
Humankind neither nasty nor brutish - well_i_never
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31832-8/fulltext
======
fancyfredbot
I think this article is rather unfairly quoting poor Hobbes out of context.
Hobbes didn't say humankind was nasty and brutish, he said the life of man
would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" in the absence of a
community... Which is not contradicted by the examples in the article!

~~~
cousin_it
What Hobbes actually said:

> _To speak impartially, both sayings are very true; That Man to Man is a kind
> of God; and that Man to Man is an arrant Wolfe. The first is true, if we
> compare Citizens amongst themselves; and the second, if we compare Cities._

In other words, within a group we often see niceness, and between groups we
often see nastiness - both are parts of human nature.

~~~
mdorazio
It's a pretty succinct description of the two sides of tribalism.

~~~
luckylion
To have a We, you need a They.

An alien threat would be the best thing ever for human cooperation. I'm not
sure whether the aliens need to be real, as long as they feel real.

~~~
082349872349872
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 is real, but apparently
insufficiently alien?

Or maybe _too_ alien to suffice as a subanthropomorphisable They?

~~~
luckylion
Yeah, I think it has to be something that can be considered an enemy, not
something that'll do us harm because that's how things are but has no mind of
its own. A virus, diabetes or global warming aren't going to work as good (my
intuition is that men need it to be an actual enemy more than women, but I
have no idea).

I do believe that e.g. Americans would be much more compliant in corona-
mitigation-things like wearing masks if the narrative was "China has sent us a
Virus to destroy us". But that would obviously also create serious issues
because they'd demand revenge.

A secretive alien enemy has sent us a Virus, and they're also trying to cook
us alive by heating up our planet. Are you going to just let them do it to us,
or will you stand up and fight for our way of life, against the intergalactic
threat? Now that's a They that can provide a We for Team Humanity, Leaders Of
The Free Universe.

~~~
082349872349872
Would you like to know more?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMTz9nIUkGc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMTz9nIUkGc)

------
jadbox
While reading this, I can't help but to hear Charlie Chaplin's Great Dictator
final speech in the background of my mind:

"... We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery.
We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for
everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of
life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-
stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have
shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our
knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too
much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than
cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will
be violent and all will be lost…"

[https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/articles/29-the-final-
spee...](https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/articles/29-the-final-speech-from-
the-great-dictator-)

~~~
zozbot234
The whole point of that Great Dictator's Speech is the beginning, the "I'm
sorry, I don't _want_ to be a dictator" part. We need fewer wannabe-great-
dictators in the world, and more successful tribal leaders striving to unite
people via voluntary consensus, tolerance and moderation. That's just as true
today as it was in the bad old 1930s.

~~~
growlist
> tribal leaders striving to unite people via voluntary consensus, tolerance
> and moderation

'Citizen 99234832, we have received reports that suggest you are
insufficiently consensual, tolerant and moderate. Please report to camp X101
for voluntary reeducation, or face the consequences.'

~~~
kazagistar
Yes, you have noticed that authoritarians sometimes use the veneer of freedom
and cooperation to force obedience. Sometimes they just use strongman tactics.
It doesn't change the fact that voluntary consensus and tolerance are, in fact
good.

------
baryphonic
Whenever I read something like this, I wonder if the author ever had children,
or even knows anyone with children. I have two. Children ages 2 and 3 are a
strong counter-example to this "inmate human goodness" hypothesis and
Rousseau's thinking in general. My kids at that age would often be about to
trip over the last nerve with some sort of interruption only to say, "Mommy
and daddy, I love you." In some ways, I think the goodness that kids these
ages show must be some sort of evolutionary mechanism to remain "cute" and
keep the parents from harming them (i.e. self-interested). Thomas Sowell
(whose work I submit is likely far superior to either Bregman's or the Lancet
reviewer Marmot's) has a wonderful quote illustrating it: "Each new generation
born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must
be civilized before it is too late."

Bergman appears to be arguing against a straw man. I don't think anyone would
say that human beings are completely, innately and irredeemably evil. I doubt
even John Calvin would have argued such a thing. People want to be loved and
they want to feel they are doing good. But we are good at lying to ourselves
about our motivations, letting our emotions lead us into bad decisions and
generally reacting in ways that preserve our own interests, status and
livelihoods regardless of the cost (which we are adept at rationalizing away).

Rousseau's "unconstrained vision"[1] has a fundamental error: if humans are
good, then human-created institutions should by and large also be good; if
humans are good and human-created institutions are for whatever reason
corrupting, then humans should be resilient to the corruption. I'd argue that
neither seems to be true, but the latter seems particularly false and fatal
for the unconstrained vision. The existence of even a few unchecked malevolent
attributes is sufficient to create mass suffering. This is doubly true if the
person believes herself to be innately good in all ways.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Visions-Thomas-
Sowell/dp/068...](https://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Visions-Thomas-
Sowell/dp/0688079512)

