First Class Notes

1340 First Lecture

I. Everyday life is stranger than we imagine and rests on fragile foundations
a. Teeming, industrialized existence is not some gradual and inevitable outcome developed over millions of years.
b. We owe it to an extraordinary experiment launched a mere ten thousand years ago

II. Homo sapiens sapiens is the only animal that engages in elaborate task sharing—the division of labor—between unrelated members of the same species.

III. Modern society is an opportunistic experiment founded on a human psychology that had evolved before human beings ever had to deal with strangers in any systematic way.


IV. What makes cooperation possible?
a. Rules of behavior make it possible for us to deal with strangers by persuading us to treat them as honorary friends or relatives
i. Some consciously designed
ii. Some grown by experiment
b. Single-mindedness—tunnel vision

V. Four pillars of book (and course)
a. The unplanned, but sophisticated coordination of modern societies is remarkable. Biology did not prepare us for the “Great Society”---trading with moral strangers
b. The explanation is institutions that make humans willing to treat strangers as honorary friends
c. When human beings come together in the mass, the unintended consequences are sometimes startlingly impressive, sometimes very troubling
d. The talents for cooperation and rational reflection that make cooperation possible, also make possible organized violence between groups. Trust is fragile