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  • Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress

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Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress


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The New York Times bestselling coauthor of Sex at Dawn explores the ways in which “progress” has perverted the way we live: how we eat, learn, feel, mate, parent, communicate, work, and die.

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

Prehistoric life, of course, was not without serious dangers and disadvantages. Many babies died in infancy. A broken bone, infected wound, snakebite, or difficult pregnancy could be life-threatening. But ultimately, Ryan argues, were these pre-civilized dangers more murderous than modern scourges, such as car accidents, cancers, cardiovascular disease, and a technologically prolonged dying process? At a time when our ecology, our society, and our own sense of selves feels increasingly imperiled, an accurate understanding of our species’ long prelude to civilization is vital to a clear sense of the ultimate value of civilization—and its costs. In
Civilized to Death, Ryan makes the claim that we should start looking backwards to find our way into a better future.
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Incredible . . . timely . . . clarifying." Jack Dorsey, cofounder and CEO of Twitter

“Engaging, extensively documented, well-organized, and thought provoking.”
Booklist

“Entertaining and provocative.”
Publishers Weekly

"Often zingy and colorful . . . Civilized to Death is unquestionably well-timed . . . Ryan is right to highlight the aspects of modern life that have gone off the rails.”—Undark

“[A] prescient book about the nature of progress . . .
Civilized to Death will make you see our so-called progress in a whole new light.” Book Riot

"This is not just a book, it's a revolution. Every person needs to read this book and unlearn the negative tropes we've been taught to believe about human nature, wake up to the shackles of consumerism, and discover who we really are as a species."
—Neil Strauss, New York Times bestselling author of The Game

“This book takes on 'progress' as a guiding ethos—and does so with gusto.”
The Stranger

“It is increasingly clear to many of us that the way we have been living is no longer sustainable, at least as long as we want the earth to outlive us. . . .
Civilized to Death is an important guide in this conversation.” Psychology Today

"A fascinating read."
Seattle Times

"Every great once in a while, a book comes along that makes you rethink everything you thought you knew.
Civilized to Death is without question one of them." —Jesse Bering, PhD, author of The Belief Instinct

“Christopher Ryan is one of the most interesting and provocative thinkers of our time. Everyone should read him—you might well disagree but you’ll definitely think differently."
—Johann Hari, New York Times–bestselling author of Lost Connections

"Read this book and you will never look at the world in the same way again. . . . Humans evolved to survive and reproduce. They were all successful with the second adaptation, with overpopulation that has resulted in famine, overcrowding, and civic strife. Human survival was made possible by the brain's remarkable intelligence. But why hasn't that intelligence produced happier, healthier men and women, even in 'civilized' countries? Christopher Ryan provides the answer in this provocative book, which is destined for classic status. It demonstrates how people are being civilized to death, both literally and metaphorically. It presents a stark picture of how the human experiment may be winding down if not winding up. But it also provides some solutions, brilliant roadmaps that you will find nowhere else, neither in politician's utopian scenarios or futurists' speculations."
—Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., co-author Personal Mythology

Praise for Sex at Dawn:

Sex at Dawn has helped me understand myself and the world so much more clearly.” —Ilana Glazer, co-creator of Broad City

Sex at Dawn is the single most important book about human sexuality since Alfred Kinsey unleashed Sexual Behavior in the Human Male on the American public in 1948.” —Dan Savage

“Funny, witty, and light . . .
Sex at Dawn is a scandal in the best sense, one that will have you reading the best parts aloud and reassessing your ideas about humanity’s basic urges well after the book is done.” —Newsweek

Sex at Dawn challenges conventional wisdom about sex in a big way. . . . This is a provocative, entertaining, and pioneering book. I learned a lot from it and recommend it highly.” ­—Andrew Weil, MD, author of Healthy Aging

Sex at Dawn is a provocative and engaging synthesis . . . that has the added benefit of being a joy to read.” Seed magazine

About the Author

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

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 1, 2019
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ First Edition
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1451659105
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1451659108
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches
  • Best Sellers Rank: #816,904 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

About the author

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Christopher Ryan
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Christopher and his work have been featured just about everywhere, including: MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, NPR, The New York Times, Playboy, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Outside, Salon, Seed, Big Think, and Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish.

Chris has been a featured speaker all over the world, from TED in Long Beach, CA to Ciudad de las Ideas in Mexico, to the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House. He's consulted at various hospitals, provided expert testimony in a Canadian constitutional case, and contributed to publications both scholarly and popular.

Even before co-authoring the New York Times best-seller, Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What it Means for Modern Relationships, with partner-in-crime, Cacilda Jethá, MD, he was on a wild ride. After receiving a BA in English and American literature in 1984 he spent several decades traveling around the world, pausing in unexpected places to work at decidedly odd jobs (e.g., gutting salmon in Alaska, teaching English to prostitutes in Bangkok and self-defense to land-reform activists in Mexico, managing commercial real-estate in New York’s Diamond District, helping Spanish physicians publish their research). In his mid-30s, Chris decided to pursue doctoral studies in Psychology.

Drawing upon his multi-cultural experience, Chris' research focused on distinguishing the human from the cultural, first by focusing on shamanism and ethnobotony—studying how various societies interact with novel states of consciousness and sacred plants—and later, by looking at similarly diverse cultural perspectives on sexuality. His doctoral dissertation analyzed the prehistoric roots of human sexuality, and was guided by the world-renowned psychologist, Stanley Krippner, at Saybrook Graduate School, in San Francisco, CA.

More at ChrisRyanPhD.com

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Cacilda Jethá has an Indian face, a European education, and an African soul. She was born in Mozambique to a family that had immigrated two generations earlier from Goa, India. As a child, she fled civil war to Portugal, where she received most of her education and medical training before returning to Mozambique in the late 1980s. A young physician determined to help heal her country, Cacilda spent seven years as the only physician serving some 50,000 people in a vast rural district in the north of the country. While there, Cacilda also conducted research (funded by the World Health Organization) on the sexual behavior of rural Mozambicans in order to help design more effective AIDS prevention efforts.

After almost a decade in Mozambique, Cacilda returned to Portugal, where she completed her medical residency training in both psychiatry (at the prestigious Hospital de Julio de Matos in Lisbon) and occupational medicine.

She and Christopher Ryan currently divide their time between Portland, Oregon and Barcelona, Spain. She speaks Portuguese, French, Spanish, Catalán, English, and some rusty Swahili.