Okay but what’s the book about?

Good question. I’m a blogger who writes about a lot of different topics, and in 2016 I decided to write about the (American) society around me. Why was everything such a mess? When did things get so tribal? Why is it so nightmarish to talk about politics right now? Why do humans do this stuff?

I thought I’d spend a couple weeks on this, write a blog post about it, and move on. Instead I fell head-first into a six-year rabbit hole studying history, evolutionary psychology, political theory, neuroscience, and modern-day political movements, trying to figure out the answer to a simple question: What’s our problem?

This book is a distillation of everything I learned—my answer to that question, and my proposed solution. Instead of focusing on the usual left-center-right horizontal political axis, which is all about what we think, the book uses a vertical axis that explores how we think, as individuals and as groups. I hope it’ll make you a better thinker, enhance your conversations, and leave you with a better understanding of the world around you.

(P.S. for people who like visuals: there are 300 drawings in the book.)