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book2019

The Goodness Paradox

Summary

The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution (2019) by Richard Wrangham argues that humans became less reactive in interpersonal violence (self-domestication) but more capable of proactive organized violence, explaining both our prosocial nature and our wars.

Core Contribution

Self-domestication hypothesis for human evolution; reconciles human prosociality with human capacity for organized violence.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • self-domestication
  • violence
  • human nature
  • evolution

Historical Influences

Evolutionary biology domestication research

Intellectual Lineage

Richard Wrangham evolutionary anthropology

Allied Works

Demonic Males Catching Fire

Contemporaries & Peers

Evolutionary anthropology literature

Minds Influenced

Human evolution theory

Intellectual Posterity

No conceptual posterity found.

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