Compare Threats by David P. Barash, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

From hurricanes and avalanches to diseases and car crashes, threats are everywhere. Beyond objective threats like climate change and asteroid impacts, there are also subjective ones: Situations in which individuals threaten each other or feel threatened by society. Animals, too, makesubstantial use of threats, which evolution manipulates in surprising ways, raising the question of honest versus dishonest communication. Rarely acknowledged - and yet crucially important - is that people don't only employ threats, they often respond with counter-threats, which end up making thingsworse. By exploring the dynamic of threat-and-response, this book gives insight into many fraught human situations, including the fear of death, of strangers, and of "the other," each of which leads to its own challenges such as the specter of eternal damnation, our murderous culture of guns as wellas capital punishment, the emergence of right-wing nationalist populism and, most worrisome of all, thinking that we can use the threat of nuclear war to prevent nuclear war-that is, the illusory security of deterrence. In this book, noted scientist David P. Barash begins with a detailed guide to how animals (and even plants) issue threats, showing why they work and what happens when they don't. The universe of threats is so widespread that we often don't realize how deeply they are ingrained and how profoundly andcounter-productively they operate. Animals, humans, societies, and even countries all internalize threats, behind which lie a myriad of intriguing issues: How do we know when to take a threat seriously or when to ignore it? When do threats make things worse? When do they make things better? What cansocial beings do to use them wisely rather than destructively? A comprehensive, scientifically accurate yet highly accessible exploration of questions like these, Threats Ailluminates some of the most important yet overlooked aspects of life. | Threats by David P. Barash, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters