The Questions
How can a species built for belonging to groups cooperate at planetary scale, and what are the biological, cultural, institutional and material limits on that ambition?
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I. The Cooperative Animal
01 How did an ape become a civilisation-building cooperative species?
02 Culture: the second inheritance system
03 Status, hierarchy, leadership and the accumulation of power
04 Cooperation as a game: trust, reciprocity, reputation and commons
II. From Belonging to Division
05 The astonishing ease of creating “us” and “them”
06 The tipping point: when cohesion becomes hostility
07 Religion, sacred values and the human need to make meaning
III. Tribes Become Political Systems
09 From bands to states to nations: why political boundaries exist
10 Democracy, leaders and legitimacy
11 Strongmen, institutions and destructive cascades
12 Inequality, class, wealth and the human appetite for “more”