1.1 Outline of Sections

Following this Introduction, Section 2 reviews major theoretical contributions from the social sciences, beginning with Alexis de Tocqueville’s reflections on voluntary associations in antebellum America and moving through classic and contemporary literature on small-group dynamics as engines of civic life (Jacob, Reference Jorgesen2006; Mills, Reference Muthukrishna1967; Olson, Reference Ostrom1971; Putnam, Reference Putnam, Leonardi and Nanetti1993, Reference Putnam, Leonardi and Nanetti2000). This section situates small groups at the heart of democratic participation, social trust, and collective agency.

Section 3 examines small groups through the lens of ‘generalized Darwinism’, drawing on insights from multilevel selection (MLS) theory and models of cultural evolution (Boyd & Richerson, Reference Richerson and Boyd2005; Henrich, Reference Henrich2015, Reference Henrich2021; Sober &Wilson, Reference Spencer1998; Wilson & Wilson, Reference Wilson and Hessen2007; Wilson, Reference Wilson2015). It analyses how small groups negotiate the tension between self-interest and altruism, how they function as adaptive units in both biological and cultural evolution, and how their ‘collective brains’ (Henrich, Reference Henrich2015: 212) enable cumulative learning, coordination, and intergroup exchange across generations.

Section 4 applies a cultural evolutionary lens to the emancipatory potential of small groups. It explores ‘integrative communities’ that have catalyzed benign forms of social renewal, ranging from early Christian cells and Protestant dissenters in nineteenth-century Scandinavia, to the Founding Fathers of the United States, and contemporary humanist collectives operating under authoritarian conditions in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The section further traces how modern prosocial innovators have evolved from religious and cultural dissidents challenging stagnant and oppressive regimes to digitally networked groups that operate in coded virtual spaces. Many of these groups sustain democratic aspirations through encrypted platforms, evading surveillance while keeping civic ideals alive in diasporic and subterranean public spheres.

Section 5 turns to the destructive potential of small disintegrative – or identitarianFootnote ³ – groups. It focuses on collectives that have mobilized cooperation to cultivate and legitimize racist ideologies and exterminatory programs. Drawing on scholarship on political extremism and violence, the section examines how initially marginal ‘groupuscules’ – including Nazi Party, Italian Fascist Party, and contemporary jihadist networks – have fuelled genocidal movements by deploying powerful myths of collective rebirth (Elias, Reference Elias, Schröter, Dunning and Mennell1996; Griffin Reference Griffin2007; Reference Griffin2012; Reference Haidt2018; Kershaw, Reference Klein1998). Viewed through a cultural evolutionary lens, these groups may achieve short-term success in forging strong collective identities and cohesive social structures, but ultimately fail by constraining human freedom, suppressing innovation, and disabling the corrective mechanisms necessary for sustainable social renewal and human flourishing.

Section 6 examines how thinkers such as Elinor Ostrom and David Sloan Wilson question the assumption that complex social and environmental problems can be addressed primarily through centralized, top-down institutional designs. Drawing on Ostrom’s account of polycentric governance and Wilson’s MLS framework (Ostrom, Reference Ostrom2010; Wilson, Reference Wilson2015; Wilson et al., Reference Wilson, Madhavan and Gelfand2013), the section treats their work not as a comprehensive solution, but as an empirically grounded alternative to both institutional monocentrism and evolutionary reductionism. It explores how the tentative alignment between institutional analysis and evolutionary theory outlines a form of ‘utopia for realists’ (Bregman, Reference Bregman2017), normatively oriented toward cooperation and collective action, yet attentive to conflict, scale mismatches, and evolutionary trade-offs. From this perspective, the Ostrom–Wilson synthesis is examined as a heuristic framework whose relevance for addressing the contemporary polycrisis depends on its limits as much as on its promise.

The final section synthesizes the Element’s core insights into the transformative role of small groups by engaging with recent diagnoses of the major maladies of the twenty-first century (Acemoglu & Robinson, Reference Rose2020; Kemp, Reference Kemp2025; Turchin, 2023). Drawing on these analyses, the section argues that many contemporary crises – from democratic erosion and institutional fragility to ecological overshoot and social polarization – are exacerbated by the weakening of prosocial small-group dynamics. It therefore highlights the urgent need to reinforce and institutionalize such dynamics across key policy domains, including education, urban resilience, climate governance, and civic mobilization. By translating evolutionary and social-scientific insights into actionable governance principles, the section positions small groups as critical leverage points for fostering adaptive capacity, democratic renewal, and long-term societal resilience.

3.1 Small Groups within a Multilevel Selection (MLS) Approach

For much of the twentieth century, the dominant view in evolutionary biology held that natural selection operates primarily at the level of genes or individual organisms – not groups. From this perspective, group-level explanations (such as species- or group-level altruism) were met with deep suspicion, despite the fact that the idea had been proposed by Charles Darwin himself in The Descent of Man (Reference Darwin1871). As he put it: ‘A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection’ (Darwin, Reference Darwin1871: 166).

Beginning in the 1990s, close re-examinations of Darwin’s ideas by Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson (Reference Spencer1998), together with contributions from other scholars (Boehm, Reference Boehm2001; Henrich, Reference Henrich2015; Turchin, Reference Turchin2006; E. O. Wilson, Reference Wilson, Van Vugt and O’Gorman2012), helped consolidate a growing consensus that natural selection can operate simultaneously at multiple levels – genes, individuals, groups, and even species. Theoretical advances demonstrated that group-level effects can, under certain conditions, override within-group selfishness, allowing traits such as cooperation or altruism to evolve. As David Sloan Wilson has emphasized, although MLS theory was initially met with resistance, it has in recent decades ‘reached a new plateau of acceptance’ (Wilson, Reference Wilson2022).

In the MLS framework, traits may evolve because they benefit individuals within groups or because they help groups outperform other groups. A behaviour that is individually costly but beneficial to the group can persist if groups embracing a prosocial ethos outcompete more selfish groups. In a now widely cited formulation – or meme – summarizing the core logic of MLS, David Sloan Wilson and E. O. Wilson write: ‘Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary’ (Wilson & Wilson, Reference Wilson and Hessen2007).

Unlike the uncompromising ‘selfish gene’ approach (Dawkins, Reference Dawkins1976), MLS is a broad and open theoretical framework that engages with – and is enriched by—insights from psychology, anthropology, and cultural history. As such, it has proved fruitful in explaining a wide range of biological and human phenomena, including the evolution of social norms, moral systems, and the emergence of complex societies. In a bold and illuminating article, Wilson and Hessen (Reference Wilson and Hessen2014) apply the MLS to the Norwegian welfare society to illustrate the world-making potential of cooperation. They begin with a general observation applicable across natural and human systems: ‘The conflict between lower-level selfishness and higher-level welfare pervades the biological world. Cancer cells selfishly spread at the expense of other cells within the body … In many animal societies, dominant individuals act more like tyrants than wise leaders … Single species can ravage entire ecosystems for nobody’s benefit but their own’ (p. 124). Yet, the authors argue, ‘every once in a great while, the good manage to decisively suppress selfishness within their ranks. Then something extraordinary happens. The group becomes a higher-level organism’ (Wilson & Hessen, Reference Wilson and Hessen2014: 123–124).

Seen through this evolutionary prism, Norway is seen as one such ‘higher-level organism’, in which a strong and enduring moral pressure to work for the common good has helped suppress destructive forms of selfishness. Several historical and cultural factors underpin this development. The modern Norwegian welfare state emerged from a long-standing tradition of robust microstructures: small-scale, high-trust communities whose identities were reinforced by institutions such as bedehus (prayer houses), schools, tightly knit neighbourhoods, workplace teams, and voluntary associations, as well as distinctive prosocial practices such as dugnad – collective, unpaid labour undertaken for a shared purposeFootnote ⁶ (Witoszek & Midttun, Reference Witoszek and Midttun2018). As Wilson and Hessen put it, in evolutionary terms, Norway functions effectively as a welfare society because ‘it has succeeded in scaling up the social-control mechanisms that arise spontaneously in village-sized groups’. Income equality, high social trust, widespread voluntarism, and altruist values taught in schools all ‘emanate from these social control mechanisms’ (Wilson & Hessen, Reference Wilson and Hessen2014: 124–125).Footnote ⁷ We may add here that, over time, these control mechanisms have become so internalized that they have shifted from external constraints to aspirational cultural ideals (Witoszek, Reference Wilson2012).

A strong tradition of Norwegian teamwork epitomises not just a competitive advantage of collaboration; it offers an instructive test case for the MLS framework: at both local and national levels, it displays prosociality and cooperative norms that contribute to high productivity and enable it to outperform more ‘selfish’ or individualistic groups in international arenas (Midttun & Witoszek Reference Witoszek2020).

