Rutger Bregman is a Dutch historian with one of most actively curious minds that I know.
In January, 2019, he achieved sudden fame while at the Davos rich-people’s conference. He’d been invited to speak on a panel there because of his 2017 book, Utopia for Realists, which, among other things, discusses Universal Basic Income. His moneyed audience expected to hear the common “left-wing but safe for rich people” talking points about helping the poor with targeted programs and philanthropies. In fact, he had already given a TEDx talk that covered those points. Those who prefer to read articles rather than view videos can try this Interview at Vox.com.
But as the time for the Davos panel drew near, Bregman reflected that a much simpler, direct solution to the problem existed. Thus, he created quite a stir when he addressed the elephant in the room by saying, (in so many words) “Just pay your damn taxes! It’s not rocket science.” Here’s a short clip of the moment when he made that declaration. And here’s a longer clip that includes his and the other panelists’ and some audience members’ remarks.
As one can imagine, his commentary did not go over well at the conference. (and it went over even less well in his subsequent but unaired interview on Tucker Carlson’s show.
It’s interesting to hear both the Davos panelists and the audience members — it’s a window into the conference that I didn’t know was available. Interestingly, the issue of tax avoidance had been addressed the previous year in a panel that included Joseph Stiglitz. Winnie Byanyima, the Executive Director of Oxfam International, was on the panel both years. But that earlier panel didn’t go viral the way Bregman’s brief but pointed speech did.
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Well, later in 2019 he published his next book, Humankind: A Hopeful History, which appeared this month in an English translation. He explains the book’s purpose this way:
This is a book about a radical idea . . . . If only we had the courage to take it more seriously, it’s an idea that might just start a revolution. Turn society on its head. 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 idea?
That most people, deep down, are pretty decent.
And lest he be seen as a simple Pollyanna, he backs it up with evidence.
As I read, I was reminded of Fred Rogers’ often-quoted bit of advice — “look for the helpers.” There will always be helpers because most people by nature are helpers. This is not to say that evil-doers and evil systems don’t exist. Obviously they do, but the default human condition for the vast majority of us is to treat other people decently.
This view flies in the face of so much of what we’ve been taught all our lives, that humans are restrained by a thin veneer of civilization, without which, dystopia would descend. In Bregman’s book this viewpoint is represented by Thomas Hobbes, and his book, Leviathan. (The “leviathan” is the autocratic ruler who imposes civilization on the rest of us for our own good.)
Bregman sets this negative view of human nature against the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In Rousseau’s view, that thin veneer of civilization is what caused so much evil and suffering in the first place. Bregman started out his research more sympathetic to Hobbes, but the more he learned, the more he favored Rousseau.
This pattern resonates with me. Before I retired, I had taught elementary school in America for many years, followed by a teaching stint at a university in China. In both cases, the educational framework seemed more aligned with Hobbes than Rousseau, keeping students in line with grades, etc. etc.
So when I began my career, I assumed that attitude toward the students. However, the longer I taught, the more I moved towards Rousseau. Yes, the occasional student in each hemisphere did try to pull a fast one on me, but they were the very rare exceptions. Most of the time, I found out that when such suspicions were raised, I was typically in the wrong and the student was in the right.
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Bregman sets the tone for his tome with a re-examination of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a novel about marooned boys who, stripped of the veneer of civilization, descend into a course of mutual destruction. This fiction, which was inflicted upon me and countless other students in high school, has had an outsized and dark influence on how we view society in real life. For example, it’s arguably responsible for the genre of Reality Television, at least that fraction of it where people get “voted off the island” or “fired.”
Well, Bregman asked himself if there had ever been a real-life case of Lord of the Flies. (or Survivor). And it turns out that there was, back in the sixties. Well, what happened? Did the real-life boys descend into Hobbsian madness, like the boys in Golding’s novel?
Actually, reality contradicted Golding in almost every respect. The real-life castaways became like a “band of brothers” who supported each other in every kindly way possible right through to their rescue fifteen months later. Meanwhile, Golding had his own reasons for writing such dark fiction.
This real-life story has already been diaried on Daily Kos here and here. Shortly after the boys had been rescued they staged a re-enactment for a short filmed documentary. The countless students assigned to read Lord of the Flies ought to also find out that the one real-life version of it turned out so differently and teaches such different lessons about humanity. It’s only fair.
And that’s what Bregman attempts to do with respect to many societal issues with his new book, where he reexamines much of the evidence that bears on this issue, which often involved contrived situations. The many famous studies / experiments / topics that he comments upon and in many cases reinterprets include:
Not all of these topics assign positive attributes to humanity in their reexamination. But enough do, that by the end of the book, I found myself feeling so positive about people that I was forced to ask myself “Do I just like his arguments out of some sort of confirmation bias?”
Well, I’ll read the book again with that question in mind. However, the arguments do seem compelling. And these days, when so much of the day-to-day news is focused on tragedy and injustice, it’s nice to take the spirit of the daily good news roundups and dwell on the positive potential that we so commonly harbor.