Rutger Bregman on elites, survival of the friendliest, rethinking human history

hello and welcome to a new run of ways to change the world you might well have noticed that we have been effectively off the Airways for the last few weeks since the coronavirus crisis hits and we couldn't work out how we could do the podcast if we couldn't do interviews face to face because we became really obsessed by sound quality and image quality and all of those things but the world has massively adapted we've all become really used to seeing people interviewed on skype and all sorts of other platforms and so we decided to give it a go and so forgive me if the technical quality isn't as good as what you're used to but we will try and do our best and so will our guests and my first guest this week is not only sort of very technologically savvy so hopefully this will be a good one he is he's a brilliant and gripping author and historian Ruka Bregman is has just brought out this it's called human kind a hopeful history a perfect book for these weird times that were in in the era of coronavirus now rocker of course burst into our consciousness I suppose last year when he went to Davos and shook things up by talking to all these rich millionaires and billionaires about their taxes and how everything else was nonsense he's also written some some big stuff that we will talk talk about later on and he's one of the big arguments or sort of people who argue for universal basic income and he's often quoted on in that particular argument again really interesting given where we're at economically in Britain at the moment with so many people being furloughed and paid for by the government but Rutger welcome you've brought you've brought a big idea at just the right time thanks and you begin this book with what you say is sort of a simple big idea what is it it's a very simple idea it's in fact that most people deep down are pretty decent what why do you say that and why is that the starting point for it there's been this very old and deep theory within our culture within specifically Western culture that goes back all the way to the Asian Greeks and that you find with the Christian church fathers as well and so many of the enlightenment philosophers and that is I think embedded at the heart of our capitalist system which says that most people are selfish and that our civilization is only a thin veneer and that especially during times of crises supposedly we human beings reveal our true selves and we become nasty and we become very selfish and the animal and the Beast comes out he needs in every one of us and I think that is fundamentally wrong I mean it's the basis for so many bits of philosophy I mean you you you start with sort of the Hobbes and Rousseau position just explained yes if Thomas Hobbes British philosopher had his famous book the Leviathan one of the most important works in political philosophy incredibly influential and so his view was that back when we were still an American two galleries we lived these lives that were nasty brutish and short and there was a kind of war of all against all going on there was like a terrible life in the state of nature but we somehow got out of this by sort of electing or choosing a Leviathan you know a very powerful guy you know it's usually a guy sort of a king or a monarch who sort of who keeps each each and every one of us in check that's really dominant the selfish view of human nature is so often used as a legitimization of hierarchy right because if we cannot trust each other then we need a Leviathan to control us now Rousseau the French philosopher had the opposite view he said no no no actually the state of nature we lived lives that were pretty good you know we were relatively healthy we were free but then became game civilization and that's when everything went wrong you know we started living in villages and cities and doing agriculture and our health deteriorated you know the age of warfare began and so this is the big debate in philosophy that's been taking place for centuries whilst hopes right or was Rousseau right I'm the truth is we're somewhere in between are we that's sort of the usual boring dill on sir I'm I had at one point yeah at one point I had the idea of calling my book verso was right right the interesting thing is that so often hops was seen as the realist right he's described as the father of realism and still today we we also equate realism with pessimism and with cynicism if someone comes comes along and says you know I've got these dreams I've got hopes for the future then we have to say well be a bit more realistic where we mean you know be a bit more cynical and so reso is often been described as this romantic French believer in these dreams that will never come to pass what really struck me while researching this book if that if you look at the latest state of anthropology and archaeology and hundreds of scientists you know doing all this path-breaking work you're like but this is pretty much what I read in the indie discourse on inequality you know that Rousseau wrote in the 18th century it's I mean I'm not saying he was right about everything but he was sort of sort of right when he said that civilization for the biggest part of the history of civilization was actually a disaster you know our health deteriorated war started we got hierarchy what got paid tricky it was a really bad decision the more you've done is you you've you've gone through a load of sort of examples of stories some of which people may think they know which you then sort of debunk slightly and the one a lot of people will have seen in the newspapers was the real Lord of the Flies and you concluded from one example that if you leave a bunch of kids on a desert island they don't all turn into cabbages and it's obviously I mean it's not a scientific experiment right it's just one example that we have the only thing that I'm saying is if millions of kids still have to read Lord of the Flies in school then let's also tell them about that one time that it actually happened I mean it's the only time in all world history that we know of that kids actually did shipwreck on an island and it's a happier story ever