Author: Michael E. McCullough
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541617525
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 371
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Book Description
"A fine achievement."--Peter Singer, author of The Life You Can Save and The Most Good You Can Do A sweeping psychological history of human goodness -- from the foundations of evolution to the modern political and social challenges humanity is now facing. How did humans, a species of self-centered apes, come to care about others? Since Darwin, scientists have tried to answer this question using evolutionary theory. In The Kindness of Strangers, psychologist Michael E. McCullough shows why they have failed and offers a new explanation instead. From the moment nomadic humans first settled down until the aftermath of the Second World War, our species has confronted repeated crises that we could only survive by changing our behavior. As McCullough argues, these choices weren't enabled by an evolved moral sense, but with moral invention -- driven not by evolution's dictates but by reason. Today's challenges -- climate change, mass migration, nationalism -- are some of humanity's greatest yet. In revealing how past crises shaped the foundations of human concern, The Kindness of Strangers offers clues for how we can adapt our moral thinking to survive these challenges as well.
Author: Steve Stewart-Williams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108776035
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 671
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Book Description
The Ape that Understood the Universe is the story of the strangest animal in the world: the human animal. It opens with a question: How would an alien scientist view our species? What would it make of our sex differences, our sexual behavior, our altruistic tendencies, and our culture? The book tackles these issues by drawing on two major schools of thought: evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory. The guiding assumption is that humans are animals, and that like all animals, we evolved to pass on our genes. At some point, however, we also evolved the capacity for culture - and from that moment, culture began evolving in its own right. This transformed us from a mere ape into an ape capable of reshaping the planet, travelling to other worlds, and understanding the vast universe of which we're but a tiny, fleeting fragment. Featuring a new foreword by Michael Shermer.
Author: Ofir Drori
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453249141
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
The true story of an adventurer-turned-warrior fighting poachers and traffickers to protect animals from extinction. Staging heart-pounding, espionage-style raids, Ofir Drori and his organization, The Last Great Ape (LAGA), have put countless poachers and traffickers of endangered species behind bars, and they have fought back against a Kafkaesque culture of corruption. Before Ofir arrived in Cameroon, no one had ever even tried. The Last Great Ape follows a young Ofir on fantastical adventures as he crosses remote African lands by camel, on a horse, and in dug-out canoes, while living with exotic tribes and struggling against nature at its rawest: charging elephants and hyenas, flash floods, and the need to eat river algae and snails to stay alive. The story moves from places of extreme beauty to those of the darkest horror: the war zones of Sierra Leone and Liberia. Ofir begins to work as a photojournalist in order to expose his shocking encounter with war victims and child soldiers. His experiences forge in him a resolution to become an activist and to fight for justice. The search for a cause eventually leads him to Cameroon. When Ofir discovers that no one is fighting to disprove Jane Goodall's dark prophesy that apes in the wild will be extinct in twenty years, he decides that he is the man to step in; because he knows he can make a difference, he sees it as his responsibility. And LAGA is born. The Last Great Ape is a story of the fight against extinction and the tragedy of endangered worlds, not just of animals but of people struggling to hold onto their culture. This book reveals the intense beauty and strife that exist side by side in Africa, and Ofir makes the case that activism and dedication to a cause are still relevant in a cynical modern world. This dangerous and dramatic story is one of courage and hope and, most importantly, a search for meaning.
Author: curious directive
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472529014
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 90
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Book Description
It's 7:03pm on the front line of the NHS ambulance service. Sylvia is on her last shift. Lisa is on her first shift. The two women patrol the city streets, encountering the full spectrum of human experience. An immersive journey into the world of the paramedic, where the audience sit in the back of a moving ambulance and witness all that comes with a twelve-hour night shift. The Kindness of Strangers is a pan-city promenade piece taking you into the curious day-to-day life of the paramedic.
Author: Aldous Huxley
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
ISBN: 146174136X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
When Aldous Huxley's Brave New World first appeared in 1932, it presented in terms of purest fantasy a society bent on self-destruction. Few of its outraged critics anticipated the onset of another world war with its Holocaust and atomic ruin. In 1948, seeing that the probable shape of his anti-utopia had been altered inevitably by the facts of history, Huxley wrote Ape and Essence. In this savage novel, using the form of a film scenario, he transports us to the year 2108. The setting is Los Angeles where a "rediscovery expedition" from New Zealand is trying to make sense of what is left. From chief botanist Alfred Poole we learn, to our dismay, about the twenty-second-century way of life. "It was inevitable that Mr. Huxley should have written this book: one could almost have seen it since Hiroshima is the necessary sequel to Brave New World."—Alfred Kazin. "The book has a certain awesome impressiveness; its sheer intractable bitterness cannot but affect the reader."—Time.
Author: Nicholas P. Money
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789141834
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 149
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Book Description
Weaving together stories of science and sociology, The Selfish Ape offers a refreshing response to common fantasies about the ascent of humanity. Rather than imagining modern humans as a species with godlike powers, or Homo deus, Nicholas P. Money recasts us as Homo narcissus—paragons of self-absorption. This exhilarating story offers an immense sweep of modern biology, leading readers from earth’s unexceptional location in the cosmos to the story of our microbial origins and the innerworkings of the human body. It explores human genetics, reproduction, brain function, and aging, creating an enlightened view of man as a brilliantly inventive, yet self-destructive animal. The Selfish Ape is a book about human biology, the intertwined characteristics of our greatness and failure, and the way that we have plundered the biosphere. Written in a highly accessible style, it is a perfect read for those interested in science, human history, sociology, and the environment.
Author: Paul Borovsky
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN:
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40
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Book Description
Even though he has always been very selfish, Nico the ape is helped by his tropical forest neighbors when his house collapses from the weight of all the food he had been hoarding.
Author: Jevan Pradas
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781520442549
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
What is life's most intense pleasure? Did you know that it is free, safe and feels way better than sex? Or that the key to pristine health is not only to eat like a caveman, but to live like one?In The Awakened Ape Jevan Pradas uses evolutionary psychology to hack the human mind and body to answer the question: "How can we enjoy life to the fullest?" The results, while unexpected, are completely backed by science.Perpetually bored, anxious, fatigued and overweight, modern society has failed to deliver the happiness it promised. The remedy, Jevan argues, is in a unique synthesis of a Paleolithic lifestyle and Buddhist meditation.A sprawling journey, featuring Jevan's adventures with naked Amazonian tribes and retreats with enlightened monks to learn the secrets of optimal well-being, The Awakened Ape will teach you how to achieve deep states of bliss. All while shaping your body into the fit and healthy animal millions of years of evolution programmed you to be.
Author: Desmond Morris
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Human behavior
Languages : en
Pages : 205
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Book Description
Author: Peter Corning
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139442183
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 476
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Book Description
Nature's Magic presents a bold vision of the evolutionary process from the Big Bang to the 21st century. Synergy of various kinds is not only a ubiquitous aspect of the natural world but it has also been a wellspring of creativity and the 'driver' of the broad evolutionary trend toward increased complexity, in nature and human societies alike. But in contrast with the many theories of emergence or complexity that rely on some underlying force or 'law', the 'Synergism Hypothesis', as Peter Corning calls it, is in essence an economic theory of biological complexity; it is fully consistent with mainstream evolutionary biology. Corning refers to it as Holistic Darwinism. Among the many important insights that are provided by this new paradigm, Corning presents a scenario in which the human species invented itself; synergistic, behavioral and technological innovations were the 'pacemakers' of our biological evolution. Synergy has also been the key to the evolution of complex modern societies, he concludes.
