Out of the Wreckage - A New Politics for an Age of Crisis

George Monbiot shows how new findings in psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology cast humans in a radically different light: as the supreme altruists and cooperators. He shows how both democracy and economic life can be radically reorganised from the bottom up, enabling us to take back control and overthrow the forces that have thwarted our ambitions for a better society. Out of the Wreckage explains just how communities can be rebuilt with the help of a new “politics of belonging”.

PL: I don’t have highlights from when I listened to the book itself, these are from William Davies’ review of it. The main thing here is The Restoration Story, linked in the Concepts database.

Human beings are the “supreme cooperators”, which explains our dominance within the natural world. Altruism and concern for others’ feelings are evolutionary properties that are central to our biology, hence the fact that “social” pain (such as loneliness or grief) produces many of the same symptoms as “physical” pain

We’d all like this to be true (even Hobbes would have done), but that’s a brave call, especially on the post-neoliberal precipice on which we stand.

If the left is to start a conversation about belonging, it needs to be confident that it can finish it

You don’t build an evocative story out of warnings and fears.