I’m delighted to say that my new book ‘Humanise: how knowing ourselves could change the world‘ is, at last, published today!

Humanise is a popular psychology book that reveals the latest understanding about how human beings think and behave, and shows how we could use this knowledge to tackle some of our biggest challenges (including obesity, the post-truth world, prejudice, violence and climate change), and build a better future for people and our planet.

It argues that the modern world we’ve built is actually hostile to human beings in many ways, given the creatures we really are. We need to build ‘scaffolding’ around us to provide the conditions that will enable us to flourish and have a sustainable future. These conditions include protecting rather than exploiting our mental vulnerabilities and promoting our ‘superpower’ of cooperation rather than activating our negative tribal instincts. Its suggestions for scaffolding include banning advertising, giving everyone greater access to basic resources, and re-thinking how we use information so that it benefits people.

It’s been said that we’re living in a new era – the Anthropocene – one in which human activity has a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems. The future in this era looks bleak. But Humanise suggests we have an opportunity to create a different, more hopeful era, in which we learn to regulate human behaviour by adjusting the scaffolding and structures around us to promote the traits of thinking and behaviour that serve us well in the modern world (like cooperation), and move away from those that don’t (such as negative tribalism), so that we can flourish and live within the parameters of the natural world we are part of.

As you can see from this summary, Humanise is a book of big ideas challenging some of our most cherished beliefs about ourselves, and the ideas, institutions and societies that surround us.

If you’d like to read a summary of the book, click here. I also give a talk on the main arguments of the book in a special new episode of my podcast ‘Humans & Hope’ – click here to listen to it.

The book is available to buy here – and from most other good booksellers if Amazon isn’t your thing.

Today at Life Squared we are launching an important new publication – our first book, in fact. It’s called ‘The Life Trap – and how to escape it’, and is available as a free download or audiobook,here.

Using the latest insights from psychology and neuroscience, the book argues that human beings are not as rational or well-informed as most of us think we are. We are in fact highly vulnerable to manipulation by other people – particularly those with wealth and power.

We also live in a complex world with more influences acting upon us than ever before – including politics, the media, advertising and many others. As a result, many of us end up being moulded by these influences, leading to us getting trapped within restricted worldviews and lives that simply follow the dominant ideas of the people and society that surround us.

This can not only be harmful to our own lives, but can also have serious implications for society, as it leaves us vulnerable to manipulation by others – including materialism, the press and the influence of political demagogues. At a time of political upheaval and rising populism, this is clearly an urgent issue.

Given this picture of non-rational human beings and the complex, pressurised world we live in, we need to be given the skills to live our own well-informed lives and not simply be moulded by other people – including the wealthy and powerful. We also need a society that helps to protect our mental freedom and provides the conditions for us to think for ourselves.

Sadly, the society we currently live in and the institutions that surround us – including our children’s education system – don’t recognise the importance of these skills and don’t equip us with them to anywhere near the level we need. In fact, we live at a time where the external conditions in society actually militate against us developing them.

The book explores what we can do about this situation – both as a society and as individuals. It will also show how we can empower ourselves with these skills so that we have a better chance of escaping our own particular ‘life traps’ and move towards a happier, fairer and more peaceful society.