![]() The guards were in on this, and even manipulated each other into acting more aggressively. Ben Blum’s 2018 article ‘The Lifespan of a Lie’ (available at en.) shows strong evidence that the Stanford Prison experiment, in which some volunteers were given the roles of prisoners, and others of guards, was manipulated into having a particular set of results. Yet, as one delves into how the canonical experiments were conducted, it becomes clear that they were riddled with questionable processes that only appear to follow the scientific method. Such tests have been the bedrock of our understanding of human nature for years. Over the past sixty years, both the Stanford Prison and Milgram’s Shock experiments seem to indicate this. The argument claiming humans are selfish has a lot of evidence. ![]() What is most important to Bregman’s investigation is factual evidence. The main point however is that humans weren’t in a state of all against all, but instead often wanted to find peaceful solutions. Sure, there were disputes about all kinds of things. Bregman builds on this idea with evidence that before farming and individual property, humans would generally interact with other groups with a natural trust and friendliness. The opening sentence to Rousseau’s book The Social Contract (1762) is “Man is born free yet everywhere he is in chains.” For Rousseau, people were better off and happier without the state and social institutions we find ourselves imprisoned by today. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, argues Bregman, has a closer affinity to how things really were. This same line of reasoning then helps him justify the existence of states, legal authority, and top-down hierarchical power.īregman starts to build a case that suggests that Hobbes’ central premise is incorrect that the brutality of the state of nature is just a belief we have, and not actually a good depiction of how things were before states existed. He conceives of this world as being pure anarchy, a war of all against all, because there is no one controlling us. In his most famous work, Leviathan (1651), Hobbes describes the state of nature before laws or states exist. Possibly no one else articulates this better than Thomas Hobbes. Most of our political thought is premised on the belief that humans are selfish, and that it is only by using this selfishness against ourselves that we can live in a civilisation. Yet it does feel obvious that, left unchallenged, we would find ourselves in a state of anarchy. And despite not necessarily being true, we are still somewhat indoctrinated into it. We continue to be taught that human beings are inherently selfish from a young age. Yet Golding’s novel is still in the curriculum. It wasn’t really picked up by the papers, and it took ages for Bregman to find the original source. Most people don’t know the real-life story. The real-life group of boys who were shipwrecked on an island without parental supervision, rather than turning into savages, worked together as friends and survived for over a year on the island. “Turns out” Bregman writes, “it’s a heart-warming story” (p.36). Trying to build a more scientific picture, Bregman tells the true story behind the Lord of the Flies. For most of us, this story has an intuitive truth about it.īut Golding’s fiction is just that: a piece of fiction. As time goes by the children become more animalistic, leading to chaos, destruction, and eventually murder. In the story a group of schoolboys are shipwrecked on an island with no parental supervision. By re-evaluating common anecdotes about war, prison experiments, and democracy, Bregman pushes one, if not to accept his radical idea, at least to question the foundation of how we conceive human nature.īregman starts off by talking about one of the most prominent representations for how we perceive human nature, William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies (1954). “This is a book about a radical idea” Bregman opens his first chapter with: “One that has long been known to make rulers nervous… That most people, deep down, are pretty decent” (p.2). Rutger Bregman has addressed this question in his book Humankind: A Hopeful History (2020). But suppose it isn’t true? What if, rather than being inherently selfish, humans are in fact inherently kind? Highly influential books have been written by the likes of Richard Dawkins ( The Selfish Gene, 1976) or Steven Pinker ( The Better Angels of our Nature, 2011) purporting to show that humans are selfish by nature. ![]() It is a notion that has over the years been proved by psychologists, zoologists, and biologists, who then go on to explain how our social world is constructed on this selfish basis. This is a core premise of both old and modern theories of politics, economics, and philosophy. SUBSCRIBE NOW Books Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman Rutger Bregman gives a hopeful spin on our species.
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