Overview
How a society's capacity for belief forms the foundation of its success Do you struggle to find reasons to feel optimistic about the future? Are you trying to understand the creeping institutional dysfunction we see the world over? In this book, Ryan Avent explores how an unswerving confidence in systems of liberal democracy and free-market capitalism—which he terms the ""Modern Faith""—has left many Western countries struggling to deal with democratic backsliding and social dysfunction. Those seeking the certainty of another technocratic solution, however, are searching in the wrong place. The true foundation of our prosperity, Avent argues, is not in an ability to reason our way to better policies and institutions but rather lies in the nature and distribution of our beliefs. Drawing from economics, history, philosophy, biology, and much else besides, Avent shows that our capacity for belief is what connects us, guides our behavior moment by moment and year by year, and determines how well we cooperate in the production of social and economic complexity. Far from standing in opposition to science and reason, faith is central to the human endeavor. By understanding the nature of faith and how it forms the fabric of our society, we can better find ways to come together to tackle the global crises of rising authoritarianism and climate change that threaten us all, and find hope within one another.
Reviews
“What are the social devices we use to transcend a world that seems to have gone mad? Why have so many people lost their social bearings? Few authors write as inspirationally about the intertwined thread of faith, history, and economics as Ryan Avent does in this book. In Good Faith is a religious book which doesn’t require a faith in God or theology but rather a faith in the power of belief, and shows why it is critical to contemporary society and politics.”—Tyler Cowen, George Mason University “Read In Good Faith if you want to grapple with the very biggest questions: Where did growth come from? What is our potential as a society? And how can we avoid failure? This mind-stretching book draws on history, evolutionary biology, anthropology and economics to argue that we are shaped by common beliefs that are much more malleable than people often assume. Avent meets the gravity of today’s problems with an energising and hopeful call to action, to have faith in our ability to be and do better.”—Soumaya Keynes, economics columnist for the Financial Times
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Author Information
Ryan Avent is director of portfolio communications at Select Equity Group and a former journalist at The Economist. He is the author of The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-first Century. He lives in Raleigh, NC, and New York City.