Wilson’s deliberately pluralistic approach – his willingness to accommodate and synthesise diverse perspectives – extends well beyond evolutionary biology. It intersects not only with multiple strands in anthropology, political science, sociology, the history of religion, and quantitative social analysis. In his survey of contemporary neo-Darwinian frameworks (Wilson et al., Reference Wilson, Madhavan and Gelfand2023) – variously labelled ‘the third wave of evolutionary theory’, ‘multilevel selection theory’, ‘generalised Darwinism’, and ‘dual inheritance theory’ – one encounters a broad array of approaches, each addressing distinct questions. Yet despite this diversity, most converge on several core propositions: (1) human evolution is fundamentally shaped by gene–culture coevolution; (2) cultural norms, values, and practices played a paramount role in the emergence of Homo sapiens as a uniquely cooperative and socially complex species; (3) small groups have functioned as an evolutionary task force that – at their best – stabilized prosociality and cooperation as foundational human values (Bowles & Gintis, Reference Bowles and Gintis2011; Mansbridge, 1990; Ridley Reference Rose2008; Welzel, Reference Welzel2013; D.S. Wilson, Reference Wilson2015).Footnote ⁸

3.2 Small Groups as Key Actors in Cultural Evolution

In their extensive work on cultural group selection, Boyd and Richerson advance a powerful argument about why some groups persist, prosper, and expand, while others fragment or disappear. At the core of their cultural-evolutionary framework is the claim that culturally evolved norms systematically shape group resilience by regulating cooperation, coordination, and collective identity (Boyd & Richerson, Reference Boyd and Richerson1992, 2009; Richerson & Boyd, Reference Richerson and Boyd2005). Groups endowed with norms that foster cohesion – whether through shared religious beliefs and rituals, robust legal institutions, or widely internalized moral expectations – are better able to withstand internal conflict and external pressures. Such norms do not merely stabilize cooperation; they also make groups attractive destinations for individuals seeking security, prosperity, and competent leadership, thereby generating patterns of differential migration that further reinforce successful institutional arrangements.

Cultural learning processes play a decisive role in amplifying these dynamics (Gelfand, Reference Gelfand2018). Because individuals do not evaluate all norms independently but rely on social learning heuristics, successful groups exert influence beyond their immediate boundaries. Prestige-biased transmission leads individuals and neighbouring groups to imitate the institutions, practices, and values associated with visible success, accelerating the diffusion of adaptive cultural traits. Crucially, Boyd and Richerson emphasize that these benefits are sustained only when cooperative norms are backed by credible mechanisms for sanctioning free riders. Groups that effectively punish norm violations prevent the erosion of cooperation and consistently outperform groups with weak or inconsistent rule enforcement.

Taken together, these dynamics support Boyd and Richerson’s broader evolutionary claim: cultural transmission dramatically amplifies small initial differences in norms and institutions, rendering group-level selection far more potent in cultural systems than in purely genetic evolution. Once established, cooperative or non-cooperative trajectories can thus become self-reinforcing, helping to explain both the rapid rise of highly adaptive social formations and the equally rapid onset of institutional decay when cooperative equilibria break down.

Penetrating insights into the role of small groups in cultural evolution – especially the role of cultural learning, the evolution of cooperation, social stratification, and economic decision-making – feature in the original work of the evolutionary thinker and anthropologist Joseph Henrich (Henrich, Reference Henrich2015, Reference Henrich2021; Henrich & Henrich, Reference Heying and Weinstein2007). Henrich views small groups from a cultural micro-ecosystem perspective, which highlights how norms, skills, beliefs, and practices are transmitted, modified, and retained. Cultural evolution requires variation, which has taken place either through groups drifting apart or via innovation, adoption or rejection of norms. In line with the cultural evolutionary approaches developed by David Sloan Wilson, Peter J. Richerson, and Robert Boyd, Henrich argues that cultural evolution is driven by group competition, where groups with effective norms and institutions (from cooperation, food sharing, community-making religious rituals, and punitive actions against free-riders) outcompete other groups, causing adaptive cultural traits to spread.

According to Henrich, human cultural and technological complexity depend on the size, interconnectedness, and social learning efficiency of a population, rather than the intelligence of any individual. Hence, larger, more interconnected groups – whose ‘collective brain’ is a repository of accumulated knowledge and interacts with the wider world – generate and maintain more complex skills, knowledge, and technological know-how because they contain more innovators and provide more opportunities for high-fidelity social learning. Small or insular groups, on the other hand – to mention Arctic foragers as one cited example – tend to lose complex technologies because cultural knowledge degrades when there are not enough skilled models to learn from (Henrich, Reference Henrich2015: 209–244).

In their work on why small groups routinely cooperate with non-kin, strangers, and even future or hypothetical partners, Henrich & Henrich (2014) contend that that cultural evolution – an ongoing diffusion of beliefs, values, norms, and institutions – shapes our motivations and expectations in ways that support large-scale cooperation between groups, even when direct payoffs are unclear. Humans are sensitive to what others think, do, and approve of, and – more importantly – to norms and practices that are both profitable and generate social well-being, and hence offer reputational advantage. Thus, the groups’ ‘collective brain’ is ever expanding, and – through the process of learning, borrowing, and imitation – encourages cooperation with successful groups.

As we shall see in Section 4, these insights offer an explanatory scheme not only for deciphering mainsprings of small groups’ cooperation, but for the conditions of scaling of ideas ‘hatched’ by successful micro-collectives. Small groups are not only more adept in monitoring and punishing non-cooperative behaviour; they score high on trust and reciprocity and are more likely to contrive innovative ideas and unconventional solutions. These features account for the fact that micro-collectives function as laboratories of innovation – they are sites, where experimentation is less risky, close mentorship is at hand, feedback is immediate, and correction is fast and effective.

There is one more feature of small groups that has to do with their role as social intermediaries: through bridging micro- and macro-level cultural evolution, small groups act as conduits between individual behaviour and large-scale institutions. They transmit societal norms to individuals, adapt macro-level rules to local contexts, and filter which norms are practiced, modified, or resisted. Whether we look at deep evolutionary time, traditional commons, dugnad groups in Scandinavian welfare society, or digital micro-communities, small groups are the fundamental units in which both cultural specificity – and intercultural communication – have been produced, maintained, and transformed. It would not be an exaggeration to say that small groups are where cultural evolution actually happens – the focal point of creating micro, and then macro-trends that become lived realities.

3.3 The Janus Face of Small Collectives

Most coevolutionary thinkers point to the dichotomous nature of small groups: as animators of cultural innovation and moral community, but also as nuclei of a social order based on oppressive conformity, groupthink, and authoritarian control. As Christopher Boehm (Reference Boehm1999) notes in Hierarchy in the Forest, even egalitarian hunter-gatherer groups relied on subtle mechanisms of social control – including ridicule, ostracism, and gossip – to enforce conformity. These sanctions were crucial in deterring domination and ensuring group cohesion. But they also reveal the cost of maintaining equality: individual autonomy had to be partially surrendered for the sake of group survival. Similarly, anthropologists such as Harvey Whitehouse (Reference Whitehouse2004) and Joseph Bulbulia (Reference Bulbulia2004) emphasize that group rituals – especially those involving costly signals of commitment – while effective at fostering internal cohesion, sanctified group boundaries that may have escalated aggression toward out-groups. This ‘parochial altruism’ (Choi & Bowles, Reference Choi and Bowles2007) suggests that small-group cohesion has historically relied on a boundary-making logic – us versus them. Clearly, the evolutionary outcomes of small-group dynamics are of a dual nature: they include both the flourishing of trust and mutual aid, and the seeds of xenophobia, exclusion, and violence. As Jonathan Haidt put it, humans are ‘10 percent bee and 90% chimp’ (Haidt, Reference Haidt2012: 41) – the hives of human cooperation but also the breeding grounds of tribalism.Footnote ⁹ Thus, selection at the group level can reinforce oppressive hierarchies or fanatical ideologies just as easily as it can support prosociality and democratic processes (Wilson, Reference Wilson2019).

Modern history offers ample support for these data. On the one hand, it abounds with moments of creative effervescence, in which small groups generated new values, identities, and more inclusive social orders. On the other, it also reveals how highly organized and often violent collectives have initiated regimes of terror and destruction. To cite just a few emblematic examples – discussed in more detail in Sections 4 and 5 – the apostolic circle around Jesus of Nazareth profoundly transformed global history by disseminating a message of compassion and peace and by imbuing human suffering with transcendent meaning. Yet history likewise abounds in malign small groups – such as the Freikorps militias that facilitated Hitler’s rise to power; Lenin’s Bolsheviks, whose doctrine of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ culminated in vast systems of repression and suffering; or the cadre of ‘murderous professors’ implicated in inciting the Rwandan genocide (Chege, Reference Chege1996; Elias, Reference Elias, Schröter, Dunning and Mennell1996).

The dual – both constructive and destructive – nature of paradigm shifts initiated by small groups helps to explain the zigzag trajectory of cultural evolution. As Jared Diamond (2005) documents, societal collapse typically results from an interaction of natural and anthropogenic forces, ranging from environmental degradation and elite short-sightedness to the gradual normalization of decline. Civilizational regressions – which often follow periods of moral and social advancement – have thus emerged from complex constellations of factors, including ecological collapse, cultural inertia, and the overproduction of competitive elites (Turchin, Reference Turchin2024). Yet such regressions have also been shaped, to a significant extent, by disintegrative and identitarian groups that mobilized intolerance, glorified violence, and actively advocated the persecution or extermination of ‘othered’ segments of the citizenry.

