Axial Age Quotes

“Many aspects of positive schizotypy -magical thinking, paranoid ideation, and the tendency to form novel and unusual ideas and express them in idiosyncratic ways- can contribute to a compelling leader personality, often with religious or messianic overtones.”
― Marco del Giudice, Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach

“Evolution in the cognitive niche has endowed our species with remarkable abilities such as language, abstract reasoning, and sophisticated mentalizing. These species-typical innovations have been accompanied by rapid changes in brain structure and functionality. While adaptations such as language are hugely beneficial, they are also likley to carry some costs. A number of authors have argued that vulnerability to psychosis is one of those costs -the price our species pays for its unique set of cognitive skills. From this perspective, there are no individual fitness benefits to psychosis proneness; vulnerability to schizophrenia and other psychoses is a general byproduct of our evolved design, and unfortunate combinations of genetic and environmental factors determine the onset of a full-fledged disorder in some individuals.”
― Marco del Giudice, Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach

“People at risk for schizophrenia seem to be more susceptible to a wide range of environmental factors, an effect that could be partly mediated by a hyperreactive stress response system.”
― Marco del Giudice, Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach

“At the level of broad personality traits, psychopathy and antisocial behavior are robustly associated with low levels of agreeableness, conscientiousness, and honesty-humility.”
― Marco del Giudice, Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach

“The general idea that psychopathy represents a potentially adaptive strategy is consistent with the finding that even violent psychopaths who harm nonrelatives tend to spare closely related individuals, such as their own parents and children.”
― Marco del Giudice, Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach

“We are desperate to start a new axial age which will involve a re-flowering of common spiritual customs and communal practices, science and art (i.e., our whole cultural technology) that bind us together and which incorporate the benefits of holiness and reason.”
― Peter Pink-Howitt, Ethics of Life: freedom and diversity