Standing on the shoulders of farsighted humans Book dedication Acknowledgements List of Boxes Preface 1 Introduction 1.1 Standing on the shoulders of others: a book of thousand different voices 1.2 Notes on interdisciplinarity 2 Death and cosmic purpose of life 2.1 Quests to find a cosmic purpose of life 2.2 Beliefs, religion, and evolution 2.3 Fear of death, purpose, human evolution, and discrimination 2.4 Teleology, morality, organized religions, and advantages of believing 2.5 Beliefs, atheism, and spirituality 3 Our place in nature, progress, racism and eugenics 3.
1 ''Progress'', racism and quests to understand our place in nature 3.2 Cultural, or ''epigenetic'', versus innate, or ''genetic'', notions of race 3.3 Aristotle, Galen, monkeys, human anatomy, and Chain of Being 3.4 Apes and rise of innate notions of ''race'' such as white supremacy 3.5 Apish-humans, Malthus and Darwin''s ''struggle-for-life'', Freud''s psychoanalysis, and eugenics 3.6 Medical experimentation, ''progress'', eugenics, and genocide 4 Myths and reality about ''savages'' and ''civilization'' 4.1 ''Savages'', ''civilization'' and inequality 4.2 Agriculture, labor, slavery, leisure, health and ''progress'' 4.
3. Hobbes, Rousseau''s ''Noble Savage'', and violence 5 Sex, love, marriage, ''meant to be'', and misogyny 5.1 Teleological stories, homosexuality, romantic love, sex, and marriage 5.2 Agriculture, religion, ''original sin'', monogamy, and misogyny 5.3 Women, men, sexual desire and orgasms 5.4 Sex at dawn, Sex at dusk, scientific biases, ''traditional societies'', and jealousy 5.5 History of marriage, love and sex, and links to health and happiness 5.6 Misogyny, history, teleology, religion, and Hypatia of Alexandria 5.
7 Myths and facts concerning narratives on gender differences and roles 6 Darwin, capitalism, ''social Darwinism'', colonialism, and beliefs 6.1 Darwin, Darwinism, idealization, adaptationism, and just-so-stories 6.2 Purpose, struggle-for-life, selfish genes, straw-men and suicide 6.3 ''Progress'', ''higher'' or ''favored'' groups, racism, misogyny, and capitalism 6.4 Teleological narratives, ''savages'', colonialism, slavery, and neo-colonialism 7 Brains, conspiracies, witches, monsters, wars and animal abuse 7.1 Brains, behavior, genes, and religions 7.2 Randomness, lack of control, conspiracy theories, and political beliefs 7.3 Witches, sexuality, misogyny, religion, magic, and QAnon conspiracies 7.
4 Teleological tales, violence, and torture 7.5 Homo irrationalis, ideology, war, terrorism and mass killings 7.6 ''Savages'', ''civilization'', animal abuse, Enlightenment and humanism 7.7 ''Monsters'', disabilities, ''mother''s fault'', God''s visitation, and mass murder 8 ''Progress'', morality, truth, ''good'' and ''evil'' 8.1 Morality, ''human exceptionalism'', ''progress'', revolutions, and health 8.2 ''Noble savages'', ''good'', ''evil'', technologic development, and loneliness 8.3 Affluence, abundance, growth and inequity, quality of life and euthanasia 8.4 Rousseau, Hobbes, biases, and ''civilization'' 8.
5 Child mortality, sex, atrocities, wellbeing, unlimited wants, and our planet 9 Towards a fulfilling life in this splendid, non-purposeful, planet 9.1 Nature, nurture, religion, enculturation, self-domestication and self-punishment 9.2. Homo irrationalis, socialis et fictus in Neverland: unreality, illusions and delusions 9.3 No need for better angels, economic fairytales, nor new teleological narratives and illusions 9.4 Medicine, wellbeing, and the price we pay for Neverland, alternative facts, and fake news 9.5 Lucretius, Epicurus, Sagan, Gould: towards a fulfilling life in a splendid non-purposeful cosmos References and suggestions for further reading Figure credits Index.