you know it's a story of friendship and of comradeship and of Corporation yeah people wouldn't believe it if it was fiction they would say well it's very sentimental but here we are it really happened so what actually happened so you've got six stolen kids Tonga is an island group in the Pacific Ocean who are bored with school they're there at an Anglican boarding school and they don't like the school meals they don't like all the homework so they're like you know what we're gonna go in an adventure this is 90 60 65 they make a big mistake on the first night they're in the boat and they fall asleep then there's a big storm and so they drift for eight days then they shipwreck on this small uninhabited island that you know people haven't lived there for you know more than a hundred years and they managed to survive there 450 months by cooperating really well so they they form teams teams of two to two tend to the garden to to cook to to be on the lookout for ships sometimes they're in fight but then one of them would go to one side of the island and the other to the other side of the island cool off a little bit come back and say sorry I mean it wasn't like they were having a fun time I mean it was very hard sometimes they were very hungry or thirsty but then after fifty months they were rescued by by an Australian captain who was just by accident fishing yeah there they became the best friends also with the Australian captain they started to work well for him and so 50 years later I I managed to track down two of those real Lord of the Flies kids and yeah they had lived happy and fulfilling lives and that's not the only example you found deserts of people not descending you know into chaos hatred and violence I mean basically you're saying that people themselves are kind of nice and dull sort of yeah it's what biologists call survival of the friendliest so what has happened for millennia is that it was actually different least among us who had the most kids and so also had the biggest chance of passing on their genes to the next generation and this is really what explains the success of our species if you ask the question why us you know why have we conquered the globe and why didn't the under thoughts do it or the chimpanzees at the pinna bonobos right why did we do it the answer is that we're really good at cooperating you know individually we're not that smart you know if you do an intelligence test and have a human talked or compete with other animals like a pig for example usually the top there loses but what we can do is you can really cooperate on the skill that other species just conned and our bodies are designed to do this so for example one fascinating thing is that we've got really specialized as human beings so I can see you looking at me right now and that that is because you've got white and I've got that as well we all have that we've got white around our eyes right which means that we can sort of follow each other gazes right you can see what other people are looking at all the other primates don't have this you know they have dark around their eyes it's a little bit like they they are poker players wearing shades right but we just give away our gaze to to everyone which makes it much easier to trust each other I mean what are you looking at our current state of being in Britain during the coronavirus lockdown I mean instead of really uncharted territory some people would have predicted chaos that there'd be math civil disobedience there's no way people would live by the rules for more than a week or two you know that people would be angry it reminded me so much of what happened in Britain on the eve of the Second World War so before the bombs started falling on London and other cities in the UK elites were really panicking they thought you know what people are going to go nuts they will break the Germans will break the British morale very quickly and then the population will panic and the the army will have its hands full controlling the masses right they can't even fight the enemy because they'll be too busy at home that was the fear that people like Churchill really had then what happened is that the bombs did start falling and the opposite happened the keep calm and carry on spirit came over Overland than in other cities right there was this wonderful British humor and jokes you know they were sort of the buildings destroyed in cafes and restaurants and and people would put out signs in front of them that said more open than usual and it didn't have a big impact on the economy actually war production increased and then the question was how do we explain this because especially in 1942 the experts had to decide what are we gonna do with our Air Force right are we gonna bomb two Germans the the Dagda cities or focus on strategic targets railroads or I don't know industry or something like that and so they thought that the response from the British population was typically British you know it was the British spirit that that must be the explanation but the Germans were obviously they were you know had a very weak moral character so it would be easy to break their spirit and then they bombed Germany 10 times as heavily as Britain and you know exactly the same thing happened again you know the cities that were bombed the heaviest actually became more resilient and saw increased wartime production compared to cities that were not bombed or not bombed as heavy because it wasn't British culture it was human nature you know this is just how people behave during times of crisis they pull together so now we have seen this epidemic you know the corona crisis it's literally the same playbook it's again Downing Street and the experts saying you know what people will get tired of this there will be this fatigue you know with the lockdown and that was one of the reason why the UK was slow to go into lockdown because they thought that public couldn't handle it and look what it it has cost us you know in terms of lives so this is the problem over and over again when elites think about human nature they look in the mirror and they assume that other people are as selfish as they are but that's not the case power corrupts but