Downhill: why cruelty spreads on its own, everything decent has to be carried, and the slope that is inside us

Cruelty coordinates for free. Cooperation has to be built. This book explains why that asymmetry exists - and why it matters more now than it ever has. The things that tear people apart are cheap. Outrage spreads on its own, needs no leader, no plan, no villain. The things that hold people together are expensive. Trust must be started by someone, held by someone, and it falls the moment that someone stops. That gap between the downhill thing and the uphill thing is the subject of this book. Downhill traces that asymmetry from the body to the feed to the institution to the species - and then back down to one person, one move, one ordinary pair of hands. It draws on evolutionary game theory, behavioral economics, institutional research, and the documented record of what building cooperation actually costs in the real world. Every claim is checked; every strong objection is given its strongest form; and the problems that remain unsolved are left standing in the open, because pretending to solve them would be the kind of lie this book exists to refuse. There is no program here and no villain to blame. There is an argument, carried as far as the evidence allows - and at the end, one small thing a depleted reader can actually do with it.