Christakis is convinced that we carry with us a genetic blueprint for doing good, despite all the wars and atrocities of human history. "Natural selection has shaped our lives as social animals, guiding the evolution of what I call a "social suite" of features priming our capacity for love, friendship, cooperation, learning and even our ability to recognize what is unique in other individuals".
He gives a broad overview of unintentional communities (like shipwrecked people on an island forced to live together), intentional communities (utopianists, hippies, ...) and artificial communities. The last category has been created in Christakis' lab, running groups of people to work toward common goals. Their software programme - Breadboard - identifies the ways of collaboration among groups of people who do not know each other. In 'fluid' societies, in which the participants can choose their friends, but are also tied to social networks, generosity prevails, and because the friends can shift groups and be in various groups, the generosity extends to the whole society in the end, in contrast with 'rigid' societies where such a choice does not exist, leading to more defectors and the ultimate collapse of the system.
Christakis uses hundreds of examples of the creation of 'societies' in the natural world, among animals, to show the systems they have set up to live together and prosper together. His social network has been tested in groups of animals, in villages in various parts of the world as well as among students and other study subjects, allowing to compare how human interaction and networks grow. "Bigger populations are better suited to social learning and to maximizing opportunities for valuable innovation." Instead of all the rhetoric of many social scientists, Christakis can show this with the data. Quantifying vocabulary, technology, group membership and interactions, current software is able to map all this into visualised networks that allow to compare (not judge).
He also discusses the gene-culture coevolution and suggests to have more bridging research between biology and sociology. The answer to the question "Is it nature or nurture?" should simply be "Yes!".
His view is one of optimism, but not naive, in the sense that he of course acknowledges that humans have both competitive and cooperative impulses, both violent and beneficient tendencies. Our history and our human narratives have to often been focused on the violent part of our humanity, and less so on the beneficial part.
There is no question that his work and that of his lab deserves wider attention. There is a lot to learn here.
