A THEORY OF EVERYONE: WHO WE ARE, HOW WE GOT HERE, AND WHERE WE’RE GOING

By Michael Muthukrishna

Basic, Rs 799

According to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it took 7.5 million years for the supercomputer, Deep Thought, to compute “The Answer to the Great Question... Of Life, the Universe and Everything.” Given the rapid advances in galactic technologies of contemplative certitude during the last forty-four years, A Theory of Everyone confidently manages to pull off a “unified theory of human behavior” as a corollary to the Great Question in a matter of hours, within the scope of its twelve chapters and 439 pages. As all grand theories go, it appears perplexing, highly innovative, and potentially enlightening.

The book is an exercise in what Michael Muthukrishna, an economic psychologist, fondly calls the literary genre of TOTTEE (The One Thing That Explains Everything). In case the description makes you afraid or overtly excited, relax. Despite the wordplay, the book is not about the quest for GTE (General Theory of Everything) in theoretical physics which tries to reconcile the ‘big picture’ of general relativity to the microcosms of quantum mechanics. Nor does it participate in complex philosophical excursions on the nature of the Self: the problematic of John Locke’s position on ‘Socrates asleep and Socrates awake’ being not the same person, the phenomenological Self recognising ‘everyone’ through one’s own being-in-the-world, or ancient Buddhism’s dismissal of the Self do not figure in this grand expository schema. Rather, the book sees itself in the league of Guns, Germs and Steel and Sapiens, and is better placed in offering policy-level solutions for the most pressing problems of the future— “polarization, inequality, the ‘great stagnation’ in productivity, and the energy crisis”— by applying the “laws of life”.

What constitute the “laws of life”? Muthukrishna boldly dives into a multidisciplinary jamboree, with eclectic switchovers among anthropology, primatology, neurobiology, economics, and behavioural psychology, while he explains the disappearing worlds of the dinosaurs, the emergence of humans as the dominant species of the planet, and the complexity of all evolving life forms as confirming to the first underlying law: “the law of energy”. The second law is the “law of innovation”, which works alike in cellular photosynthesis, technologies like farming, and organisations like corporations. The third is the “law of cooperation”, operational between complex living cells as well as nation-states, and multinational corporations — unlike Peter Kropotkin’s idea of benevolent “mutual aid”, this works only if an entity, focused on making profits, chooses cooperation with others based on a “high probability of winning the spoils”. The fourth is the “law of evolution”, which projects the Darwinian theory of the evolution of life onto the realms of human innovation and culture.

Together, these four universal laws are explained through the workings of an “extended evolutionary synthesis” — “the extension of the biological theoretical framework beyond genes” — into what Muthukrishna defines as “cultural evolution”— “the way in which companies, countries, and other aspects of our societies change, adapt, and evolve.”

The inherent Social Darwinism, though cleverly guised, becomes evident as one progresses. Sometimes homiletic, at other times condescending, Muthukrishna asks his readers to apply these laws to the thorny problems of life as strategies. This is where things also start to get confusing: weren’t these laws functional, avant la lettre, as life or humans evolved through time? Are these cultural laws indicative of unconscious structural processes — as in evolutionary biology or Richard Dawkin’s idea of the culturally-transmitted ‘meme’? Or are these conscious strategies to be implemented by evolutionary psychologists and policy-makers brainstorming in futurological congresses?

To stress on the efficacy of this ‘Theory of Everyone’, the book has an entire chapter discussing how Jamie Heywood, the head of Uber in the United Kingdom and northern Europe, upped his game by learning to use his “collective brain”, serendipitously created by culture. Thankfully, throughout the book, no Jungians, intransigent Deleuzians, or SMIMS (Smother-Me-In-My-Sleep) Lacanians enter the panel discussion on ‘culture’ to explain “How We Got Here”.

Also note that the ‘We’ here tacitly represents those living in WEIRD societies (Western, educated, industrialised, rich, and democratic). It excludes your irritating co-worker, or the ‘everyone’ in the Metro playing YouTube Shorts on speakers. Because, well, even the expanding universe has its limits. And the Answer to the Great Question, in case you have lost your copy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide, is forty-two.