Rutger bregman humankind3/19/2023 In other words, they began engaging in propaganda. With the advent of the first settlements and growth in inequality, chieftains and kings had to start legitimising why they enjoyed more privileges than their subjects. If you can convince the masses that you’re smarter or better or holier, then it makes sense that you’re in charge and you won’t have to fear opposition. We’re fine with a little inequality, psychologists emphasise, if we think it’s justified. Homo puppy is not a natural-born communist. That said, we also shouldn’t exaggerate such findings. Children as young as three already divide a cake out equally.Īnd at six would rather throw a slice away than let one person have a larger portion. Do a search for ‘inequality aversion’ in Google Scholar and you’ll find more than ten thousand scientific articles about this primordial instinct. Humankind PDF BookĪ further indication that human behaviour more closely resembles that of bonobos than chimpanzees is our innate aversion to inequality. After all, nobody wanted to share food with those who were full of themselves. The selfish and the greedy would get booted out of the tribe and faced likely starvation. Anyone foolish enough to act as Machiavelli later prescribed was risking their life. Leadership was temporary among hunter-gatherers and decisions were made as a group. Until 1800, at least three-quarters of the global population lived in bondage to a wealthy lord. Up until the French Revolution (1789), almost all states everywhere were fuelled by forced labour. But it’s easy to forget that genuine progress is a very recent phenomenon. But is civilisation all bad? Hasn’t it brought us many good things, too?Īside from war and greed, hasn’t the modern world also given us much to be thankful for? Of course it has. Hobbes has somehow gone down in history as the ‘father of realism’, yet his view of human nature is anything but realistic. The man’s take on humanity was rooted in his own experience with disease and war, calamities which were virtually unknown for the first 95 per cent of human history. Take the plague that killed his patron in 1628, and the looming civil war that forced him to flee England for Paris in 1640. The irony is that the curse of civilisation dogged Hobbes throughout his life. He characterised the life and times of our ancestors as ‘nasty, brutish and short’, but a truer description would have been friendly, peaceful and healthy. Thomas Hobbes, the old philosopher, could not have been more off the mark. In Part 1 of this book I’ll examine the question: which philosopher was right? Should we be grateful that our days of nature are behind us? Or were we once noble savages? A great deal hinges on the answer. Hobbes and Rousseau, after all, were armchair theorists, while we’ve been gathering scientific evidence for decades now. But these days we’re in a position to test their principal point of contention. Rousseau, in particular, leaves lots of room for interpretation. The writings of these two do not make for light reading. Whenever the cynic grumbles that this will only spark more violence, Hobbes nods in agreement. No Limits: Blow the CAP Off Your Capacity PDF As the cabin fills with smoke, everybody inside realises: We’ve got to get out of here. Imagine an airplane makes an emergency landing and breaks into three parts. For years, he’s been asking students the same question. I don’t know anyone who explains this idea better than Tom Postmes, professor of social psychology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Because once you grasp what it really means, it’s nothing less than a mind-bending drug that ensures you’ll never look at the world the same again So what is this radical idea? That most people, deep down, are pretty decent. If only we had the courage to take it more seriously, it’s an idea that might just start a revolution. Humankind PDF Book by Rutger Bregman Name of Book An idea so intrinsic to human nature that it goes unnoticed and gets overlooked. One that’s corroborated by evolution and confirmed by everyday life. At the same time, it’s an idea that’s legitimised by virtually every branch of science. An idea denied by religions and ideologies, ignored by the news media and erased from the annals of world history. Click here to Download Humankind PDF Book by Rutger Bregman Language English having PDF Size 4.5 MB and No of Pages 385.Īn idea that’s long been known to make rulers nervous.
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