most people are pretty decent why have we then spent 70 years still thinking that there's such a thing as British exceptionalism I'm not really understanding that it's everybody I think that's another truth about human nature and it's a darker truth right it is that we also have this capacity for tribalism and and group behavior right it's that it's the dark side of friendliness so on the one hand I'm saying that human beings have evolved to be friendly but then sometimes that friendliness is exactly the problem right we sometimes do the most horrible in the name of comradeship and of loyalty I thought it was fascinating to discover that actually empathy and sort of Sena phobia are often two sides of the same coin right you feel empathy for your own group for your own people and then you distrust the out group this is the dynamic that plays out again and again in our history well I mean if people are sort of fundamentally nice I mean we kind of have to address you know the bad stuff why do bad things happen why do bad people exist and you know and also what you just mentioned really which is the elites being selfish useless whatever it might be venal what's going on there I mean let's start with you know I mean you have to I mean you do it in the book as well we you know you talk about the 21st century ultimate European evil remains the Nazis so where does that fit in so your theory of yeah what's interesting is that after the Second World War there was this whole new generation of social psychologists people war have have probably heard of you know Philip Zimbardo with this famous Stanford Prison Experiment or Stanley Milgram with his studies he did at Yale where supposedly people were willing to shock random strangers you know give them very dangerous electric shocks and so the message of those scientists back then in the sixties was that you know what how do we explain the Holocaust it's because there's a Nazi in each and every one of us right so it was the return of venire theory it's just below the surface we're all capable of it now I think that is wrong I take a lot of time you know in the book to criticize those experiments but then still you got ask yourself the question how is this possible right how do we get there now what I what my most important objection is to these kind of psychological experiments is that they trivialize trivialize our history right you can write library's full of books about the very complex historical process that led to our switch right and there are so many different things at play here the the role of distance for example the technologies that played a role the sort of brainwashing that was at the same time how evil became normalized year by year but obviously I mean as I said libraries for the books I felt that these sort of psychological experiments trivialize the Holocaust because they're like well there's an easy explanation does it not see in each and every one of us well it's not as simple as that well then take us to the next okay so one important thing that we have to talk about is the role of distance in the history of violence so we've all watched way too many series on Netflix and an HBO and you know Game of Thrones and you name it that give us a depiction of violence as if it it's as if it's easy you know as if and we can all do it that's absolutely wrong we can't do it we know for example or most of us can't do it we know from historical research that only 15 to 25 percent of Allied soldiers during the second war or were actually capable of firing their guns it's just there's a very strong tendency in our psychology that at the moment that we have to do this we can't do it especially if the enemy is really close bayonets for example most bayonets throughout history have never been used and the reason is quite simple because it's just psychologically too hard if you look at the Battle of the Somme you do in the First World War of the batter of Waterloo you know where Napoleon was defeated almost all the wounds were not caused by a bayonet almost none of them were caused by bayonets but it's almost all of artillery because it's much easier to push a button and then ever explosion far away right so then we can actually be violent so this sense is sort of a way to overcome this not only sort of physical distance but also psychological distance so we can also de you man eyes the other and I mean it's a terrible truth about our species that we are capable of this but I'm just saying that it doesn't come natural to us it's not easy I mean sex is easy right most of us like it and love it food is easy right it's perfectly understandable why it's good for us and why it's good for the body violence actually when people kill someone else for example when soldiers come back from wars and they've killed someone else they've also destroyed something within themselves right they are trauma they often have PTSD etc which suggests to me that were not born to do this even though we are capable of it I mean that that explains I suppose some of the mechanism as to how you get armies to do bad things but I mean I suppose we still have to kind of work out the thought the thinking behind it don't we know that somebody somewhere has bad thoughts all that all people have bad thoughts to some degree and how that squares up with what you're saying about sabe yeah yeah yeah is it that we all have good and bad thoughts and the good naturally in most cases I sort of have a double view on this so on the one hand I'm saying that your view of human nature is a self-fulfilling prophecy so what you assume in yourself and in other people is often what you get at if you assume that most people are selfish and aggressive then you'll design your society in such a way that it will bring out the worst in yourself and and all of us right you'll design your company in a way that you'll get a lot of cutthroat competition and people will behave you know in a very nasty Hobbesian way and you'll do the same thing at schools and prisons and maybe our democracies as well and I think we can turn it around because if we have a more hopeful view of human nature we can start designing our institutions in a very different way more