In short, evolutionary processes are complicated by the distinctive rhythm and logic of cultural evolution which is neither linear nor predetermined. Culture is what makes people different from one another: it is about distinctive languages, rites, beliefs and ‘habits of the heart’. But culture is also about symbolic and emotional responses to existential situations which confront all human beings on all continents, through all time: the nature of tragedy and death, the role of heroism, the definition of loyalty and obligation, the redemption of the soul, the meaning of love and sacrifice, the understanding of compassion, the tension between an animal and human nature. Though political and economic situation changes all the time, these existential questions remain. Unlike the development of science and technology, where the old replaces the new, in culture past is ever present. As Daniel Bell has argued, ‘Culture is always a ricorso’ (Bell, Reference Bell1991: 333). It is a constant and creative return to narratives and images from the past – stories, icons, and ideas that were often prematurely thought to be buried or extinct. Think of the rediscovery of Baruch Spinoza’s or Lao-Tsu’s ‘ancient’ ideas of nature by contemporary ecological thinkers. Or, to use a more malign example, consider the destructive power of the imagery and stories of the Battle of Kosovo (1389) resurrected during the Balkan Wars in the 1990s. The real-life potency of dormant ideological or philosophical visions is often cyclical and inherently unpredictable. It may be activated by a range of factors, including economic turmoil, shifts in the cultural Zeitgeist, the ambitions of political leaders, sheer contingency – or the fatal attraction exerted by small, antisocial, and disintegrative groups.

While generalized Darwinism and MLS theory help explain how some traits evolve for the benefit of the group, they capture only part of the complex dynamics of cultural evolution. As Wilson notes in Creanza et al. (2017), the coevolutionary framework, especially in its cultural applications – remains relatively underdeveloped empirically and often skews toward macroevolutionary generalizations (see also Muthukrishna et al., Reference Newport2021; Turchin, Reference Turchin2015). Here Christian Welzel (Reference Welzel2013) – a key contributor to the World Values Survey – offers a bold scheme, supported by empirical facts and statistics. Central to Welzel’s studies is the concept of ‘emancipation’, understood broadly as a process of expanding rights and dignity and agency to a growing array of groups: women, children, slaves, ethnic-, religious-, and gender minorities, and – in some cases – to animals, plants, and rivers. Interestingly, for Welzel ‘the root premise of emancipation is evolutionary’ (Welzel, Reference Welzel2013: 393), in the sense that evolution instilled in humans an adaptive quest for freedom and fairness – latent under oppressive conditions but activated when existential opportunities widen. All societies are subject to a ‘permanent reality check’, and those unable to follow an emancipative path usually face stagnation or collapse. To support his argument, Welzel quotes data from the World Value Survey which show a significant correlation between societies’ emancipative values and high levels of social productivity and well-being.

What Welzel does not broach in his upbeat accounts of freedom rising is the crucial role played by brave, small groups as key drivers of emancipatory transitions. More often than not, visions of a free and fair society are first incubated in small circles of brave thinkers and committed ‘do-gooders’, who then embark on a bumpy, often tantalizing journey to translate moral imagination into institutional reality and to make the social world more hospitable. Welzel likewise underplays the fact that processes of freedom rising are frequently accompanied by moments of freedom waning – or what Erich Fromm famously described as an ‘escape from freedom’ (Fromm, [Reference Fromm1941], Reference Fromm1994).

A coevolutionary lens highlights the central role of small groups in the long-term development of human cooperation, culture, and morality which highlights the quest for emancipation. Yet, as noted earlier, it also draws attention to local communities and tightly knit collectives that sow discord, intensify social polarization, and promote disintegrative or discriminatory agendas. Grasping this tension is essential for any project aimed at revitalizing civic life or designing more resilient social institutions. The core challenge lies in learning how to harness the evolutionary strengths of small groups – trust, reciprocity, and shared values – while simultaneously guarding against their darker potentials: parochialism, conformity, and hostility toward out-groups.

The following two sections will delve further into the small collectives’ Janus-faced legacy.

4.1 The Disciples of Christ of Nazareth and the Ethics of Compassion

The core circle Christ’s followers – initially the twelve apostles along with a group of women devotees (such as Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Salome) – was a classical small group led by a charismatic preacher and healer. The question is: how to explain the dazzling, global success of what was initially a tiny group’s moral vision and the accompanying set of practices?

In evolutionary and social terms, the tight micro-communities of early Christians cultivated prosocial norms and values that were as trailblazing as they were compelling in the ancient world: the affirmation of indelible human dignity irrespective of social status or ethnic origin, care for the poor, mutual aid, non-violence, the ethos of compassion, the emphasis on social cooperation (Stark, Reference Stern1996). Because these commitments were not merely articulated as a moral vision but enacted as everyday social practices, they generated high levels of trust and strong collective identity, enabling the rapid diffusion of a distinctive codex of Christian life. In sharp contrast to prevailing Greco-Roman norms, early Christian communities elevated the social position of women – encouraging them to act as teachers, prophets, and community leaders – discouraged infanticide, promoted mutual fidelity in marriage, and condemned sexual exploitation. According to several historians (Harper, 2016; Stark, Reference Stern1996), these countercultural and comparatively egalitarian practices may have contributed to higher reproductive success and lower mortality rates within Christian communities.

What is particularly striking is that the crucifixion and martyr’s death of Jesus Christ did not precipitate the collapse of these early Christian groups. On the contrary, it appears to have reinforced their resilience, sense of purpose, and existential commitment. Sacrifice and suffering ceased to be meaningless experiences; instead, they were reframed through a shared template of divine suffering and the promise of eternal life. Emotional bonding and strong in-group cohesion were further intensified and ritually sealed through a range of sacred practices, including shared meals commemorating Christ’s Last Supper, baptism, and regular prayer gatherings.

Taken together, these norms, practices, and symbols transformed early Christian communities into super-cooperators: groups whose small-scale ethical systems enhanced both survival and adaptive capacity in often hostile social environment. They help to explain, at least in part, the high-fidelity transmission of norms, remarkable resilience under persecution, and the gradual emergence of scalable institutions. Christian communities cultivated a cooperative, altruistic, and broadly egalitarian collective identity – a robust moral we – which was transmitted across an expanding network of groups and eventually projected into wider society through the globalization of Christianity as a universalist moral system.

To sum up: what these Christian small-group structures effectively accomplished was a form of cultural ratcheting of what we would now describe as humanistic norms. Individual egoistic impulses were not suppressed but channelled within trust-rich group environments, while altruistic groups consistently outcompeted more selfish ones – not only in terms of resilience and adaptability, but also with respect to social cohesion and levels of collective well-being.

4.2 Norwegian Haugian Groups as Harbingers of Social Democracy

Another striking example of a successful religious group embracing an emancipative script was a religious circle led by Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771–1824), a Norwegian farmer, preacher, and entrepreneur, whose followers catalyzed a large-scale cultural and socio-political change. The so called ‘Haugian awakening’ was a result of Hauge’s religious epiphany while he was working on his farm. Following his spiritual revelation, Hauge began to preach a personal and purified version of Christianity which highlighted repentance, emancipation through education, and the ethos of ‘gain what you can, save all you can, and give all you can’ (Kullerud, Reference Kullerud2022; Witoszek & Sørensen, Reference Witoszek and Midttun2018). Initially, a small group of his followers – who called themselves ‘Friends’ – held oppbyggelsesmøter (edification meetings) that took place outside church buildings or in people’s homes. The Friends were a community of equals – men and women reading the Bible, discussing the Lord’s message – and designing new economic enterprises. Admittedly, the Pietist Haugianism had its shadow side: it was low on carnivalesque protocol, alcohol and cholesterol. But what it lacked in hedonistic spirit, it more than made up for as a tool of peasant emancipation and a trigger of cooperative enterprises.

The meteoric success of Haugianism is something of a puzzle, considering that between 1804 and 1813, Hauge was imprisoned in Christiania (modern-day Oslo) on account of breaking the so called Konventikkelplakaten – the law that banned religious gatherings and meetings organized outside the clergy’s control.Footnote ¹⁰ But, just as Christ’s sacrifice boosted the small community’s resilience, so Hauge’s years in prison did not break his and his followers’ spirit; on the contrary, his suffering became a template of pure and renewed Christianity (Magnus, Reference Magnus2020).

From the perspective of cultural evolution, several factors help explain the success of the Haugian movement. First, the Haugians emerged as a small group bonded by friendship, whose shared moral vision generated strong norms and values. Thanks to early peasant literacy in Scandinavia, these norms were disseminated through reading circles and discussion groups. When combined with economic success and entrepreneurial acumen, Haugian norms soon outcompeted prevailing moral imperatives by proving more adaptive – and often more profitable as well. Second, the Haugian organizational structure as a small group shows clear parallels with key Ostromian design principles, including a strong collective identity, clear boundaries, a relatively flat structure, inclusive decision-making, peaceful conflict resolution, robust social monitoring, and a pronounced ethos of cooperation (Ostrom, Reference Ostrom1990). The third pillar of Haugianism’s success lay in an fusion of word and action: the reanimation of existing Lutheran narratives of Christian piety through an ideal of caring fraternity that did not retreat from the world but actively contributed to society’s material prosperity. Hans Nielsen Hauge’s entrepreneurial ventures were always complemented by acts of philanthropy, such as administering poor funds and even providing financial support for the first University of Christiania.

Over time, the most gifted peasant pupils coalesced into an extraordinarily vibrant and socially mobile group that included successful businessmen, parliamentarians, pioneers of overseas religious missions, architects of the Norwegian Constitution of 1814, and co-creators of the humanist foundations of what became the ‘welfare society’ (Witoszek & Sørensen, Reference Witoszek and Midttun2018).

But a strong cooperative and philanthropic ethos and the leader’s charisma were not enough to explain why Haugian Christianity outcompeted orthodox Lutheranism. As in the case of Christ of Nazareth, the key to groups’ success was conciliatory, adaptive mien. As a cultural innovation, Haugianism did not break with the codex of Lutheran Christianity; rather, it energized it with ideas of social emancipation through education and responsible work for the public good. It proposed a peaceful refolution:Footnote ¹¹ a mixture of reform and revolution that reinvigorated Christianity while letting Lutheranism remain the center that held.

