Ebook: The Rhythm of the West: A Biohistory of the Modern Era AD 1600 to the Present

Is Western civilization generally progressing or declining? Optimists point to high levels of wealth and subjective well-being and low levels of poverty and mortality, alongside over a century of mostly sustained economic and cognitive growth - the latter reflected in the three point per decade increase in IQ test performance over past decades, known as the Flynn effect. But contemporary research indicates that in recent decades the Flynn effect has faltered and gone into reverse. Something, then, has clearly gone awry. The Rhythm of the West offers a rigorous and empirically robust theory to elucidate this adverse turn of fortune. Prior to the British industrial revolution and the end of the preceding Little Ice Age, life throughout Western Europe was brutally difficult. Harsh environments with scarce resources forced European populations to compete with one another for survival and expansion. Unpleasant as this was, it laid the groundwork for an advance to the prosperous industrial age that was to follow, the relaxed existential conditions of which enabled the development of specialized economic niches and specialized cognitive skills, with the Flynn effect emerging as a consequence of the latter. Inter-group competition favored or selected for those populations highest in general intelligence (g) and intra-group altruism. These traits are in fact foundational to advanced civilizations, but when the effects of industrialization undid the circumstances engendering inter-group competition, selection shifted such that it now favors lower rather than higher levels of g. Furthermore, mild industrial and post-industrial environments have permitted the unprecedented accumulation of harmful mutations in Western populations The implications for the future of the West are dire, making the authors' findings all the more worthy of serious attention.

[From the book's Amazon page]