Genesis - On The Deep Origin Of Societies

Book Name : Genesis - On The Deep Origin Of Societies

Author : E.O. Wilson

What is it about : And now back to my long-term interest of Evolution, social biology and our completely meaningless life - are we nothing more than a machine for gene perpetuation ? The author, a world renowned authority on such subjects attempts to help solve my riddle, by beginning at the beginning, when our very simple-structured ancestors in the form of earth's basic elements, were an accident waiting to happen - molecules swimming around Nature's laboratory, an underwater volcano vent maybe or was it that flash of lightning, zapping energy into a puddle of organic soup, fusing some carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen atoms together to form long chains of particles capable of replicating themselves ? Read on, the book tries to come up with the answers through his knowledge of group selection and altruism, thereby trying to answer one of the evolution science's most un-answerable puzzle - going against the instinct and force of natural selection, how did an individual organism acquire the knowledge and ability to sacrifice oneself for the greater common good ? - thus giving rise to our present society's condition, form and shape. A Key Take-Away from this book technically - within groups, selfish individuals win against altruists, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals.

Some thoughts after having read the book : Having read countless books on Evolution from various authors, I have consistently found them to be succinct, communicative and their one common trait being, the use of commonly experienced phenomenon to enlighten the readers - behaviour of flocks of starlings, pods of dolphins and schools of fish to distill a complex argument down to easily absorbed information. This book is no different - interesting, scientific and thought-provoking. 

Furthermore, the book again confirms the gigantic efforts in the time and effort of individuals, groups and international collaborations required in academic research work, before tiny steps of progress are made to better understand this very interesting topic - yeh, teams and teams of researchers over days and days (24x7) observed, measured and documented bees, ants and termites all day and night long in the field and in the laboratory - Respect！

What's more, the ideas of Altruism and Individualism presented in this book, had me thinking a parallel of the political systems of Socialism/Communism versus Capitalism. Ummm ...

The book ended rather abruptly, a mini roundup conclusion would be nice - my guess is that the author wanted to keep the book short and precise.

Would I recommend this book to you : An outstanding example of how to convey a complex idea for a general audience in 120 pages or so, through writing concise and precise prose with oodles of illustrations of the cases-in-point in our world of Nature. Go read and no regrets. The book broadens your mind, trust me.