egalitarian or we actually rely on the intrinsic motivation of people you know to make the world a little bit of a better place so that's one thing the other thing I'm also saying is that we do have sort of two legs sort of the social leg and the selfish leg and you know it's the question is which what leg do we train but we also have a natural preference you know that is deeply embedded in our evolutionary history for the social leg and this is something you clearly see when how people behave during crisis you know they have an intuitive response that is all about solidarity and cooperation right they don't really have to think about it's just what they immediately do and that is exactly what has made our species so successful I mean have you worked out yourself where where because a lot of this is sort of belief system it sounds quite religious in a way sort of what you believe about good and evil background on that front so my father is a Protestant minister so I grew up in a religious household not very strict in any way I mean he's a he's a free thinker he's a bit of a philosopher himself but yeah then you have this moment as I think so many of us have when you're 17 or 18 years old and you're wondering you know what should I believe which dogmas are true that Jesus died on the cross for my sins is there a god is there life off the death and that was the moment when I became an atheist it was only later and also while researching this book that I became certain less interested in the question is this or that true but more interested in the question what is the effect of us believing this or that so what is the performative power of ideas but it's so like a religious book in a way that you've you've even come up with your own Ten Commandments couldn't resist sorry 10 10 ways to live your life in a good way I mean can we just go ten rules to live by when in doubt first I mean so often when we communicate we we don't really understand each other I mean even though yeomen beings have been designed to cooperate and communicate and connect there's I mean we make a lot of mistakes here right so for example whatsapp you get an emoji and you're looking at the emoji and like what does that mean and and then often when we are in doubt we assume the worst we think that someone else's bad intentions I think that's a bad strategy for a couple of reasons so in the first place most people are pretty decent so when you assume the best you'll be right most of the time in the second place if someone doesn't really mean well then your behavior your positive behavior can have an effect that psychologists call non complimentary right so someone does really nasty against you and you behave in a positive way and then the other one is like oh well maybe I should change my behavior as well right human beings are mirroring each other all the time so if you have having a good time together then you're friendly to me I'm friendly to you and that can go on for a very long time but it also goes the other way around right you can also go in a in a circle of nasty behavior the way to break that is to go against your intuition and to be nice to someone who who's not nice to you which is as I said non complimentary behavior now then you can say but wait a minute Rutger there are still like coal men out there right there are still people who want to rip you off and that I'm saying yes that's true and we can't change that fact and it's just collateral damage you should accept it because what's the alternative do you want to live your whole life distrusting everyone around you just to make sure that you'll never be conned I mean that's a way too high price to pay it's much better to say okay I accept that a couple of times in my life I'll be conned by the very tiny majority of people who do this and then have you know can live a life full life trusting other people I think that's a good price to pay and I mean the alternative if you've never been conned then you should ask yourself the question what's wrong with me right is my basic attitude to life trusting enough maybe I should visit a therapist or something do you leave your doors unlocked at night I wonder I mean if this reminds me of my conversation with my Australian family my wife's family who all leave their doors unlocked at night and don't seem at all worried about anything and it's totally unimaginable because not only do I bolt three bolts across my door at night well I mean you don't have to be totally irrational about it for example I lived in do track you know one of the big cities in the Netherlands where people on average owned I don't know two or three bikes so everyone is a lot of bikes and of course I lock my bicycle there right because there's just a small group of people who often you know have difficult backgrounds or are addicted and our stealing bike after bike after bike I mean I'm not saying that you shouldn't lock your bike or anything but I am saying that you should be really careful about being too distrusting of other people and worrying about being ripped up all the time because maybe you know it's just a price to pay number two thinking win-win scenario yeah so very often when we when we sort of talk about doing good things we think that people have to suffer for it right and then someone does something nice and that's yeah but that's just for her his or her career or LinkedIn profile or just because it gave gave him or her a good feeling right because people just want to be a do-gooder and I'm just like but what would the alternative be what we really want to live in a world where every time you do something nice you get this nauseous feeling right that you feel terrible I mean what kind of hell would that be I mean luckily we live in a world where doing goat also often feels good I mean that's that's what evolution is done for us that's pretty great terrific news right so yeah I think that very often sort of the best deals work for both sides as you mentioned earlier that I've written quite a bit about universal basic income one of the things that I really like about giving the poor free money is that it is an investment that pays for itself because you have to spend less on health