For most of human history, some 300,000 years, we lived in immediate-return hunter-gatherer societies that were egalitarian and sustainable. Hunter-gatherers lived using direct flows of plants, animals, and materials from nature. This required institutions and belief systems that reinforced sustainable resource use. The social cohesion and egalitarianism of small-scale, face-to-face societies also required institutions and customs that promoted harmony and protection for all members. New evidence about hunter-gatherers contradicts the widely held belief that today’s pervasive inequality and the decimation of the nonhuman world are due to “human nature.” Two prevalent beliefs reinforce the “defective human nature” view: the idea of Pleistocene overkill and the belief that hierarchy and inequality characterized early human societies. Both ideas are examined and debunked in this chapter. This chapter also stresses the importance of diversity, serendipity, and synergy in human physical and social evolution.

Homo sapiens has been present on planet earth for at least 300,000 years. For almost all that time we lived as immediate–return hunter gatherers. During this period we evolved the basic traits that make us human. We lived in small bands where virtues like altruism, sharing, and the preservation of nature were essential to group survival. Our societies were sustainable and egalitarian. Hunter-gatherers show us that neither environmental destruction nor extreme inequality is due to human nature. Both are the result of the requirements of production for surplus that came with agriculture. Over the last 10,000 years human society became ultrasocial, that is, it became so complex, stratified, and interconnected that it began to act as if it were a single self-regulating superorganism.

A minimal bioeconomic program would curb the major abuses of unchecked global capitalism. Polices include maximum and minimum limits to income and wealth, universal affordable health care and education, and an expansion of protected wild areas. Implementing these policies would not solve the basic contradiction of global capitalism – an inherently expansionary system within a finite planet – but it would buy time to make the transition to a sustainable society less catastrophic.

The forces that reorganized human society that came with the agricultural revolution still control and constrain our social evolution today. The human global economy has become a global, unified, interlocking system of resource extraction and surplus production. Integral to this system are institutions and belief systems supporting it. Today, neoliberalism is the dominant ideology supporting the ultrasocial system. Far from supporting individual freedom, it is a philosophy that defends sacrificing the well-being of individuals for the benefit of the global market. Fredrich Hayek, one of the leading figures of neoliberal thought, was influenced by biological theories of group selection and recognized that the market economy was a kind of superorganism. Neoliberals explicitly argue that the market is a supreme information processing system, far superior to human reason. The political agenda of neoliberals is twofold: to protect the market from public regulation and to promote government spending to expand market activity.

A key difference between humans and social insects is that human societies are characterized by hereditary social castes. Individual ants and termites do not inherit resources, privileged individual humans do. With the advent of large-scale state societies some 5,000 years ago, the lion’s share of the economic surplus was commandeered by an elite class whose power was enforced by hierarchical religions, the police and military, and belief systems supporting domination and control of the everyday lives of individuals. The reorganization of human society that came with the agricultural revolution still controls and constrains our social evolution today. The human global economy has become a global, unified, interlocking system of resource extraction and surplus production. Integral to this system are institutions and belief systems supporting it.

The term ultrasocial refers to those complex human and social insect societies that actively manage the cradle-to-grave production of the food they depend on. Contemporary theoretical concepts in evolutionary biology – including group selection, epigenetics, and social evolution – help to understand the transition to ultrasociality. Twentieth-century biology was dominated by a gene-centric view of evolution and natural selection. Today, biologists and social scientists are applying the basic principles of Darwinian evolution – selection, variation, and inheritance – at multiple levels. The recognition that Darwinian natural selection need not be gene based opens the door for a rigorous analysis of the common factors in the transformative evolution of humans and social insects that came with agriculture. Concepts of group selection can be successfully applied to understand how and why differentiated social structure and social complexity evolved. For humans and other ultrasocial animals, the evolution of complexity was propelled by their ability to produce surplus food. Basic economic laws drove the evolution of this major evolutionary transition.

Even if all the reforms outlined in Chapter 8 were enacted, the growth imperative would still drive the economic system. This chapter explores ways to move toward an evolutionary path leading to an entirely new system not based on growth and exploitation. It does not offer a blueprint for a utopian future but rather examines the human potential for radical social change given our physical and psychological characteristics, particularly brain plasticity and “evolvability.” Examples of sustainable human societies with very different economic systems from market capitalism are discussed, including Tikopia, Ladakh, and the Inca Empire. These cases illustrate the human capacity for innovation and radical change. As we face an uncertain future, nonmarket economies can at least show us that sustainable and equitable societies are possible. It is not human nature that is preventing us from constructing a better world.

Can we regain our humanness? Considering the massive loss of the natural world, the impending effects of climate change, staggering inequality, and the power of the elite, it may be impossible to avoid a dystopian future. Nevertheless, many scenarios for the future are possible, including a prolonged or sudden collapse, a new optimist paradise, or a decentralized golden age of barbarism. I argue that a plausible future is a return to a hunting and gathering way of life as the coming climate instability and the exhaustion of accessible fossil fuels make agriculture impossible. If there is cause for optimism, it lies in our deep evolutionary past. Selfishness and exploitation are no more a part of human nature than cooperation and caring about others and the natural world. If we are to avoid a dystopian future, we need a collective political movement to challenge the ultrasocial status quo and its defenders. Individual action is not enough.

Individuals did not choose the transition to ultrasociality or its incarnation as the global market economy. The current configuration of global human society is the result of the mechanical forces of Darwinian natural selection working on groups. Avoiding environmental and social disasters requires actively reasserting human agency over the ultrasocial system. The first step is to curb the excesses of the global market economy. Minimal policies to temporarily stabilize the system would ensure the well-being of all individuals and protect the natural world we depend on. Environmental policies at a minimum should stabilize the level of atmospheric CO2 to prevent catastrophic climate change and greatly expand and protect the Earth’s nonhuman life forms by expanding wild areas. Minimal social policies include universal health care, universal education, establishing a minimum and maximum income, and ensuring old age security. But these policies are only a first step in a transition to a sustainable evolutionary path.

Agriculture was a major transition in human social evolution. After its adoption, the size of human communities increased from a few dozen to hundreds of thousands. Societies became organized around surplus food production with an extremely complex division of labor. Human society became ultrasocial. It began to resemble a superorganism – an autonomous, highly integrated network of technologies, institutions, and belief systems dedicated to the production of economic surplus. Agriculture and the institutions that supported it gave us two problems that now threaten our very existence as a species: destabilizing inequality and potentially catastrophic environmental degradation. With agriculture, world views arose to justify and reinforce the subjugation of most individuals to the new hierarchical socioeconomic system. In early state societies, divine right, caste systems, patriarchy, and state religions supported the exploitation of human labor and the domination of nature. Today’s beliefs include the inevitability of progress, selfish individualism, and the sanctity of the market economy.

Some 10,000 years ago, agriculture arose independently in several areas across the world. The causes of the agricultural transition are still debated, but it is likely that the unprecedented warmth and stability of the Holocene climate made agriculture possible and that the climate instability of the Pleistocene made it impossible. As the weather became more predictable, people began to more intensively manage wild plants and began to store the grain they collected. Because of the unpredictability of harvests, people cultivated more crops than they thought they would need, and in most years, there was a surplus of food, leading to larger and more concentrated populations. By 5,000 years ago, small-scale agriculture had led to large-scale state-managed economies and total dependence on agriculture. Competition between city-states gave us full-blown ultrasocial economies and hierarchical, repressive states. Other consequences of agriculture for individuals include a marked decline in physical health, a reduction in brain size, and a loss of individual autonomy.