What do you think?
Rate this book
Beyond Bad: How obsolete morals are holding us back
'Brilliantly unillusioned thinking... It could hardly be more necessary in these all-too-moralistic times' - James Marriott, THE TIMES
Morals have held empires together, kept soldiers marching under fire, fed the hungry, passed laws, built walls, welcomed immigrants, destroyed careers and governed our sex lives. But what if morality's all meaningless rubbish, a malfunctioning relic of our evolutionary past?
This is the provocative argument that Chris Paley makes. This isn't an attack on one set of moral codes or one way of thinking about it's a call for abolishing the whole caboodle.
He uses evolutionary psychology to show how and why morality they
enabled our forebears to survive and prosper in tribal groups. Today, our morals constrain us, bias us, and push us in the wrong direction.
The biggest challenges our species faces, whether global warming, nuclear proliferation or the rise of the robots, are pan-human. These challenges are beyond what our moral minds were designed to cope with. You can't build smartphones with stone-age axes, and you can't solve modern humanity's problems with tools that are designed to create primitive, competitive groups.
From Chris Paley, author of the 'extraordinary', 'startling' and 'thought-provoking' Unthink , comes Beyond Bad , which shows morals hinder us from achieving what we want to achieve. Beyond Bad is the book that 'does for morals what Dawkins did for God'.
Morals have held empires together, kept soldiers marching under fire, fed the hungry, passed laws, built walls, welcomed immigrants, destroyed careers and governed our sex lives. But what if morality's all meaningless rubbish, a malfunctioning relic of our evolutionary past?
This is the provocative argument that Chris Paley makes. This isn't an attack on one set of moral codes or one way of thinking about it's a call for abolishing the whole caboodle.
He uses evolutionary psychology to show how and why morality they
enabled our forebears to survive and prosper in tribal groups. Today, our morals constrain us, bias us, and push us in the wrong direction.
The biggest challenges our species faces, whether global warming, nuclear proliferation or the rise of the robots, are pan-human. These challenges are beyond what our moral minds were designed to cope with. You can't build smartphones with stone-age axes, and you can't solve modern humanity's problems with tools that are designed to create primitive, competitive groups.
From Chris Paley, author of the 'extraordinary', 'startling' and 'thought-provoking' Unthink , comes Beyond Bad , which shows morals hinder us from achieving what we want to achieve. Beyond Bad is the book that 'does for morals what Dawkins did for God'.
- GenresNonfiction
272 pages, Paperback
Published July 12, 2022
10 people are currently reading
96 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 27, 2021
For me this is an important book which draws together many of the questions I have about morality. Where does it come from? What is its affect on individuals and society? Is morality useful? Chris Paley made me think and I agree with much that he says. I had two problems though . At the end I could not see how our use of morality could be changed to avert disaster. Maybe it couldn't. And I found some of the writing hard to follow partly because it was so informal and conversational in style. I am sure he aims for clarity for the lay reader but I found some sentences unfathomable. Having said that , I do recommend this book.
October 14, 2022
At first, the book is hypocritical, overly reductive, and regards religion with the depth and seriousness that you'd expect from a 16year old edgy rational atheist. This was quite annoying, but after about 3-4 chapters Paley gets less opinionated and dives into the hard science (as hard as this kind of science can get) that exists in opposition to traditional morality. This is where the book really shines. Paley brings a modern scientific perspective on the idea that morals are simply articulated behaviour patterns, and it's done in a very convincing way. This book left me with incredibly more depth on the subject and it wasn't a very hard or dry read at all. Aside from the few flaws previously highlighted, I think this was pretty insightful.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 3, 2021
I cannot even begin to tell you how happy I am that I randomly came across this book. I saw a post on Twitter about some of the best thought-provoking books of the year, and since I love moral psychology and moral philosophy, I had to check this out. As I read this book by Chris Paley, I just kept thinking, “FINALLY!”. Chris Paley argues that although we evolved to have morals, today’s world doesn’t cater to those who are beacons of morality. Paley focuses on evolutionary psychology and does an incredible job explaining how morality mainly evolved for social signaling to others in order to benefit ourselves. Most books don’t take a critical look at altruism, but this book does, and I’m so glad that it did. Beyond Bad really satisfied the cynic in me, which is all I’ve wanted because most books paint our evolved morality with rose-colored glasses. There’s plenty to debate about this book such as his criticisms of moral philosophy, and there’s plenty that I disagree with. But as far as a unique book that gives a new perspective on morality, this book couldn’t have been written any better. I highly recommend it and will definitely read it again in the future.
January 21, 2022
"Harm isn’t the sole basis of morality; humans also impose an obligation on others to actively help."
Chris Paley was right when he said this book will not be easy to stomach because not only it talks about the foundation of morality but also about how it has been given a mask of altruism.
Even though this book claims to talk about the lack of science behind our morals, it rarely does so. It seemed to be drifting off path which made it a confusing read.
But I still would say the theme had a potential to engender a thought taking someone in a spiral of contemplation which it did a few times but otherwise would coerce someone to give it a skim.
Chris Paley was right when he said this book will not be easy to stomach because not only it talks about the foundation of morality but also about how it has been given a mask of altruism.
Even though this book claims to talk about the lack of science behind our morals, it rarely does so. It seemed to be drifting off path which made it a confusing read.
But I still would say the theme had a potential to engender a thought taking someone in a spiral of contemplation which it did a few times but otherwise would coerce someone to give it a skim.
