#615 Mark Moffett - The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall
RECORDED ON JANUARY 21st 2022.
Dr. Mark W. Moffett is a tropical biologist and research associate at the Smithsonian and used to be a visiting scholar in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, which he used to write his book, The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall.
In this episode, we focus on The Human Swarm. We go through topics like: what is a society; what makes humans successful; different types of hunter-gatherer societies; how societies scale up; markers of membership; how people think about societies; identities, and how they change over time; the lifecycle of societies, including how they end; war and peace across human history; transfers of membership, slavery and subjugation; immigration, and how citizenship is determined; and the necessity of societies.
Time Links:
Intro
What is a society?
Human societies, and our success
Different types of hunter-gatherer societies
Scaling up societies
Markers of membership
How people think about societies
Changing identity
The lifecycle of societies
War and peace
Transfers of membership
How societies end
Immigration and citizenship
Are societies necessary?
Follow Dr. Moffett’s work!
Follow Dr. Moffett’s work:
Website: https://bit.ly/3jkrRee
ResearchGate profile: https://bit.ly/3zAgTI7
The Human Swarm: https://amzn.to/38hmWEC