21 Comments

Thank you for all of the kind and generous comments. I am grateful, and looking forward to hearing what people think about the book!

Expand full comment

I downloaded my Audible copy this morning! :)

Expand full comment

Congratulations! I was so excited to see Amazon had sent it to my kindle this morning.

Expand full comment

Congratulations Heather & Bret! My Kindle version is waiting for me and my hardback is on its way!

I love you guys, thank you for all that you do♥️

Expand full comment

Today is my 55th bday and I ordered your book a month ago, and am eagerly awaiting it’s arrival today!! Thank you!! Keep up the good work!!🙏🏽💜📚

Expand full comment

Happy Bday!

Expand full comment

So excited! Ordered my copy today. Eagerly awaiting that pure joy I feel when holding and smelling a brand new book. Especially one that holds so much promise for a shift towards understanding how far from the path we have strayed. I'm sitting in my garden in the early morning spring sunshine (in Australia) listening to birdsong, watching my two furry buddies, one a cat and the other a dog, "play". I always wonder what they are thinking! Perhaps I'll find some answers in your book!

Thank you for your dedication to getting humanity back on track🙏🌞😊

Expand full comment

Cannot wait to read the book and listen to y'all talk about it in current and future podcasts (and the like).

Love y'all and keep up the amazing work!

Expand full comment

Cheers from Brazil ! Just added it to my Audible library. ❤️🇧🇷

Expand full comment

I'm eagerly awaiting my copy in the mail today. My sister will be getting one as a Bday gift, too. Congratulations to you both, this one was a long time coming!

Expand full comment

Congratulations! I'm on Chapter 7 in the audiobook already. Wonderful.

Expand full comment

Congratulations to you & Bret! Received my copy today! :)

Expand full comment

I got my hard copy today!!!!!

Expand full comment

Here's my thesis: The function of morality is to facilitate mutually advantageous cooperation. But the specific set of moral memes - the rules, institutions, taboos, principles, rights, responsibilities... - that promote mutually advantageous cooperation is highly context-specific. That is, they are "relative" to the social, geographical, cultural, technological... circumstances you find yourself in. Moral memes work in concert, they form a kind of social ecology, which is difficult to navigate and change. Exactly which meme or meme complex needs adjusting to a new circumstance is hard to figure out.

For the most part, our moral psychology is well-adapted to the Pleistocene, where small, closely-related clans had to defend their territory cooperatively from invaders. It was more important for everyone to row in the same direction than for that direction to be the best one. Hence we have an innate moral psychology that is egalitarian and conformist to authority. But that moral psychology is not well adapted to a modern technological society where we live among millions of strangers. Equality and authority do not scale up very well, but freedom does. Conformity to authority is highly exploitable in a stratified society, whereas individuality secured by property rights is not so much.

Think of it this way: our taste for salt, fat, and sugar developed in an age when these tastes led us to nutritious foods: meat, ripe fruit, etc. But in a world where these tastes can be met and exploited easily, they lead us astray: we get fat and unhealthy by indulging them too much. Likewise, equality works for small, voluntary associations and families; but not for large nations and world governments. I think we have an innate tendency to "progressive" politics due to our inherited moral psychology, but the woke tribalism, the herd mentality that results in censorship and deplatforming, is now dysfunctional. Western civilization is largely the story of our discovery of the advantages of freedom.

That's the nub of it. I elaborate it by the hundreds of pages in my 1997 DPhil thesis.

Expand full comment

I just got my copy today! So excited! Have enjoyed your readings on Dark Horse podcast. You two are complicit in keeping me sane! Virtual hugs.... <3

Expand full comment

Delivery in Australia takes a bit longer..... I don't think our postal service saw the podcast saying you don't have to disinfect your Amazon packages :D

Congratulations to you both!

Expand full comment

I have the kindle version of the book. For me it is much easier to held a kindle than a book. Thank you for writing in a language accessible to a large segment of the population. If you don't understand, it is because you are lazy or have a very short attention spam.

I have heard of other authors having problems with the printed copies and the cause seems to be paper shortages.

Expand full comment