care costs and and you know judicial costs and police costs and you name it you know it's really an investment with a great return and I think that's the kind of view we need to adopt here okay number three is ask more questions well we talked about this that people may get the impression that I've written this happy-clappy book about follow your intuition etc I think that's not a good idea empathy can very often be a bad guide right that we sort of think that we know what the other person is feeling but in reality we often don't so that it's officer often just better to ask to ask a question I also give the example of the golden rule right how do you say it in English I do not do unto others what you don't want to be done unto yourself right and then the other formulation as well yeah I think what's wrong with the golden rule is that it assumes that you know what the other person wants right you don't know that and the other person may be different from you so there's also the Platinum rule Dirt's Burnett Shaw had a great expression maybe you can read it from the book because I don't know it by heart it's the last line there yeah do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you their tastes may depend okay number four is temper your empathy train your yeah well we talked a little bit about this empathy often works as a spotlight right as a searchlight as you as you focus on the one person or group that you care about the rest of the wolf fades into darkness right and empathy is just very limited you can't feel empathy for everyone you come just do that and psychologists emphasize that compassion is different it's it's a bit more you take bit more of a distance right it's a bit more dispatch it's a bit more rational and you sort of don't feel what the other person is feeling but you do feel with that person and you can even there's even a real difference in the brain here so when people feel empathy a different part of the brain lights up then they're then then when they feel compassion okay number five is try to understand the other even if you don't get where they're coming from and I guess we have to kind of you have to kind of go to extremes English don't you you know I have to try and understand the Nazi I have to try and understand the realist and it's so important to make the distinction here between understanding and condoning because if we understand why young men blow themselves up right why they kill themselves and killing a lot of other innocence people in the process if we understand that then we can maybe try and make sure that it doesn't happen again right that's that's that's not the same as s condoning it and what experts emphasize is that very often these for example the foot soldiers of terrorist organizations they're not motivated by a strong grasp of the ideology right people there were a lot of people who went to Syria who had very little idea about sort of the Islamist faith the someone some of them had books with the Quran for dummies you know in their backpacks so why did they do what they do well the terrible truth is that they often did it out of friendship and out of comradeship and others sort of this finally having this feeling of belonging to something of finding meaning in your life again this is not about condoning it's about understanding because if you understand that I think then there are ways to design the most effective counterterrorism programs to make sure that this doesn't happen again and what are those most effective counterterrorism programs well they're often the opposite of what we do right so often we think that you have to sort of really crack down and have expand the surveillance apparatus and that kind of thing but if you look at the most effective counterterrorism programs well you go to somewhere like Denmark where they have this outreach program to drink tea with people who are potentially about to be radicalized and offer damn a job and a conversation etc now I know this sounds all very sentimental and naive but for example our hosts have this moment where they tried this and in the before that they had like 3035 people going to Syria at the year after that it was just one so there's a huge amount of scientific evidence that this kind of approach were even treating potential terrorists with a certain kind of compassion it just has better results and again not about condoning anything it's about understanding okay number six is love your own as others love their own I think we also have to sort of accept that human beings are limited creatures right we just can't love all of humanity that's not what we're capable of I mean some Buddhist philosophers or meditators pretend they can do it and then they have studied and meditated for fifteen fifty thousand hours or something like that and and then they say oh that's an example to us all but I'm like I don't have fifty thousand hours you know I want to live my life right so I think that in a certain way it's it's acceptable that when there is a you know a terrible attack say you live in London and there's a terrible attack in London it's acceptable then that you sort of feel more empathy for that then if there is sort of terrible thing going on ten thousand miles away right in some other distant country that's who we are we are limited creatures the only thing that we have to remember is that those people far away are human beings just like us you know with the same human nature what why does that help us though what does that help us be better people well look for example at the I mean classic example is the israeli-palestinian conflict I mean it's this terrible cycle of empathy and the inventions that goes on and on and on so there's an attack and then one group feels real empathy for the victims and there's like okay we need vengeance and then BOOM an attack on the other side and then no empathy and it goes on and on and on right but it's sort of the same dynamic that is at play on both sides and sort of you tend to forget that yeah what drives you is often what drives the people that are so distant from you as well okay now we get to the difficult one number seven is avoid yeah yeah yeah the news is well just to