The traditional measure of evolutionary success is a population's ability to continue, adapt and grow. By that measure, humanity has been a huge success: our population is only getting bigger, and for a lot of countries, so is our average life-span. Biological anthropologist Agustín Fuentes takes issue with this measurement. In his view, the sheer number of humans living on the planet doesn't necessarily equate to success. In fact, the argument that humans are doing better than ever before is problematic, because it only considers a narrow perspective of Euro-American societies, ignoring other vast cultures and populations. Instead, Fuentes argues, evolutionary success for humans should be measured by our capacity for flourishing, which includes health, security, interaction, and well-being — and importantly, how this flourishing is distributed across our species.

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Chapters:

0:00 What is evolutionary success?

1:07 Is everything getting better?

1:32 Response #1. Who is “we”?

1:51 Response #2. One broad culture

2:24 Response #3. What is the measure of success?

3:21 Distributing human flourishing

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