with people we resemble rather than those we do not; to like our friends and hate our enemies; and to value our own groups and revile other groups. But the bigger story here is that we are friendly and kind, and we have a psychology shaped by natural selection to be this way. These features of the social suite work together. They set the stage for us to cooperate with others and to teach and learn from others. ([Location 4432](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=4432)) ##### CHAPTER 11 Genes and Culture Many social scientists believe that this is the deepest origin of economic growth: people have ever-increasing amounts of cultural and intellectual capital at their disposal with the passage of time, and so they can plow ever more land in a day. ([Location 5673](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=5673)) Our species’ ability to survive in diverse habitats, from the Arctic tundra, where humans hunt seals, to the African deserts, where they build wells, has depended only a little on physiological adaptations such as a higher adiposity and shorter stature to conserve heat among humans living in the far north. Rather, our species’ survival across the world hinges on its capacity for culture, a capacity that is ingrained and that has led to astonishing inventions like kayaks and parkas. No other species depends quite so much on creating and preserving cultural traditions. ([Location 5697](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=5697)) Ecologist Peter Richerson and anthropologist Robert Boyd define culture as “information capable of affecting individuals’ behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation, and other forms of social transmission.” ([Location 5701](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=5701)) Culture builds on, and reinforces, our evolved capacity for making a good society. ([Location 6075](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=6075)) Once humans evolved to be capable of teaching and learning, they developed a parallel evolutionary strand, cultural evolution, side by side with genetic evolution. ([Location 6080](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=6080)) ##### CHAPTER 12 Natural and Social Laws Choosing cultural over genetic explanations for human affairs is not more forgiving. After all, culture has played a huge role in slavery, pogroms, and the Inquisition. Why should the social determinants of human affairs be considered any better—morally or scientifically—than the genetic determinants? In fact, belief in the sociological mutability of human beings has, in my judgment, done more harm to people through the ages than the belief in their genetic immutability. There is a long history, for example, of denying any biological basis for homosexuality and seeing it as a lifestyle choice under the control of the individual, a choice that others then may respond to with opprobrium, oppression, and violence. ([Location 6357](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=6357)) - Note: The author is baffled at how in society today there is a antsiness toward attributing behavior to genetics. We like to think we are in control. But he argues by accepting the degree to which genetics influence our societies, we can live more empathetically. Even more amazing, to me, is that AI might actually affect our social organization. We will increasingly be adding machines (such as driverless cars) and autonomous agents (such as online bots) to our social systems. These devices are not simply tools we will use to supplement our own efforts (like the face-recognizing glasses), but machines that might act in humanlike ways. At the moment, these devices—such as companion robots that express emotions and carry on simple conversations or online bots that spread misinformation—are still crude. Still, many of these technologies interact with us on a level playing field, as if they were human, in what I call hybrid systems. ([Location 6478](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=6478)) - Note: AIs are the first tool humans have ever made that could fundamentally change the social blueprint. These hybrid systems of humans and machines offer opportunities for a new world of social artificial intelligence. My own lab has experimented with some of the ways that such AI might modify the performance of groups. In one experiment, we added bots to online groups of humans and showed how the bots—even though very simple (equipped only with what we have called “dumb AI”)—can make it easier for groups of (intelligent) humans to work together by helping them to overcome friction in their efforts to coordinate their actions.66 In another experiment, we brought people into the lab and placed them into groups of four (three people and one humanoid robot); the groups were given the challenge of solving a game (involving laying railroad tracks in a virtual world) and the robot was programmed to make some mistakes and—importantly—to vocally acknowledge them (for instance, saying, “Sorry, guys, I made the mistake this round. I know it may be hard to believe, but robots make mistakes too”).67 The presence of this robot willing to admit error modified how the humans interacted among themselves, making them work better together. ([Location 6483](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07F67B9P4&location=6483))