~~~
munificent
_> Children ages 2 and 3 are a strong counter-example to this "inmate human
goodness" hypothesis and Rousseau's thinking in general._

Children younger than that are strong counter-examples to claims that humans
are bipedal and have sophisticated verbal skills. I think there is a more,
useful understanding of "innate" that doesn't literally mean "from the moment
of birth" but more means "absent other sufficiently strong influences, a fully
developed human will evidence this trait".

I agree that toddlers are miniature terrorists. It's a good thing their little
bodies develop as slowly as their brains and moral compass, to mitigate the
damage they can cause.

~~~
vermilingua
The trick isn’t in the meaning of the word “innate”, but in your definition of
child and human. Children are not fully human at birth, their brains are
entirely undeveloped; so it’s perfectly valid to say humans have innate
goodness, and children do not, because they are not yet entirely human.

~~~
thursday0987
sorry, but no. children are 100% human.

------
diego
There is no contradiction. We can all be altruistic or nasty depending on the
context. We are messy and complicated animals, and we cooperate or defect
depending on many signals. For those interested in this topic in depth (not
just anecdotes like in the article) I recommend Behave by Robert Sapolsky.

------
ericmcer
It seems pretty straightforward: we are capable of great benevolence to people
we view as our "tribe", and great cruelty to "others". It makes sense
biologically and has played itself out that way in history and among our
closest animal relatives.

That being said you only get one life, and most of your views will go
unchallenged throughout it. Why spend that brief time always assuming and
preparing for the worst?

------
karaterobot
> Rather than see humankind's inherent nastiness, Bregman is keen to show our
> inherent goodness.

Everything I've ever observed about human behavior leads me to believe it's
more complicated than this dichotomy. I'd hope that the book is less naive
than the review makes it seem to be.

------
rob74
> _As a rhetorical device, Bregman takes Jean-Jacques Rousseau 's more hopeful
> account of humanity in a state of nature. For Rousseau the problem is not
> what is hidden by the veneer—human nature is fine—it is civilisation
> itself._

Hmmm, without the veneer of civilisation, we would be basically apes with
oversized brains. Apes cooperate just fine within their own group, they are
social animals after all, but between different groups it can get very nasty
very fast. Which is of course what we can see all around the world at a larger
or smaller scale (wars, social networks, election campaigns, racial tensions
etc.) but I doubt getting rid of civilisation is a solution for these
problems...

~~~
asgard1024
I haven't read the book, but I suspect you're disagreeing with Rousseau and
not Bregman here. I don't think Bregman recommends removing the civilization,
but rather augmenting it based on the moral principles that we already accept
as humans.

