Abstract: Moral growth is an evolutionary process, for both the individual and the society. Democracy requires a certain kind of respect that is different from the expression of respect called for in other settings. Here, an object of respect is the capacity of the individual and the society to shape their own development and to determine their own idea of a good life. This calls for an education that aims to promote self-consciousness about existing and emerging possibilities and that enables rising citizens, both as individuals and as part of collective enterprises, to recognize their capacity for growth.

Abstract: All democratic education is directed against tyranny, but some kinds of tyranny are easier to identify than others. One kind of tyranny involves a visible dictator who controls public and private lives toward arbitrarily determined ends. Another kind of tyranny, more insidious than the first, controls what people come to want for themselves and for others – this is the result of the tyranny of habit. We want what we are conditioned to want, and we often find it hard to imagine anything else. One of the aims of education for the office of citizen is to provide students with the intellectual tools and to develop the character dispositions required to recognize, monitor, and respond to the tyranny of habit. The remainder of the chapters in the book is an elaboration on this aim and the way it sets the stage for the education of new patriots and their role as custodians of democracy.

We close with some linkages between prehistory and the modern world. We survey an empirical literature in economics arguing that regions where agriculture began early, or state formation occurred early, have higher per capita incomes or more rapid economic growth in the present. Another literature in economics involves the use of growth theory to explain the full trajectory from Neolithic agriculture to the Industrial Revolution, the recent demographic transition to slower population growth, and rising per capita incomes in advanced economies. We also discuss hypotheses about the transition from elite-dominated states in prehistory to widespread democracy today. Against this backdrop we consider the evolution of human welfare, as measured by nutrition, health, and life expectancy, from mobile foraging bands to modern societies. Theory and evidence suggest that welfare diminished in the transitions to sedentism and agriculture, and then remained low for commoners due to stratification and Malthusian population dynamics. But during the last 100–150 years the Industrial Revolution, the Demographic Transition, and political democratization have made billions of people better off. We conclude by discussing the role of climate change in prehistory, along with some lessons about the likely effects of global warming in the future.