make sure I make a distinction between the news and journalism not all journalism is the news the news is really but the sensation is the incidental you know the stuff that that makes you bit the press there's even a term for this in psychology psychologists talk about mean waltz syndrome so people will watch too much of the news have become more cynical and depressed etc it's not good for you it's like a it's a bit like a drug are you sure that's true if you take our current example with coronavirus in which you say people on the whole are behaving well and people are obsessed with the news no news audiences yes and people are just being involved yeah yeah you know it's it's understandable because we're living through history right now right so it's obviously very important to know what's going on but then sort of the daily numbers about the number of deaths and infections and how helpful the hospitals do we really need to know all of that I think that often it makes people more anxious in the press and doesn't really help them in their lives right but then I mean doesn't it help people work out what's gone yeah and where their leaders may have made mistakes which is yes yes and that's investigative journalism right there helps us to zoom out and to focus is the bigger structural forces that govern our lives so what I always recommend to people is just I mean start with the Sunday newspaper just to read that the rest of the week make sure you've finished it right and then sort of ignore the the breaking news ignore the sort of the the push alerts etc etc you can easily do without that number eight is don't punch Nazis yeah so there is a certain kind of activism Rebecca Solnit one of my favorite authors once remarked that is more that cares more about sort of being right or sort of feeling good about being right then about actually achieving results sort of this moral righteousness you see that often so I think that I get in there in the chapter I give the example of sort of left-wing activists who like to point Nazis and it's like we're fighting fascism and then my question is is that really the most effective approach right because when you drop a bomb on the Middle East that's often you know the best way to recruit more terrorists right it sort of really fits the narrative of those who you're saying you're fighting the same is with punching Nazis right it's probably a great way for Nazis to recruit more Nazis and for them to give the you know to really feel this feeling of being oppressed you can turn this around so there's one town in Germany what's it called once IDO that sort of did the opposite and they when they they had a Nazi March of neo-nazis every year in their town and so they said you know what we're gonna make this instant kind of benefit march for the for the good cause so they promise that for every 10 meter that the Nazis donated they or walk they would donate a certain amount of money to a group that helps neo-nazis get out of you know those kind of groups I think that is just that is just hilarious and it's just a much better way to try and to try and reach out which takes you ones number nine which has come out of the closet don't be ashamed angered so I'm a fan of the film Love Actually right and that is it takes a lot of courage to say that as a as a man of 32 years old right it's it's often very sort of people find it hard to come out for the good because they they're afraid that they'll be dismissed as sentimental or naive or you know the oh the your do-gooder you know you're just doing this for the money or for your LinkedIn profile or something like that the difficulty here is that when you do not come out for it then you'll put it in Karen Tyne right and then it cannot spread anymore we know that human behavior is contagious right not only viruses our behavior are contagious human behavior as well just submit it you know you're just like the movie especially the beginning with you know the part about Heathrow you know where all these happy people are hugging each other you just like it just admit it okay finally be realistic now some people may think well that's a bit no it's the most important thing actually and what I'm trying to do in this book is to redefine what it means to be a realist the realist is someone who has hoped for the future and who has a more hopeful view of human nature I think that is entirely realistic and it's the cynic who's really naive and who needs to update his view of human nature in line with the latest scientific evidence so why did you why did you write this I mean why do you it's a hopelessly hubristic book right I think that everything starts with our view of human nature right every political philosophy starts with it and then if we look at the greatest challenges that lie ahead of us as a species and maybe especially climate change how how are we ever going to do anything about it if we don't believe in ourselves you know if we believe that people deep down are just selfish then it's never going to work out so also if we just want to survive and let's sustainably on this planet I think we need to start with just looking at ourselves in it in a different way do you I mean also enjoy throwing the odd hand grenade I mean when I think about that sort of session in Davos watched a little bit of it again this morning you know you went you went into this elite playground answers yeah basically sort of stocks who think yeah was that the plan yes there was very much the plan well actually was I knew that on that Friday this all happened on Friday the last day of the conference that I was gonna do a panel that was televised and where the opportunity to plot my book and try and sell more copies right and then the day before that I was on my hotel in my hotel room and skyping with my wife and saying how horrible I found the whole experience of being at the World Economic Forum you know it's not I'm not really I'm not really a network or anything and so I suppose spend a lot of time actually in the hotel room itself I must admit but I said you know what I just have to do this speech tomorrow or this panel and then I'll go home and she said but come on are you really gonna do that