July 17, 2022
It’s interesting in parts and certainly made me think but I found the writing style difficult to follow. I also felt he could have supplanted morals with customs and beliefs and written virtually the same book, but maybe I missed something. The chapter at the end on climate change made me want to weep because he is absolutely correct, though again not sure this is anything to do with morals and not just because humans are unable to consider anything beyond their own lifespans.
July 21, 2022
With some serious thinking put to work, Beyond Bad scrutinizes and questions the strength of our inherited morals.
May 10, 2025
This is a book with a radical thesis, that "morality is meaningless rubbish", an evolutionary dead-end, no longer fit for purpose. It's not that we get morality wrong, just that there is no such thing and we ought to give it up entirely. But of course, when you get such a provocative headline you often find that when you get into it the real story is not so extreme. So Paley, you might not be surprised to learn, does not actually argue that it's ok to eat babies or anything of the kind. Instead, most of the book is about the psychology of in-group biases and other prejudices, "groupishness" he calls it, that have evolved to help us get along with our neighbours. In some books like this you get to a point when the paradox is resolved with an ironic wink and you realise that of course he doesn't really mean what he seems to say, but something more subtle and more interesting. But here that point never comes. Paley never acknowledges the mismatch between the headline claim, that there simply is no morality, and the more modest arguments of the book and there is, I think, a massive hole at the heart of the argument.
The latter parts are, as mentioned, about the psychology of group behaviour and how that affects the moral attitudes we take, about how morality has evolved to signal group membership and persuade our neighbours to trust us, and about how our inbuilt moral biases fail us in the radically different societies we live in today. But in the opening sections, in arguing that there cannot really be any such thing as morality of any kind, Paley chews off a lot more than he is prepared to swallow. He rehearses David Hume's argument that you can't derive an "ought" from an "is", that no physical facts about how things are can tell you how they ought to be, or what you ought to do about it. And since physical facts are the only facts Payley recognises, that means no morality. But this argument applies to any sort of value system and this book is full of normative values and judgements. Paley doesn't just write about morality, he says we ought to get rid of it, that "it is good to be amoral". But what is this "good" if there is no morality? The last chapter is devoted to the climate crisis and argues that our group psychology actively prevents us from saving the planet. But again, if there is no morality, why should we bother if it doesn't affect us? Science itself rests on fundamental values, those of truth and rationality. But since it is quite easy to get along in our society without caring a lot about either, why should we care, if there are no values? Paley doesn't begin to give an answer to this.
I found the style glib and annoying. Paley mentions lots of different psychological studies, but doesn't spend a lot of time analysing them. He just gives his interpretation and moves on. (Any ambiguities or qualifiers are relegated to endnotes, if they are acknowledged at all.) Despite definitely putting forward some philosophical claims himself, Paley is ridiculously rude about philosophers. In an early section on the subject titled "Pure thought is for idiots" we learn that moral philosophers are pointless because they all argue with each other and never come to any agreed conclusions. (Of course Paley disagrees with all of them, but he's a scientist you see, so that's different!) But philosophers I read all write with more analytical rigour than I find in this book. And there are some surprsing gaps in the bibliography. Paley's account of the genetics of behaviour rests on Richard Dawkins' idea of the selfish gene, but Dawkins is not cited. He mentions the famous Trolley Problem, but nowhere credits Philippa Foot for it. (Perhaps, as a philosopher, she is too contemptible to be worth mentioning.) Finally, there is no index, which even for a book as unacademic as this is a terrible failing in my opinion.
On the plus side, the book is very short and easy to read.
The latter parts are, as mentioned, about the psychology of group behaviour and how that affects the moral attitudes we take, about how morality has evolved to signal group membership and persuade our neighbours to trust us, and about how our inbuilt moral biases fail us in the radically different societies we live in today. But in the opening sections, in arguing that there cannot really be any such thing as morality of any kind, Paley chews off a lot more than he is prepared to swallow. He rehearses David Hume's argument that you can't derive an "ought" from an "is", that no physical facts about how things are can tell you how they ought to be, or what you ought to do about it. And since physical facts are the only facts Payley recognises, that means no morality. But this argument applies to any sort of value system and this book is full of normative values and judgements. Paley doesn't just write about morality, he says we ought to get rid of it, that "it is good to be amoral". But what is this "good" if there is no morality? The last chapter is devoted to the climate crisis and argues that our group psychology actively prevents us from saving the planet. But again, if there is no morality, why should we bother if it doesn't affect us? Science itself rests on fundamental values, those of truth and rationality. But since it is quite easy to get along in our society without caring a lot about either, why should we care, if there are no values? Paley doesn't begin to give an answer to this.
I found the style glib and annoying. Paley mentions lots of different psychological studies, but doesn't spend a lot of time analysing them. He just gives his interpretation and moves on. (Any ambiguities or qualifiers are relegated to endnotes, if they are acknowledged at all.) Despite definitely putting forward some philosophical claims himself, Paley is ridiculously rude about philosophers. In an early section on the subject titled "Pure thought is for idiots" we learn that moral philosophers are pointless because they all argue with each other and never come to any agreed conclusions. (Of course Paley disagrees with all of them, but he's a scientist you see, so that's different!) But philosophers I read all write with more analytical rigour than I find in this book. And there are some surprsing gaps in the bibliography. Paley's account of the genetics of behaviour rests on Richard Dawkins' idea of the selfish gene, but Dawkins is not cited. He mentions the famous Trolley Problem, but nowhere credits Philippa Foot for it. (Perhaps, as a philosopher, she is too contemptible to be worth mentioning.) Finally, there is no index, which even for a book as unacademic as this is a terrible failing in my opinion.
On the plus side, the book is very short and easy to read.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews