A bold, provocative history of our species finds the deep origins of society's success and failure in our evolutionary history.
We are living through the most prosperous age in all of human history, yet people are more listless, divided and miserable than ever. Wealth and comfort are unparalleled, and yet our political landscape grows ever more toxic, and rates of suicide, loneliness, and chronic illness continue to skyrocket. How do we explain the gap between these two truths? What's more, what can we do to close it?
For evolutionary biologists Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein, the cause of our woes is clear: the modern world is out of sync with our ancient brains and bodies. We evolved to live in clans, but today most people don't even know their neighbours' names.
Survival in our earliest societies depended on living in harmony with nature, but today the food we eat, the work we do ? even the light we absorb - is radically different from what our minds and bodies evolved to expect. The cognitive dissonance created by trying to live in a society we're not built for is killing us.
In this book, Heying and Weinstein cut through the noise surrounding issues like sex, gender, diet, parenting, sleep, education, and much else besides to outline a science-based worldview that will empower you to live a better, wiser life. They distill more than 20years of research and first-hand accounts from the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth into straightforward principles and guidance for confronting our culture of hyper-novelty.