come on you gotta say what you really think about the whole thing and then I said okay okay okay maybe you're right so it's prepared this short speech about you know how this is a firefighters conference where no one's allowed to talk about water right no one's really talking about taxes you know what we actually got to talk about and that didn't do much but then over the weekend I think a Monday it totally exploded on the Internet so there was a strange experience but I think it sort of also reveals the paradox of this book it is that even though human beings have evolved to be friendly sometimes that's exactly the problem right very often progress comes from people who are willing to be unfriendly and go against the status quo and to be nasty and and and just say what they think right that often helps it and if you go to Davos and you expect some kind of conspiracy and these elites you know sort of scheming to take over the world you'll be disappointed but because you'll discover that actually the these elites are really nice and well you know you'll have nice conversations with them and that's that's especially what is it I mean that is boring right it is and they mean well and still they don't pay taxes yeah someone else it's helping the truth--the I guess let me just talk to you briefly about universal basic income as well and see how you think that argument has shifted because when you were talking about it and you've got a famous TED talk it's had a lot of views talking about it it's still something that people were basically writing off saying yes this is sort of even people who are thinking well it's quite a nice idea in theory it's quite simple I like its simplicity but it would not too much and it's just kind of crazy we're now in a situation in Britain for example where the state or the tax payer is effectively paying for half the country or taking on that liability at the moment because of a furlough scheme in which 80% of people's salaries are being paid for in millions of millions of jobs and also the public sector it is in a way a universal basic income they've capped it at two and a half thousand pounds a month so do you think this is now an argument that's kind of come of age and do you think that that is effectively what they're doing or are they are they not doing the universal basic income and doing something much more complicated because they don't you have to look at the whole basic income discussion and see it on a spectrum right so you can make the current welfare system more basic income ish right you can make it a bit you can remove some conditions you can make it more universal right you can make it more in the spirit of a basic income so if we'll ever have a basic income then I think that's how we'll get it just you know some a lot of small steps that will get us there but did you still think a universal basic income is the way to do it or do you think these more complex instruments that are sort of just coming up house in Pisces effectively do the same thing and that's fine I think that after the crisis what I would want is is not only like high quality public health care and I think in other essential ingredients is high quality public education but also a floor in the income distribution that is really what a basic income is about it's not a net but it's a floor something that you can always rely on right it's just the right that you have as a citizen venture capital for the people and so that everyone can decide for themselves you know whether they want to start a new job or great something new that's sort of what I envision as the ultimate goal of what I just see is socio democracy should that floor be at a comfortable level or should it be at a difficult level you know because how do you stop people just saying okay somewhere in between so it should be enough to pay for your basic needs food shelter education bit of clothing but almost everyone would also want to have additional income on top of that um you know the reason actually or one of the reasons why I started working on human kind was that I realized that the idea of a basic income presupposes a different view of human nature it presupposes that people are can actually be intrinsically motivated they don't also always only work because someone else says they have to do it or because of the money or whatever but because they have their own dreams and ambitions so yeah I think that if you if you really want to believe in basic income then you also have to need this different view of human nature I wish have end the podcast by asking people if they could change the world one way by waving a magic wand god that's how they would do it you know the thing that I that moved me the most while I was researching this book was at one point I I had the privilege of visiting a school in the south of the Netherlands that sort of completely reimagined what it what a school can be like so no more homework no more no more sort of rooms no more sort of strict schedules or curricula no more tests no more grades just relying on the intrinsic motivation of the kids and then mixing it all together you know all the ages together all the levels academic levels together and what touched me the most well was there is that there there was no bullying going on they designed it in a very different way and that made me realize actually and there's a lot of sociology to back this up that the way we've designed schools now especially sort of the typical strict maybe let's say the typical British boarding school where the kids have Lord of the Flies went to these are designed to bring out the worst in us from a very early age you know designed to bring out more competition and nastiness if I could change the world I would start there you know with just creating different environments for our kids because you have you know then you'll have very different individuals who want different things are alive yeah thank you very much indeed for sharing your ways to change the world and talking's was about human kind of hopeful history I hope you enjoyed that if you did then please do give us a rating and a review this podcast is produced by rachel evans until next time bye-bye

