Interview: Nicholas Christakis on His Latest Book

“When I’m speaking of a good society, I’m not necessarily speaking of a good society in the 21st century. I’m speaking of a kind of good society that we have a blueprint to make, that is, in turn, written in our genes.”

Nicholas Christakis, the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, recently published his third book Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Dr. Christakis also earned a PhD in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. In the time since, he has worked at the intersection of social networks and biological sciences—and, to this effect, serves as the director of the Human Nature Lab at Yale, which focuses on the “relationship between social networks and health.” He joins Merion West editor Erich Prince to discuss key conclusions of his book Blueprint, the context in which he sees his work, and the role of empirical approaches to understanding human society.

To begin, Professor Christakis, I’d like to ask you about the context in which you see your book, if any. I know there have been a number of recent books out that have received a lot of attention, from those by Steven Pinker, whom I see is well-represented on the book jacket—to Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind. Some of these books are shedding light on aspects of human nature with a certain upbeatness and are also grounded more in empirical sorts of methodologies. I’m wondering if you see this book in that context or maybe a different context or maybe none at all?

The book is, in some sense, in conversation with books such as Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature or Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel or Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind. It’s a book that’s full of stories and big ideas. It tries to advance a set of interlocking arguments about the role of evolution in shaping our societies for good. How is it that, in fact, we make societies have all these desirable properties—such as love, friendship, and cooperation—and not just awful qualities? It uses evidence from many fields and from many case studies to make that case. So it’s similar to the books you mention in terms of scope and positivity, I suppose—and empirical basis.