Researchers have noted that Hauge’s followers helped incubate values and ideas that were to become the normative core of social-democratic codex: cooperativism, lay empowerment, civic responsibility, and trust-based social relations (Kullerud, Reference Kullerud2022; Magnus, Reference Magnus2020). Thus, in cultural-evolutionary terms, the Haugian movement demonstrates how tight-knit groups can propagate prosocial norms, generating a ripple effect that reshapes the founding values of the national culture and influences socio-economic structures.

4.3 The Wilberforce Group and the Abolition of Slavery

The Norwegian Haugians – a small group of religious dissidents who moved to a cultural centre – had their equivalent in the British group of Anglican evangelicals gathered around William Wilberforce (1759–1833). Unlike the parochial, lowborn Hauge, Wilberforce was a well-known politician and philanthropist leading the Clapham Sect, a small humanitarian group campaigning for a number of causes – from minority and refugee rights, to the abolition of the slave trade. But, just as in the Haugian case, a small group – initially sidetracked by its contemporaries as playing with utopian, if not dangerous ideas – managed to do the impossible. In 1789 Wilberforce stood in the British parliament and held a 3½-hour speech detailing the horrors of the Middle Passage and arguing that the slave trade was morally indefensible (Tomkins, Reference Tomasello2007). The speech initiated the long political and cultural battle that finally succeeded in 1807 with a Slave Trade Act banning the British transatlantic slave trade.

Though there are certainly many contributing factors to the Clapham’s group’s success,Footnote ¹² the small group’s dynamics played a decisive role. When seen through an evolutionary prism, the British abolitionists were originally an intimate network of friends who scripted and transmitted a moral vision anchored in the original message of Christianity, that is, emphasising charity and compassion. The group had certainly a strong identity and cohesion which was rooted in religious conviction and frequent interaction (dinners, prayer meetings, correspondence). It enjoyed high trust and shared purpose which accelerated coordination of its various activities in a number of channels – schools, charities, publications and press reviews. Its central memes – ‘All humans bear equal dignity’, ‘Slavery is an evil that must be ended’ – appealed to an increasingly literate public (in particular middle-class women), and chimed with the revival of evangelical ideas. Last but not least, the Clapham Sect succeeded because their moral ideas were well positioned within evolving cultural, economic, and political ‘ecologies’. The victory of the group’s ideas was partly due to a prestige bias: human tendency to imitate successful and influential individuals. In the case of the Norwegian Haugians, the group’s prestige grew gradually, through extraordinary social mobility and entrepreneurial success of the ‘Friends’. The Clapham group had the advantage of its members enjoying high social status: as parliamentarians and politicians (Wilberforce, Thornton), influential bankers (Thornton family), and reputable writers (Hannah More).

That said, both the Haugians and the Wilberfoce group illustrate the role religion – in this case Christian values – in cultural ‘mutations’. Both groups were moral innovators, generating a vision of renewed Christianity based on reanimating the prosocial and altruist message and work for the common good. Both groups translated this message into concrete actions on the ground: practicing philanthropy, imbuing business transactions with ethical content, and investing in educational and healthcare projects. In both cases, small, peripheral networks created novel moral frames that succeeded not only in advancing cultural and economic reform but contributed to social well-being.

4.4 The Founders of the American Dream

Understanding the extraordinary success of the modern United States as the world’s major, economic and soft power, is impossible without reference to an exceptional small group that forged the moral vision and institutional foundations of the modern ‘Promised Land’: the American Founding Fathers. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Adams were all contemporaries who lived in the period 1755–1790. Although they hailed from different colonies and represented diverse social backgrounds and temperaments, they shared Enlightenment education, understood themselves as participants in a world-historical project, and – despite ideological differences – developed a strong group identity reinforced by enduring ties of friendship and mutual respect (Bernstein, Reference Bernstein2009; Ellis, Reference Ember2007). In evolutionary terms, they constituted a small, unusual coalition of highly gifted political and cultural outliers operating at the edge of their political ecology.

Very much as integrative groups discussed in Sections 4.1–4.4, the Founding Fathers operated in a ‘historical window of opportunity’ – weak legitimacy of distant rule, and high transaction costs of colonial governance – in which institutional innovation became viable. And, just as in other cases of prosocial animators, they were prepared to incur a high personal risk, operating in an exceptionally high-stakes environment marked by war, diplomacy, and economic instability. Independence was not inevitable; rather it was locally adaptive under shifting environmental constraints. Characteristically, the Founders confronted complex challenges through deliberation, negotiation, and iterative experimentation rather than rigid adherence to dogma (Bailyn, Reference Bailyn2017; Bernstein, Reference Bernstein2009). This cooperative dynamic enabled them to design novel political institutions robust enough to withstand competition with the British Empire, European monarchies, internal fragmentation, and recurring foreign conflicts.

In this sense, the Founders exemplify a process akin to group-level selection: a small, high-variation and resilient collective that successfully adapted to rapidly changing circumstances under intense environmental and political pressures. Their capacity to solve multiple, interconnected problems – ranging from war and taxation to legitimacy and narrative cohesion – allowed them to outcompete rival groups. By combining visionary ambition with prudence and institutional creativity, the Founders selected the most adaptive ideas and encoded them into a durable ‘institutional DNA’ that – for centuries – has continued to shape American political life and inspire the world as a locus of democratic and industrial innovations: separation of powers constrained dominance strategies, federalism allowed local experimentation, and regular elections introduced feedback loops.

At the time of writing this Element, the American Dream seems to have been compromised and eclipsed by the rise of a ruthless ‘transaction man’ (Lemann, Reference Leonard2019; Putnam, 2016). And yet, there are grounded evolutionary reasons to believe that the key Founding ideas can survive the current crisis of American democracy – though not as inert traditions or automatic safeguards. That is to say that, from a coevolutionary perspective, their endurance depends on reactivation through small groups, institutional niches, and selective pressures, not on reverence for tradition alone. The American crisis reflects maladaptive elite behaviour, polarization, and information pathologies – not the exhaustion of constitutional ideas per se.

To this we may add that, historically, founding ideas have tended to survive through small groups of outliers – from abolitionists to civil rights lawyers, constitutional reformers, and investigative journalists. In other words, the durability of founding ideas depends on their continued embodiment in decentralized institutions and small-group practices. While conditions in the 2020s tend to favour dominance strategies and norm erosion at the top, constitutional orders may nonetheless retain adaptive capacity through fragmentation, feedback loops, and moral carriers operating below the level of national leadership. Such features have historically enabled small, integrative groups to endure prolonged crises and to reassert themselves under altered selection pressures.

This is by no means a predictive analysis. As argued above, humanity’s cultural history abounds in extended periods of civilizational regression before small groups manage to coordinate their efforts and stage a cultural risorgimento.

4.5 Small Groups as Drivers of Emancipatory Transitions in Autocratic Regimes: The Case of Polish KOR and Somaliland’s SORRA

Although the role of small, humanist groups as drivers of emancipatory and democratizing processes has been explored in a number of isolated studies (Friszke, Reference Fromm2011; Skórzyński, Reference Snyder2012; Tellander, Reference Tellander2025; Witoszek, Reference Witoszek2020), there is still no comparative synthesis that systematically examines the role of prosocial animators as cultural and political innovators – and as challengers to – autocratic regimes. From a coevolutionary perspective, in oppressive conditions, such groups function as moral laboratories in which new norms, identities, and cooperative practices are generated, stabilized, and selectively diffused beyond their immediate social niches to challenge unjust and despotic order.

One of the most successful – and sadly half-forgotten – examples of such a small-group catalyst was the Workers’ Defence Committee (KOR), founded in Warsaw in 1976 under the Moscow-ruled communist regime. The KOR group began as a very small circle – barely a dozen Polish intellectuals, writers, and dissidents – who, initially, had no other ambitions beyond offering legal, financial, and material support to families of workers persecuted by communist authorities. Soon, however, largely thanks to the extraordinary talent and innovative flair of the group members, the KOR’s program morphed into a bold and groundbreaking vision: rather than fighting against the communists, the KOR leaders resolved to ignore the communist order altogether by building a parallel democratic polis existing alongside the Soviet-ruled system. Tirelessly, they forged micro-alliances with students, Catholic circles, workers, and peasants. They founded their own educational platforms and publishing channels, including an independent press bureau with a link to the BBC, Voice of America, and Radio Free Europe, which started broadcasting all cases of communist oppression. To put it in Castells’ terms, KOR worked on transforming resistance identity – based on negative sentiments and hatred of the oppressor – into a project identity, one which forges vestiges of a better and more just world (Castells, Reference Castells1997).

In the course of four years, between 1976 and 1980, the impossible happened: KOR managed to steal the information monopoly from the communist state through building an extensive network of independent publishers, running ‘flying universities’, and publishing Robotnik (The Worker) – a broadsheet distributed in Polish shipyards and factories that spread the idea of social solidarity. Suddenly, in the spring of 1980, a parallel society, complete with independent educational institutions, communication networks, and a circle of political celebrities – was in place. It was as if KOR’s acts of altruism and solidarity with the oppressed created an ‘epidemic of goodness’, yielding countless civil initiatives, committees, and projects. That is how a mass of ‘gratefully oppressed’, intimidated citizens fostered social solidarity (Solidarność) – a 10 million-strong, peaceful revolution that contributed to the collapse of communism in Europe.