Channel: Channel 4 News

Views: 110,545

Keywords: Channel 4 News, channel 4 news, bregman, rutger bregman, bregman davos, bregman tucker carlson, rutger bregman tucker carlson, interview, bregman interview, rutger bregman interview, rutger bregman davos, humankind rutger bregman, humankind, rutger bregman books, rutger bregman ted talk, rutger bregman's humankind, rutger bregman ted, ways to change the world, ways to change the world podcast

Id: VYubG-SthWs

Length: 44min 58sec (2698 seconds)

Published: Fri May 22 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Dignidude]

I think the most important point in Rutgers book (without having read it) is that we can adopt cooperation as a basic value for our actions and decisions by examining all our behavioral patterns for whether they are cooperative both with ourselves, with other humans and creatures, and with earth/the universe - and adapting accordingly. Once we learn ways to do this efficiently, the consciousness revolution takes flight, grows exponentially and humanity is saved. Wouldn't that be nice? :)

[u/gripmyhand]

https://www.reddit.com/r/neuronaut/comments/at7vyz/rutger_bregman_on_human_nature_empathy_sacx/

[u/gripmyhand]

NrN Search 'HISTORY'

[u/gripmyhand]

NrN Search 'EMPATHY'

[u/gripmyhand]

NrN Search 'HUMAN RIGHTS'

[u/gripmyhand]

https://psyche.co/ideas/do-humans-really-have-a-killer-instinct-or-is-that-just-manly-fancy

[u/gripmyhand]

NrN Search 'INCOME'

https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/ig9ked/mum_living_in_extreme_poverty_found_dead_next_to/g2t5wjw/?context=3

https://onezero.medium.com/amp/p/2967ffdd1035

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/aug/24/councils-scrapping-algorithms-benefit-welfare-decisions-concerns-bias

[u/gripmyhand]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-yPq2wv9-s