Civilized To Death: The Price of Progress

Christopher Ryan

Oct 2019 · Simon and Schuster · Narrated by Christopher Ryan

About this audiobook

The New York Times bestselling coauthor of Sex at Dawn explores the ways in which “progress” has perverted the way we live—how we eat, learn, feel, mate, parent, communicate, work, and die—in this “engaging, extensively documented, well-organized, and thought-provoking” (Booklist) book.

Most of us have instinctive evidence the world is ending—balmy December days, face-to-face conversation replaced with heads-to-screens zomboidism, a world at constant war, a political system in disarray. We hear some myths and lies so frequently that they feel like truths: Civilization is humankind’s greatest accomplishment. Progress is undeniable. Count your blessings. You’re lucky to be alive here and now. Well, maybe we are and maybe we aren’t. Civilized to Death counters the idea that progress is inherently good, arguing that the “progress” defining our age is analogous to an advancing disease.

Prehistoric life, of course, was not without serious dangers and disadvantages. Many babies died in infancy. A broken bone, infected wound, snakebite, or difficult pregnancy could be life-threatening. But ultimately, Christopher Ryan questions, were these pre-civilized dangers more murderous than modern scourges, such as car accidents, cancers, cardiovascular disease, and a technologically prolonged dying process? Civilized to Death “will make you see our so-called progress in a whole new light” (Book Riot) and adds to the timely conversation that “the way we have been living is no longer sustainable, at least as long as we want to the earth to outlive us” (Psychology Today). Ryan makes the claim that we should start looking backwards to find our way into a better future.

Ratings and reviews

I've been doing a lot of research on early civilization, and as both a fan of the scientific method, and of the bible (and other sacred texts, but for the purpose of this thought specifically the bible)I really enjoyed this book. the author shows great disdain for the mind virus that arose from the agricultural revolution, which is well grounded in the sense that groups seeking power in the wake of scarcity mentality used a book (out of context) to manipulate humans, but I feel it is incomplete. I very much enjoyed the point of view, and it removed many of the cognative biases I've been unaware of, but I recommend also reading irresistible by Andy Stanley; which talks about the early purpose and differences in the old and new testament. Both books together provide a complemantary narrative in the nature of who we were, are, and the potential futures before us.

The author paints a myopic and romanticized version of the past, while history and science shows us that the majority of humans suffered brutal and short lives, often punctuated by violent death due to disease, parasites, malnutrition, starvation, predators, the environment and other humans. Obviously facts and science are not important If the past was as idyllic as the author wants us to believe, why did the human population not grow at (unsustainably) explosive rates until the last 100 years?

Un libro impresionante. Trae mucha claridad sobre el origen social de problemas que equivocadamente limitamos al individuo que los sufre. Este libro es un manifiesto de empatía.

About the author

Christopher Ryan, PhD, and his work have been featured just about everywhere, including: MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, NPR, The New York Times, The Times of London, Playboy, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Outside, El Pais, La Vanguardia, Salon, Seed, and Big Think. A featured speaker from TED to The Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House to the Einstein Forum in Pottsdam, Germany, Ryan has consulted at various hospitals in Spain, provided expert testimony in a Canadian constitutional hearing, and appeared in well over a dozen documentary films. The author of Civilized to Death and the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Sex at Dawn, Ryan puts out a weekly podcast, called Tangentially Speaking, featuring conversations with interesting people, ranging from famous comics to bank robbers to drug smugglers to porn stars to authors to plasma physicists.