What were the engines of KOR’s efficacy as a small group? Some were readily apparent: extraordinary imaginative talent in articulating prefigurative futures, incisive writing, and personal charisma – combined with the courage and high prestige of its leaders. Yet, when viewed through a cultural-evolutionary lens, KOR’s rise can be traced above all to its small-group dynamics. Dense networks of friendship, trust, and a shared sense of moral duty propelled KOR from a peripheral oppositional circle into a significant socio-political force. Equally important, KOR practiced what it preached: neither prison sentences nor police harassment prevented the group members and their collaborators from providing direct financial, legal, and material aid to workers. These acts of care and solidarity forged an unprecedented bridge between the dissident intelligentsia and the working class in communist Poland. KOR’s small-group structure enabled rapid and innovative norm transmission, departing from the logic of mass protest and instead modelling a miniature democratic culture – or an alternative polis – characterized by open debate, pluralism, and ethos of cooperation. These values were first cultivated within KOR’s own circle, then rendered attractive to student groups and influential early supporters, and finally gained traction across Polish society.

As in the case of other integrative groups, crucial to the efficacy of KOR was a deep friendship between the group members – a factor figuring in evolutionary theories of the ‘survival of the friendliest’ (Hare & Woods, Reference Henrich2025; Witoszek, Reference Wilson2007). The elixir of a friendship – nourishing trust and imaginative, unhindered deliberation – generates loyalty and acts of moral bravado unthinkable in bigger, more hierarchical or impersonal collectives. In the case of KOR, friendship was a battery which powered a stream of underground newsletters, samizdat publications, and the dissemination of the meme of social solidarity (Solidarność) as an antidote to communist oppression. That is how KOR became a ‘cultural seed crystal’ – a small structure around which a much larger movement coalesced and grew in strength.

When the Solidarity trade union exploded in 1980, many of its memes – from the defiant, red logo featuring a national flag – to more traditional Christian symbolism highlighting ubiquitous crosses and images of the Virgin Mary, were an intriguing brew of replicable, new and old icons and symbols, which united divided communities. The careful, ecumenical navigation between innovation and tradition explains why both in 1980–81 and at a later stage – during the time of transition to a democratic order – many advisers, strategists, and moral leaders came directly from the KOR circle. Similarly, the organizational DNA of Solidarity – anchored in non-violence, openness, horizontal cooperation, worker–intellectual unity – was robust enough to live through the years of oppositional retrenchment (1982–1988) to put a stamp on a peaceful transition to democracy in 1989.

To move beyond the Western hemisphere: The Somalian equivalent of KOR was a small group of teachers, doctors, and other educated professionals from Northern Somalia (today’s Somaliland), who founded the Somali Relief and Rehabilitation Association (SORRA) in the early 1980s. Very much as in Poland, the prosocial animators in Somalia had to struggle with a society that was haunted by a history of violent oppression, trauma and civil war. And very much as in the case of KOR, SORRA started small: from cleaning the streets and building schools and hospitals in every region of the country, including communities which were on different sides in the preceding intertribal war (Tellander, Reference Tellander2025). SORRA’s ethics of care and social solidarity, built trust and social capital within the community, setting the stage for larger mobilisation. Gradually, the small group morphed into more explicit opposition to Siad Barre’s dictatorship, leading to the regime’s escalation of violence again resistance throughout the 1980s. After their release from prison in 1989, the SORRA group became a locus of constructive projects, building alternative communal imaginaries and forging a sense of ‘we can do this’ outside elite or state structures.

In evolutionary terms, SORRA functioned as a micro-community nourished by ties of friendship, cohesion, and a strong community-oriented identity. As in the case of the Polish Workers’ Defence Committee (KOR), the Somali group enabled cultural evolution by incubating norms of mutual care, resilient identity, and local autonomy – norms that eventually scaled into a broader movement.

In her study of SORRAs ‘constructive resistance’, Ebba Tellander (Reference Tellander2025), argues that small groups should not be understood as mere stepping stones toward mass movements; rather, ‘they themselves are the foundational units of lasting change’. This insight brings us to the question of the complex, zigzagging – and often non-linear – nature of what we call ‘lasting change’.

4.6 Reinterpreting Small Group’s ‘Failure’: The Case of Hong Kong

Tellander’s contention that the small groups are the foundation of ‘lasting change’ is yet to be tested in brutal authoritarian regimes such as North Korea, Belarus, Burma (Myanmar), Russia, or China. The Chinese small prosocial groups are especially intriguing because the People’s Republic of China represents one of the most advanced, modern, Panopticon-like states – a ruthless dictatorship that has had a long tradition in violent suppression of all signs of dissent.Footnote ¹³ This does not mean that human quest for freedom and justice has been quenched or forgotten – even in light of harrowing consequences for those who dare to challenge the communist rule.

As in other cases analyzed above, the initial impetus of what became known as Hong Kong’s ‘Umbrella Revolution’ (2014), came from a small, well organized group. What was an interesting cultural innovation in the Hong Kong case was that the rebels consisted largely of the university and secondary-school students. Though their chosen name – Scholarism – sounds elitist, it may have been used on purpose, to boost the teenagers’ standing and prestige. In September 2014, dozens of Scholarism members – led by the 17-year-old Joshua Wong – climbed over the government building’s fences to occupy the Civic Square to protest against state surveillance and demand change of the biased election system (Lee & Chan, Reference Lee and Chan2018; Ma & Cheng, Reference Ma and Cheng2019). When police used pepper spray and tear gas on peaceful student protesters, many in the crowd held up umbrellas as a shield, an ingenious sign that stood for protection against the ‘elemental violence’ of the state and peaceful bottom-up protest.

The Umbrella Revolution spread rapidly through digital media (social platforms, or hashtags like #UmbrellaRevolution), sparking massive street occupations and quickly turning into widespread decentralized protests for genuine democracy against Beijing’s election controls. Some 100,000 Hong Kong residents, young and old, student and worker alike, took to the streets. Thus, what was a group protest scaled into a movement whose main features were lack of formal hierarchy, flexible roles, use of digital tools, and moral rather than institutional legitimacy.

Seen through a cultural-evolutionary and MLS prism, Scholarism led to a broad collective mobilization as an adaptive response to a perceived decline in institutional fitness which trigged experimentation with emancipative ideas and strategies. Highly cohesive youth groups functioned as evolutionary outliers, generating novel protest norms and symbols that diffused through imitation and moral contagion. In the light of the MLS, group-level gained in identity and solidarity that temporarily outweighed individual-level costs.

In terms of variation and mutation, Scholarism spread because of its struggle against cultural traits which were highly transmissible ‘memes’: striking visual symbols (umbrellas, yellow ribbons, school backpacks, school uniforms, megaphones) which attracted international publicity and solidarity. The group also grew in prestige and recognition. The rebellious students’ icons, Joshua Wong and other teenage activists – quickly gained social adulation not only because they were exceptionally articulate for their age; they exhibited exemplary courage and were ready to risk arrest while engaging in a non-violent action.

The revolution ended in December 2014, after the government refused to yield to protesters’ demands. The police had cleared the last protest camps, the stock market refused to crash, and key activists were arrested and ‘brought to justice’. Does it mean the original work of the student groups should be taken as a failure?

Cultural group selection suggests that the ideas of groups that display high internal cohesion, enhance trust, and solidify the ideas of free inquiry and social justice thus contributing to social resilience – should, in principle, survive and spread. There is but one qualification. In the case of brave, prosocial groups challenging oppressive regimes or authoritarian rule, ‘success’ is often less about immediate gains – or even creating new institutions – and more about forging a moral vision, reinforcing social endurance and initiating collective mobilization for emancipative change. The small group’s initiatives often entail significant personal risk, and their efficacy may only be appreciated retrospectively. Their ‘success’ is better understood as deferred impact – building moral legacies, creating a template for future actions, and expanding the collective cultural repertoire. Although the original student group was dissolved in 2016, its cultural traits persisted through other groups such as Demosistō and 2019 Anti-Extradition Movement (which adopted many Scholarism-style tactics). Thus, although institutionally fragile, the Umbrella Revolution succeeded in constructing a durable cultural niche whose traits later reappeared in subsequent cycles of contention.

The evolutionary perspective helps us understand how prosocial animators play a vital role in augmenting their societies’ ‘collective brain’ (Muthukrishna & Henrich, Reference Muthukrishna and Henrich2016), i.e., expanding the social capacity to imagine a more liveable lifeworld, innovate, adapt, and propose solutions to intractable problems. As reservoirs of prosocial energy, and the authors of scripts of social transformation, rebellious groups of Hong Kong students embodied values that have yet to take root in political or economic structures. The efficacy of their heroism defies any measurement. What they represent is – to paraphrase Ernst Bloch – the human capacity to learn hope which is superior to fear (Bloch, Reference Bloch, Plaice, Plaice and Knight1986).

4.7 Integrative Groups: Summing Up

As signalled earlier, the impact of small prosocial groups challenging authoritarian oppression should be assessed not merely by their short-term achievements but by their capacity to leave a durable moral footprint – one that can guide future transformations even after the groups themselves no longer exist. We may say that the humanist groups inhabit a prefigurative moral space (for the lack of a better term) – inhabited by a virtuous community – whose values and practices may be suppressed or dismantled by despotic rulers, but they linger in collective memory as a reminder that no defeat is final, and the project of a just and free society, once considered as impossible is, in fact thinkable and possible.

