You will hate to read this book, but you will love what it could achieve
„The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes“
„Le véritable voyage de découverte ne consiste pas à chercher de nouveaux paysages, mais à avoir de nouveaux yeux“
Marcel Proust
For ages it was generally accepted knowledge that the earth is in the center of the universe. People believed that the sun, the planets and the moon are circling around a stationary earth. This seemed to be obvious: God must have put his creation into the most privileged position.
But astronomers realized at some point in time that the calculations of the orbital motions could be simplified if the sun was assumed to be in the center instead of earth. It started in ancient Greece, but Nikolaus Kopernikus was the first astronomer to publish a detailed model in the year 1543. It was improved later by Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton. The new model offered dramatically simplified equations and allowed to calculate the planetary motions with much higher accuracy.
But the new theory was in conflict with the religious believes of the time. It was not acceptable that the earth was not in the central position and even in motion. The astronomers had to face fierce resistance from the church. In 1616 the then powerful catholic church banned all books advocating the heliocentric system.
The conflict was the beginning of an important paradigm shift called the Copernican Revolution. It was more and more accepted that science is more suitable to describe nature than religion. It was the beginning of a new era of scientific discoveries and subsequent technological advances which brought enormous prosperity to the world.
What has all this to do with this book? A central thesis of this text will also make you most likely feel very uncomfortable: that you are not this good person you believe to be. The goal of this book is to show that such a realistic (and more scientific) view of the human mind could open extremely promising new possibilities to redesign our society. I’m deeply convinced that by exploring and understanding our true nature (including what we call our "dark side"), we could be able to create a fully cooperative society. And it is not difficult to see how becoming fully cooperative will increase our society‘s prosperity (and most likely our happiness) at least tenfold.
I will also try to show that the transition to a fully cooperative society is in fact without alternative. If we don’t manage to transition to such a state rather soon, humankind will face doom. There is no sensible compromise: it’s all or nothing.
I will describe human sexual behavior in detail. I want to show that our sexual desires can be explained in a very compact way, if we abandon our precious belief that woman and man are designed to make each other happy. If we accept that the sexes unconsciously try to exploit each other as much as possible (which makes sense from a scientific/evolutionary point of view), human sexual behavior suddenly becomes easy to understand. And in this understanding lies a great chance for reconciliation: we can accept our partners according to their true nature and forgive them. This means we are able to love our partners for what they really are, which allows us to enjoy much deeper relationships. Armed with this understanding man and woman could find happiness.
Similarly I will analyze how competition leads to aggression between groups and individuals. We will see that this aggression is an inevitable consequence of the competitive system. As there is no effective alternative to evil behavior in a competitive system, we are ultimately all innocent. This is an important key ingredient to make the fully cooperative society work: it allows us to forgive ourselves and others and will make aggression much more unlikely.
I will also explain how people’s minds are connected by means of a shared subconscious. We will see that, because of this connection, giving makes us more happy than taking and earning. This again can be utilized to create a fully cooperative society.