Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T04:05:05.886Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - The Ultrasocial Origin of Our Existential Crisis

from Part I - The Evolution of Human Ultrasociality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2021

John M. Gowdy
Affiliation:
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York
Get access

Summary

Agriculture was a major transition in human social evolution. After its adoption, the size of human communities increased from a few dozen to hundreds of thousands. Societies became organized around surplus food production with an extremely complex division of labor. Human society became ultrasocial. It began to resemble a superorganism – an autonomous, highly integrated network of technologies, institutions, and belief systems dedicated to the production of economic surplus. Agriculture and the institutions that supported it gave us two problems that now threaten our very existence as a species: destabilizing inequality and potentially catastrophic environmental degradation. With agriculture, world views arose to justify and reinforce the subjugation of most individuals to the new hierarchical socioeconomic system. In early state societies, divine right, caste systems, patriarchy, and state religions supported the exploitation of human labor and the domination of nature. Today’s beliefs include the inevitability of progress, selfish individualism, and the sanctity of the market economy.

Type
Chapter
Information
Ultrasocial
The Evolution of Human Nature and the Quest for a Sustainable Future
, pp. 3 - 16
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×