When read in evolutionary terms, in extremely oppressive contexts, many creative, emancipative ideas experience delayed selection – not extinction. More often than not, they go through a process of hibernation, distortion, partial capture, or eventual rearticulation in new forms. To cite the Polish Solidarność movement as an example: Between 1976 and 1980, it was suppressed by martial law and lay dormant for long nine years. In 1990, as the Soviet empire began to unravel, KOR’s and Solidarność’ ideas resurfaced and contributed to creating the first democratic government in post-communist Europe.

The empirical cases discussed in preceding sections show that, despite disparities in social background – some groups have been led by intellectuals, others by workers, peasants, or clerics – the integrative, prosocial groups tend to share several defining characteristics. First, they are often seemingly ‘maladaptive’ moral outliers. Rather than accepting or adjusting to the oppressive conditions, they function as altruistic, if not Quixotic, ‘do-gooders’ in their grassroot efforts to build social solidarity, mutual aid, and moral resilience. Secondly, their norms and control mechanisms come close to what Elinor Ostrom’s labelled as ‘core design principles’ mentioned in Section 3. Although the workings of small groups’ core principles need more research, if not amplification – such features as groups’ clear boundaries, strong identity, and their monitoring and sanction mechanisms were evident in most cases under scrutiny. Finally, the prosocial outliers operate through strategies that combine a mixture of ‘civility and subversion’, to use Jeffrey Goldfarb’s apt phrase (Goldfarb, Reference Graeber and Wengrow1998). Their narratives and action strategies are not simply reactive; they are generative, imagining new normative orders and laying the groundwork for a more inclusive society.

What is particularly fascinating about all cited cases is the cultural replication of small groups’ narratives and strategies. In some extreme political contexts – such as Belarus – new political realities and digital tools have reshaped group dynamics, organizational structures, and leadership styles. Yet even under the Belarusian regime, certain time-tested oppositional institutions, such as the so-called flying universities, continue to echo the practices of their historical predecessors.

A similar pattern can be observed in Poland. The Wolne Sądy (Free Courts) group – initially just four barristers opposing the lawlessness of the neo-authoritarian Law and Justice (PiS) regime (2015–2023)Footnote ¹⁴ – drew direct inspiration from the altruistic work of their twentieth-century predecessors in the Workers’ Defence Committee (KOR) (Witoszek & Kieszkowska, Reference Witoszek and Kieszkowska2019). Free Courts replicated much of KOR’s prosocial repertoire, ranging from legal defence of regime victims to wide-ranging educational initiatives.

At the time of writing this Element, altruistic small groups – and their cooperative ethos, permeating networks such as Stocznia and the Committee for the Defence of Democracy (KOD) – function as a form of ‘anti-authoritarian antibodies’. In the conditions of fragile democracy, it is prosocial animators that keep the democratization project afloat by healing social ruptures and reigniting moral imagination within society at large.

5.1 Palingenetic Groups in the Digital Era

The promise of rebirth is central, not incidental, to radical Islamist groups that dominate the violent, political theatre in the twenty-first century (Griffin, Reference Griffin2012; Mezzetti, Reference Midttun and Witoszek2017). Riled by the loss of faith, as well as corruption, hypocrisy, and decadence at the heart of Western culture, they promise collective rebirth through purification, total rupture with the present, the cult of martyrdom, jihad against the ‘infidels’, and the restoration of the Caliphate. The latter embodies a vision of absolute order that resolves uncertainty and restores dignity (Griffin, Reference Griffin1993; Roy, Reference Ruddick2017).

Seen from the perspective of small-group theory and cultural evolution frameworks, early and influential jihadist cells – such as Al-Quaeda or ISIS groups – have provided an intensive learning environment where members adopt radical norms, hatred of ‘infidels’, and symbolic practices (martyrdom, takfir, etc.) (Cengiz et al., Reference Cengiz, Karademir and Cinglu2022). The extremist norms are stabilized through enforcement and reputational dynamics based on commitment, loyalty, and punishment of dissent. Innovation and variation are provided by the small initial groups’ experiments with doctrines (Salafi-jihadist interpretations), tactics (suicide bombing, guerrilla warfare, online radicalization), and organizational forms (cells, networks, etc). Successful innovations spread on to other groups.

To use the example of Al-Quaeda (Guanaratna, Reference Haidt2002; Wright, Reference Witoszek and Trägårdh2006): in the 1990s it operated like a classic vanguard group similar to early Nazi, Bolshevik, or other revolutionary cells. Membership was selective, internal cohesion high¸ meetings were face-to-face¸ loyalty was personal; ideology Manichean (black and white) and purified within the group. What is intriguing about Al-Quaeda is that it did not expand by getting scaled into a movement; rather it remained a network of small groups, including local jihadist cells: affiliated organizations (Egyptian Islamic Jihad), training camp cohorts, and diaspora communities in Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan, and Europe. By comparison with Nazism, Jihadism never had mass membership; rather it relied on linked clusters, whose ideology and tactics crystallized through small-group dynamics. As Glenn Robinson argues (2020), what matters is the diffusion of ideas rather than large numbers of members. This modus operandi has made the Jihad groups both powerful and difficult to detect.

Thus, in the twenty-first century, it is not only the big superpowers, but extremist cells and networks that threaten to disrupt democratic processes, destabilize countries and regions, and undermine global efforts to address the climate crisis. In Europe, National Action (UK) and Nordadler(Germany) represent robust and versatile forms of small radical groups that operate, vanish, and reappear again under new names or aliases. In France, the jihadist mobilization has been conducted via cells such as the deadly Charlie Hebdo–Hyper Cacher Attackers, responsible for the 2015 terror attacks. Needless to say, some of these groups – made ‘visible’ by public stigmatization – are only a tip of the iceberg of a malignant ‘groupscape’. Modernity is rife with small, nefarious networks and collectives that have long remained under the radar, either because they have been adept at disseminating their ideas through highly encrypted codes and closed communication channels, or – as in the case of some white supremacist groups – because they have been tacitly accommodated as auxiliary task forces by right-wing parties and movements.

6.1 Amplifying Conditions for Small Groups’ Efficacy in Social Transformations

A synthetic review of the case studies discussed in previous sections – building on, yet extending beyond, Elinor Ostrom’s framework of eight CDPs for governing the commons – points to a broader constellation of conditions that underpin the transformative efficacy of small groups. One such condition is the dynamic and often fragile interplay between competition and collaboration within groups. In collectives shaped by strong, charismatic, and highly capable individuals – as exemplified by the American Founding Fathers or Poland’s KOR – the outcome hinges not merely on individual brilliance or moral conviction, but on the group’s capacity to curb ego inflation, regulate status competition, and distribute labour in ways that sustain collective purpose. Even the most gifted members routinely – though not always without friction – subordinate personal ambition to shared goals that can only be achieved through prolonged cooperation, mutual restraint, and principled compromise. Not so in disintegrative groups, where the cult and adulation of a strong leader are often a key factors in the groups’ dynamics.

A second enabling factor lies in the liminal status of many prosocial animators. Operating at the margins of cultural or political centres affords these groups access to creative spaces – zones of epistemic freedom in which imaginative responses to entrenched problems can be incubated. Within such spaces, unconstrained internal disagreement becomes an asset rather than a liability. Contention and debate serve as crucibles for visionary ideas and cooperative strategies grounded in creative compromise rather than ideological polarization. Informal group structures, in turn, allow members to appear as their ‘true selves’, fostering what might be described as controlled cognitive deviance: a disciplined openness to experimentation, error correction, and persistence in the search for workable solutions. As Theodore Mills observed, ‘Since social pressures and pressures from the individual come together in a small group, it is a convenient context to observe and experiment with the interaction between these pressures’ (Mills, Reference Muthukrishna1967: 87).

Sustained face-to-face interaction emerges as a critical ingredient in a small group’s capacity to initiate and maintain collective mobilization. Without dense interpersonal ties and a compelling palingenetic vision of the community’s risorgimento, emancipatory protest movements risk being overtaken by more established political or religious actors that operate through embodied social networks and articulate clearly defined moral visions. As Palestinian activist Iyad el-Baghdadi observed with regard to the Arab Spring, youth groups were often able to mobilize with lightning speed through social media and briefly articulate a powerful collective voice – yet ‘they had no manifesto, no ideology, no plan’ (el-Baghdadi, 2014).Footnote ¹⁶ Lacking organizational depth, durable leadership structures, and a shared strategic orientation, many such protest groups and movements were swiftly crushed by militarized regimes or outcompeted by better-organized actors – such as the Muslim Brotherhood – who relied on ostensibly ‘outdated’ modes of communication, including dense organizational networks, face-to-face coordination, and long-cultivated practices of collective discipline.

A fourth, related – and largely underexplored – condition of groups’ efficacy lies in the prosocial groups’ capacity for learning through what Mikhail Bakhtin called a ‘dialogic imagination’ (Bakhtin, Reference Bakhtin and Holquist1981). Dialogic imagination is the ability to inhabit the worldview of one’s adversaries not as enemies but as past or possible versions of the self. This imaginative empathy can be critical for both strategic manoeuvring and moral legitimation. The American Founding Fathers benefited from their past as loyal British subjects, allowing them to anticipate British counterstrategies. The Norwegian Haugian group had begun its pietist revival through lay preaching within the Lutheran church which it knew intimately and hence was able to identify its drawbacks and points of weakness. Likewise, many members of Poland’s Workers’ Defence Committee (KOR) were ex-communists or leftist intellectuals; their embeddedness in the real existing socialism and understanding its inner logic allowed them to contest it more effectively.

