Jane Goodall: All Good

What can our relationships with other animals teach us? That’s the question naturalist Sy Montgomery addresses in her memoir, How to Be a Good Creature. She explores the lessons about life and love she learned from various animals who touched her life, from a tiny pinktoe tarantula in French Guiana to a beloved 750-pound pet pig named Christopher.

In our guide, we’ll examine how the wisdom and companionship of animals helped Montgomery find her calling as a traveler and nature writer, appreciate animals and people in new ways, and cultivate love and community. These animals taught her how to be more curious, compassionate, friendly, loving, and much more—in other words, they taught her how to be a good creature. We’ll also discuss some of the science and history behind our relationships with other animals, along with ways you can apply the lessons Montgomery learned to your life.

In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari uses concepts from biology, history, and economics to tell the story of us, Homo sapiens. We start 2.5 million years ago, when Sapiens make their historical entrance, and end in the future, when the creation of an artificially created superhuman race may mark the end of the Sapiens species. Along the way, we learn how our ability to create imagined realities led to our dominance over other species. We watch as the Agricultural Revolution, the Scientific Revolution, imperialism, capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution change our species in lasting, and not always positive, ways.

Ultimately, we’re left with one question: As we design our future, who do we want to become? Asking the right questions may be more important than finding the right answers. Read this summary to explore our history as a species—in doing so, you’ll see today’s world in an entirely new way.

What lies at the core of human nature? If you stripped away civilization, would we be fundamentally compassionate creatures? Or would we cheat, lie, and steal, with only self-interest in mind? In Humankind, historian Rutger Bregman suggests that most of us think of humans as naturally deceitful and cruel, seemingly with a lot of evidence to back us up: Throughout history, groups of humans have gone to war, committed genocide, and owned slaves.

But despite our history of evil, Bregman argues that humans are fundamentally good. In this guide, we’ll go into detail on why he thinks this, explaining his claim that humans evolved to be kind, not to kill. We’ll discuss his critique of Killer Ape Theory and the Stanford Prison Experiment, two pieces of evidence that often justify the idea that humans are inherently evil. We’ll also compare his view of human nature with those of other authors such as Philip Zimbardo (The Lucifer Effect) and Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow).

Each of us houses a psychological Chimp inside our brains, primitively reacting to the world and spurring us to act emotionally, impetuously, and irresponsibly. If you’ve ever struggled to stay in control of your urges, succumbed to temptation, or sabotaged your own success, your Chimp has probably taken the reins for a bit. Fortunately, our brains also have an inner Human who, when functioning properly, keeps our inner Chimp under control and allows us to interact with the world in a stable, positive, productive way.

In The Chimp Paradox, psychiatrist Steve Peters outlines a mind management program that can help you manage your inner Chimp and lead you to happiness, success, and a sense of balance between your emotional and thinking selves.

Alex Banayan writes that success is like a nightclub with three doors: The first is the main entrance, through which you enter by working hard and playing by the rules. The line to this door is crowded and moves slowly. The second door is reserved for billionaires and celebrities and is off-limits to ordinary people. In The Third Door, he focuses on the last option—the door that allows regular folk to skip the line, find hidden opportunities, and think outside the box. He argues it’s the best—and really, only—route to getting ahead of the crowd.

Banayan interviews successful people from a wide range of fields to discover what insights, tricks, and motivations helped them find their unique paths to success. In this guide, we’ll review major themes he came across in his interviews, and we’ll explore how the insights he gleaned compare to theories of success from other thinkers.

What lies at the core of human nature? If you stripped away civilization, would we be fundamentally compassionate creatures? Or would we cheat, lie, and steal, with only self-interest in mind? In Humankind, historian Rutger Bregman suggests that most of us think of humans as naturally deceitful and cruel, seemingly with a lot of evidence to back us up: Throughout history, groups of humans have gone to war, committed genocide, and owned slaves.

But despite our history of evil, Bregman argues that humans are fundamentally good. In this guide, we’ll go into detail on why he thinks this, explaining his claim that humans evolved to be kind, not to kill. We’ll discuss his critique of Killer Ape Theory and the Stanford Prison Experiment, two pieces of evidence that often justify the idea that humans are inherently evil. We’ll also compare his view of human nature with those of other authors such as Philip Zimbardo (The Lucifer Effect) and Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow).

Renowned astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan believes the world is in a precarious position. Science has taught us a great deal about the world and brought about many beneficial changes to humanity, yet we still cling to unscientific beliefs and ideas at an alarming level. Sagan argues that as we advance into the 21st century and beyond, our collective ignorance of scientific methods, values, and thinking may be catastrophic to us and the world we live in.

In The Demon-Haunted World, he tries to counteract these dangers by teaching the scientific method and encouraging the application of critical and skeptical thinking in all facets of life. In our guide, we’ll examine Sagan’s argument that a less scientifically-minded society is a less prosperous and functional one. We’ll look at how the issues Sagan addresses have developed in the 25 years since the book’s publication. We’ll also look at how we, both individually and collectively, can remain critical and well-informed in an increasingly complex world.

What can our relationships with other animals teach us? That’s the question naturalist Sy Montgomery addresses in her memoir, How to Be a Good Creature. She explores the lessons about life and love she learned from various animals who touched her life, from a tiny pinktoe tarantula in French Guiana to a beloved 750-pound pet pig named Christopher.

In our guide, we’ll examine how the wisdom and companionship of animals helped Montgomery find her calling as a traveler and nature writer, appreciate animals and people in new ways, and cultivate love and community. These animals taught her how to be more curious, compassionate, friendly, loving, and much more—in other words, they taught her how to be a good creature. We’ll also discuss some of the science and history behind our relationships with other animals, along with ways you can apply the lessons Montgomery learned to your life.