Finally, the strategic genius of prosocial outliers often lies in what Christian Welzel (Reference Welzel2010) called ‘civicness’. Being civic-minded entails welcoming diversity, embracing reciprocity, and sustaining conciliatory approaches across group boundaries. At the same time, however, the most impactful groups also exhibit irreverence – a capacity for non-violent transgression, as theorized by Chantal Delsol (Reference Delsol2010). Irreverence draws on long traditions of irony and satire, from Socratic inquiry to medieval heresies and Enlightenment polemics. When cultivated within small groups, irreverence operates as a crucial cultural adaptation: it challenges repressive authority while simultaneously releasing social tension and reducing the likelihood that political antagonism will escalate into violent confrontation between opposing parties.Footnote ¹⁷

6.2 Historical Importance of ‘Invisible’ Prosocial Groups

Two final qualifications are warranted. First, while this discussion has focused on charismatic groups whose achievements have been publicly recognized, history is also shaped by lesser known groupuscules whose impact is no less significant. The Culper Ring of spies, who helped Washington win the American Revolutionary War (Rose, Reference Rose2014) or the anonymous codebreakers – led by Alan Turing – working on deciphering German movements during WW2, are examples of such ‘invisible’ small groups whose actions influenced large-scale historical outcomes.Footnote ¹⁸

Second, small groups evolve in step with the technological conditions in which they operate. Today’s integrative networks work within a digital landscape that simultaneously empowers and constrains. In Belarus, for example, Telegram-enabled activism flourished during the massive 2022 protests, but its long-term efficacy remains contested (Beissinger, Reference Beissinger2017: 366–367). While digital tools can amplify educational and prosocial messages, some researchers argue that they weaken the formation of collective identity – a crucial ingredient in prosocial outliers’ ability to create solidarity and endurance (Herasimenka, Reference Herasimenka2025).

As we enter the ‘Panopticon era’ of ubiquitous surveillance, fake news, and algorithmic manipulation, the ecology of small-group activism is transforming, raising urgent questions for future research. New forms of social cooperation and competition are emerging – reshaping how prosocial and integrative groups act, organize, and imagine the future. In this shifting landscape, the moral ingenuity and adaptive creativity of integrative micro-collectives remain indispensable to any vision of emancipatory transformation.

6.3 Small Groups as Key Actors in Elinor Ostrom’s and David Sloan Wilson’s Vision of a Polycentric World

Throughout their academic careers, Elinor Ostrom and Vincent Ostrom worked to refine a governance framework that gradually crystallized into a theory of polycentric governance: a model in which multiple, overlapping centres of decision-making, operating at different scales, coordinate with and monitor one another while remaining mutually accountable (Ostrom, Reference Pagel1991, Reference Ostrom2010; Ostrom & Ostrom, Reference Pagel1997). This architecture of nested, semi-autonomous units – ranging from small face-to-face groups to local, national, and international institutions – affords a degree of institutional flexibility and contextual sensitivity that is often absent from centralized bureaucracies or purely market-based solutions.

Crucially, as mentioned above, small groups are not marginal add-ons within this architecture; they are its evolutionary and operational foundation. As mentioned above, it is at the scale of small groups that trust can be generated, norms can be monitored at low cost, and cooperation can be experientially learned rather than merely prescribed. Far from inviting anarchy, polycentric systems grounded in such groups can enhance adaptability, resilience, and democratic legitimacy – particularly when they draw on local knowledge, participatory engagement, and iterative problem-solving rather than top-down command.

It is this polycentric and pragmatically optimistic vision that has animated David Sloan Wilson’s extension of Elinor Ostrom’s work into the domain of evolutionary theory. As her former research partner, Wilson has persistently argued for a deeper integration of evolutionary science and institutional design, maintaining that Ostrom’s CDPs map onto the logic of MLS theory (Wilson et al., Reference Wilson, Madhavan and Gelfand2013). MLS holds that selection operates not only at the level of individuals but also at the level of groups, favouring social arrangements that suppress internal free-riding and promote coordinated cooperation.

From this perspective, Elinor Ostrom’s empirical findings on small local communities that successfully maintain prosocial norms acquire clear evolutionary depth. They resonate strongly with David Sloan Wilson’s claim that groups capable of aligning individual interests with collective goals tend to outperform more selfish groups when competing with others – even when such alignment requires individual restraint, sanctioning, or sacrifice. Small groups thus function as selection environments: they reward cooperation internally while enhancing collective performance externally. In this sense, the CDPs operate as institutionalized mechanisms for scaling prosociality. Not only do they provide durable social technologies that stabilize cooperation within groups; they also enable coordination between groups despite persistent incentives to defect. Importantly, as Wilson emphasizes – and as this Element has shown – CDPs are not confined to the governance of common-pool resources; rather, they are generative across a wide range of social domains, including classrooms, firms, neighbourhoods, municipalities, and oppositional niches within oppressive regimes (Wilson, Reference Wilson, Madhavan and Gelfand2023; Wilson et al., Reference Wilson2019).

Wilson’s animating concept to describe the project of universalizing CDPs points to an ‘intentional cultural evolution’: the proposition that societies can deliberately design social environments – often beginning at the small-group level – that foster cooperation, fairness, and collective well-being. More importantly in the context of this Element, Wilson’s synthesis offers a dynamic model of social change: one that acknowledges our evolutionary past as former hunter-gatherers without being bound by it; one that prizes diversity without sacrificing unity; and one that treats small groups not as sociological curiosities, but as scalable engines of intentional cultural evolution, capable of radiating their norms outward into larger institutional ecologies.

6.4 Polycentric Governance: A Utopia for Realists?

Predictably, both Ostrom’s and Wilson’s optimistic accounts of the role of small groups in shaping a prosocial, polycentric world have met with critique – both from within evolutionary biology and across the social sciences. One of the prominent critics has been Richard Dawkins, who in the 30th Anniversary Edition of The Selfish Gene (2006) reiterated his long-standing opposition to group selection. While Dawkins’ selfish-gene narrative – and Steven Pinker’s dismissal of group selection as a ‘scientific dust bunny’ (Pinker, Reference Pinker2012) – have lost traction in evolutionary theory, the governance implications of polycentricity raise a number of questions.

A major concern is the risk of elite capture: small, local governance units may be more vulnerable to domination by entrenched interests, thereby undermining the fairness and cooperative ethos they are meant to sustain (Mansuri & Rao, Reference Meeks2013). Ostrom’s emphasis on local knowledge and participatory processes has also been criticized for underplaying historical and structural inequalities that constrain local actors (Cleaver, Reference Cleaver2002). Communities are often internally fractured – by class, caste, ethnicity, or gender – and thus far removed from the harmonious collectives portrayed in idealized accounts of commons’ management.

Other critics argue that Ostrom’s framework underestimates the role of political conflict and coercion. In contexts marked by polarization, corruption, or state violence, bottom-up governance can falter – or worse, serve as a legitimizing façade for elite interests (Dryzek, Reference Dryzek2007). Finally, for those shaped by the traumatic legacy of Soviet-style social engineering, Wilson’s discourse of intentional change or managed evolution (Wilson, Hayes, et al., Reference Wilson and Hessen2014) can appear unsettling. Historical evidence suggests that successful policies do not re-engineer human psychology but rather activate pre-existing moral intuitions and social instincts – such as quest for fairness, reputation management, reciprocity, and status sensitivity – to motivate behavioural change (Baumard, Reference Baumard, Yami, Castaldo, Dagnino and Roy2010).

People comply with norms not merely because they are monitored, but because they perceive those norms as legitimate and fair. As the collapse of the Soviet experiment and its production of Homo sovieticus demonstrated, new institutions do not create new human beings; they reorganize social interaction so that the same underlying psychology produces novel collective outcomes (Baumard, Reference Baumard, Yami, Castaldo, Dagnino and Roy2010). From this angle, small groups matter not because they engineer virtue, but because they provide settings in which moral intuitions can be aligned, tested, and reinforced.Footnote ¹⁹

These qualifications notwithstanding, Ostrom’s and Wilson’s MLS-informed vision of polycentric governance is not as outlandish as its critics would have it. On the contrary, it comes close to what Rutger Bregman (Reference Bregman2017) has called a utopia for realists: a vision of a better world based on a pragmatic hope that collective intelligence, when properly channelled, can build fairer and more resilient societies. History, after all, is shaped not only by crises and collapses, but also by utopian imagination – by the belief that problems are solvable and that cooperation can yield both social resilience and individual flourishing.

Wilson’s Prosocial World is partly vindicated by a growing number of twenty-first century small-group experiments that counter the narrative of democratic decline. A compelling example is documented by David Van Reybrouck (Reference Van Reybrouck2013), who describes how a small community in Eastern Belgium developed a robust form of participatory democracy by complementing electoral representation with sortition: randomly selected citizen assemblies tasked with deliberating on public policy. Designed to counter ‘democratic fatigue’ and ‘electoral fundamentalism’, these assemblies have demonstrated a remarkable capacity to foster trust, empowerment, and cooperative joy – qualities often absent from adversarial mass politics.

At the time of writing, countries such as Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Estonia, Denmark, and Poland are experimenting with decentralized democratic innovations rooted in small-group deliberation. Strikingly, these initiatives are not only institutionally effective but emotionally transformative: participation in small-group governance ‘makes citizens happy’ (Kopp, Reference Kropotkin2019). As Van Reybrouck (Reference Van Reybrouck2013) notes, citizens who actively participate in political decision-making often return home feeling respected and energized – an experience starkly opposed to the frustration and humiliation associated with conventional electoral politics.

The phenomenon of public happiness – a notion famously articulated by Hannah Arendt (1963) – was vividly illustrated by the Irish Citizens’ Assembly on abortion rights. Convened in 2016, the Assembly brought together ninety-nine randomly selected citizens over five months to deliberate on one of the most divisive issues in Irish society. Supported by expert testimony and radical transparency, the process transformed ordinary citizens from passive spectators into active political agents. Its recommendation paved the way for the 2018 referendum, in which 66.4 per cent of voters supported repealing the abortion ban – revealing that a profound cultural shift had already occurred beneath the surface of institutional inertia.

Such examples illustrate a broader pattern: small groups often function as early detectors and accelerators of cultural evolution, making visible what has already changed in collective moral intuitions long before elites recognize it. The creative energy of local communities as problem-solvers is not confined to affluent Western democracies; it is equally evident in African experiments with ‘grassroots economics’ (Ruddick, Reference Ruddick2025) and in pioneering ‘green states’ such as Costa Rica (Evans, Reference Evans1999). While the scope of this Element does not permit detailed analysis, these cases underscore a common lesson: small groups excel at navigating complexity, addressing ‘wicked problems’, and sustaining cooperation under conditions where centralized governance struggles.

The question is: Can such deliberative micro-publics be generalized to address global and polarizing challenges – such as climate change, migration, or artificial intelligence (AI) governance? How to square the small groups as loci of civic trust with national and global governance? And is attention to small groups naïve in a world dominated by global markets, algorithmic governance, and institutional inertia?

This Element does not offer definitive answers. It does, however, suggest – on historical and theoretical grounds – that innovation authored by small groups does more than shift norms or increase resilience: it provides local communities with meaning, sense of purpose, and the experience of well-being. From an MLS perspective, cooperation and altruism are not merely moral ideals but evolutionarily grounded sources of public happiness. Institutions that promote fairness and prosociality persist not only because they are normatively attractive, but because they enhance group resilience and make life, quite literally, more worth living.

7.1 Back to the Future?

‘History does not repeat itself’, Timothy Snyder reminds us – ‘but it instructs’ (Snyder, Reference Snyder2017: 9). Understanding our evolutionary past matters because it provides a deep-time context for human nature – our basic tendencies to cooperate, compete, imagine, fear, and hope. These tendencies shape everything from psychology and ethics to politics and sustainability. They illuminate why we form in-groups and out-groups, seek social status, perform selfless acts, and find joy in a shared purpose. Crucially, evolutionary history also reminds us why, in a disorienting and fragmented world, we continue to long for meaning and belonging, which are provided by family, friends, and local engagement.

In the sections above, I have discussed influential proponents of group selection who contend that the most successful human communities are those in which individuals curb their selfish impulses and subordinate personal self-interest to the collective good. While that contention has a strong empirical grounding, this Element has sought to show its equivocal and distressing facets. History instructs not only through exemplary models of prosocial action but also through cautionary tales – cases of small groups that engineered their vision of a national rebirth through the cultivation of social exclusion, resentment, and genocide. Studying both kinds of groups – those animated by altruism and prosociality, and those driven by fear or hate – enables us to better understand the conditions that support constructive versus destructive social change.

At their best, small prosocial groups have practiced altruism that transcends kinship ties, building prototypes of mutual aid societies (Gintis, Reference Graeber and Wengrow2015; Hare & Woods, Reference Henrich2025; Wilson, Reference Wilson2015). The coevolutionary lens helps reveal the dynamic interplay between cooperation and ruthless rivalry, reciprocity and revenge, innovation and institutional inertia. Ultimately, it is the fertile tension between selfish and altruistic – or more broadly prosocial – motives and actions that underpins our adaptive capacities and determines whether we confront the planetary crises of our time with regression or with creative resilience.

The earlier sections highlighted how prosocial small groups have often acted as catalysts of emancipatory transformations. Many thinkers quoted in this volume emphasize that emancipation – understood as the condition of being free from domination – is a universal aspiration (Sen, Reference Skocpol1999; Welzel, Reference Welzel2013). The dream of autonomy and dignity has driven civilizational quantum leaps: from the abolition of slavery and extension of suffrage to the recognition of children’s rights, gender and sexual equality, and – most recently – the ascription of rights to animals and ecosystems. There is compelling evidence that small humanist collectives were essential in initiating and advancing these transformations. The emergence of modern liberal democracy – with its core values of freedom, justice, solidarity, and individual rights – has depended on the moral imagination and civic courage of such prosocial animators.

There are several reasons why studying small groups is especially critical in the age of polycrisis. As Elinor Ostrom argued in her essay ‘Crowding Out Citizenship’ (Reference Ember2000), contemporary models of collective action often presume that individuals are trapped in social dilemmas and require top-down control. In contrast, she advocated for a broader understanding of human behaviour – one that acknowledges rational egoists, conditional cooperators, and social learners alike. As mentioned earlier, she warned against the dominance of linear, hierarchical systems and called instead for polycentric polycentric structures: complex, multilayered arrangements in which individuals and groups have meaningful participatory roles in governance.

Ostrom’s argument reveals three insights often neglected by the sociology of large-scale movements. First, it affirms the importance of human agency and creativity in resolving seemingly intractable problems. Second, it highlights the need to harmonize local and global strategies rather than pit them against each other. And third, it points to new governance models that combine the ingenuity of grassroots actors with the strategic reach of formal institutions.

The process of ‘crowding out citizens’ calls for in-depth interdisciplinary research on such questions as: What motivates prosocial groups to embark on seemingly utopian projects? Which metaphors, narratives, and cultural tropes enable them to galvanize action and withstand repression? Which of them are universal and which are culture-specific? How do they mediate tensions between deep-rooted traditions and the demand for institutional innovation? What is the role of charismatic leadership in the process of initiating emancipatory transitions? What visionary scenarios of new models of governance do they offer – and how do they make those scenarios emotionally compelling and practically implementable?

In attempting to improve the efficacy of contemporary prosocial groups, we must also inquire how international actors – such as the EU, UN, OSCE, and philanthropic foundations – can better support small-scale civic innovation. How can they foster local democratic experiments without co-opting and distorting their original ideas or stifling their spirit? How can they help maintain the autonomy and authenticity of grassroots actors while boosting their visibility and long-term viability?

There are multiple domains where the insights on the work of small groups can be utilized and further refined in concrete actions on the ground. One involves the strengthening of democratic institutions through smaller deliberative bodies – citizens’ panels, mini-publics, and assemblies – where consensus can be built through inclusive and imaginative deliberation. These bodies often succeed where traditional party politics fails – by reconnecting disaffected citizens with the practice of governance. Another application lies in building crisis-resilient communities that are able to address the multiple challenges of our time. Whether in response to pandemics, natural disasters, or social disruptions cause, small groups are often the first to mobilize, coordinate, and deliver aid. Decentralized, trust-based networks can act faster and adapt more flexibly than large bureaucracies. Climate assemblies, community-based disaster preparedness teams, ethical hackers, or activist cells resisting authoritarian regimes, are all contemporary examples of prosocial micro-groups operating under adverse conditions. Their practices exemplify the core insight of MLS: the survival of the group – and ultimately the species – depends on the capacity to balance internal cooperation with external challenges.

A third area where research on prosocial groups is both relevant and needed is educational innovation. In the West, redesigning education through the lens of cooperation and prosociality involves reimagining the prevalent Bildung and curricula to include scripts on how to build broad partnership through empathy, collective problem-solving, and decentralized leadership. It would also entail a ‘re-humanization’ of schooling systems increasingly driven by inert bureaucratic structures, competition, individualism, and a narrow vision of success. In the digital realm, platforms designed to foster collaboration and mutual learning – rather than polarization and self-promotion – could transform social media into tools for community-building rather than sectarian division. It has become almost a truism that, to survive, we need constitutions that restrain power, legal systems that resolve disputes peacefully, and educational institutions that resist becoming growth-obsessed competitors and instead bring education into communities.

One of the most urgent and promising fields for small-group interventions is climate adaptation. Climate resilience efforts often begin at the local level, through small-scale energy collectives and first responder units, such as food-sharing networks, or green cooperatives. Small groups and grassroot networks can deliver tangible results more speedily than national governments, while also modelling sustainable lifestyles. In business and governance focused on green transition, prosocial small teams – autonomous, accountable, and solidaristic – can help organizations weather economic, technological, and environmental shocks. The evolutionary dimension of our environmental and climate strategies has been aptly captured by Naomi Klein, who writes: ‘Climate change isn’t an ‘issue’ to add to the list of things to worry about, next to health care and taxes. It is a civilizational wake-up call. A powerful message – spoken in the language of fires, floods, droughts, and extinctions – telling us that we need an entirely new economic model and a new way of sharing this planet. Telling us that we need to evolve (Klein, Reference Klein2014: 22, my italics)’.

Evolutionary insights suggest that in times of crisis, centralized bureaucracies often freeze or fragment, while small, autonomous groups can adapt, innovate, and persevere. If the future of human species depends on our ability to resolve conflict, build trust, and imagine new social contracts, then we must better understand how creative collectives ignite the moral imagination and mobilize empathy and wisdom. Equally, we need a clearer grasp of the complex history of prosociality: how altruism and cooperation emerge, how they are challenged, and how they can endure. The story of humanism – recast not as a lofty, Western abstraction but as a product of both biology and culture – can serve as a grand récit of human resilience. It reminds us that the human capacity to care, imagine, and transform is not a historical anomaly but an evolutionary inheritance.