~~~
Joker_vD
Last time I checked, it was agreed that there are no universally accepted
moral principles. In fact, counting purely by headcount (India and China do
exist!), quite a number of things you consider to be universally or widely
accepted may actually be accepted by the minority of the people. Is it "eye
for an eye" or "turn another cheek"? More than half of the world would take
the first options as morally correct.

~~~
asgard1024
Maybe I am reading too much into this argument, but I think this is moving the
goalposts. So Bregman comes and proves, presumably mostly based on history of
Western civilization, that humans are (at least in some ways and on average)
better than they think they are. Your response to that is, well, those darn
Indians and Chinese, they are not part of Western civilization, therefore,
Bregman's proof does not hold.

Not to mention that it has a little bit of a scent of white man's burden.

And BTW, I do believe in universality of human rights, I don't care what the
consensus is. While I agree with Bregman, I think it is kind of a moot point
(as any argument from nature), because the values we have (or rather decisions
we make) are much more a function of the environment we live in.

~~~
Joker_vD
> "universality of human rights" That's a somewhat overcompressed term. Does
> it mean "the human rights, as they're generally perceived in the beginning
> of the XXI century in <your country>, are applicable to all humans in the
> past, the present, and the future, at any place on (or in, or outside of)
> the Earth"? Or does it allow for some human rights that will be discovered
> one day in the future to also cover everyone, including you and me today?

And I certainly did not intend "the white man's burden", on the contrary, "the
white man's nosiness". The Western people, objectively judged by their own
standards, turn out to be better than they generally tend to judge themselves
by those standards? Good for them! Now could they please allow other people to
judge themselves by their own, maybe different, standards?

------
soledades
One thing I found very interesting from the book (which is worth a read):

The notion humans might have rose to supremacy among the apes, not by
brainpower alone, but by a combination of brainpower and mirroring, i.e. our
almost magical ability/tendency to copy others.

This then, goes the hypothesis, allowed a thicker channel of intellectual
transmission, and faster development of species technology, even though
Neanderthals had 20% larger brain mass and appear to have made many of the
hallmark human discoveries first.

------
stakkur
I just finished reading this book a few weeks ago. I can't recommend it
enough. There is so much to learn here, and it's not just a shot of positivity
--it's that we're fundamentally wrong about human nature, and much of the
research we've long relied on to justify our beliefs is flawed (or often faked
or just plain wrong).

------
kevin_thibedeau
All it takes is one narcissist to ruin things for everybody else.

~~~
arethuza
I do believe that most people _are_ basically decent. However, we are also
gullible and prone to conforming to dominance hierarchies.

~~~
bleepblorp
About 40% of humans are predisposed, either through biology or upbringing, to
blindly follow socially dominant people.

This is why authoritarianism happens.

A disproportionate percentage of socially dominant people are sociopaths who
are unfit to lead. This does not matter to authoritarian followers, however,
and this is why things like Naziism happen.

~~~
wahern
Do you have a citation for such a figure, or is it something that appeared
self-evident, like sticky electoral support for historical, authoritarian
leaders?

~~~
heavyset_go
I'm not the original poster, but there have been studies on the authoritarian
personality type[1] in psychology going back nearly seven decades years or so.
A certain subset of the population is inclined towards displaying
authoritarian traits, and those traits are about 50 percent heritable[2].

Regarding contemporary Americans, about 40 percent of Americans are in favor
of non-democratic forms of government and about 52 percent support a strong
leader without checks and balances from Congress or elections[3].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality)

[2] [https://psmag.com/news/authoritarianism-the-terrifying-
trait...](https://psmag.com/news/authoritarianism-the-terrifying-trait-that-
trump-triggers)

[3] [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/03/13/is-
public-s...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/03/13/is-public-
sentiment-shifting-toward-support-of-authoritarianism-not-really/)

------
mjfl
Seems to focus way too much on the bystander effect as a straw man example of
"human evil". A much better picture of human evil would come from studying war
rape, especially that of a victorious army. Any victorious army. Think Soviets
in Berlin, Japanese in China, during WWII. The English civil wars were full of
it as observed by Hobbes. Furthermore, it is ubiquitous throughout history.
Any human convinced of their impunity, such as a conquering army, will
absolutely be brutish and nasty to their enemies.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Look at the US conquest and occupation of Germany vs. the Russian. There was a
massive difference.

------
paul_f
The article uses the infamous Kew Gardens story, which has been thoroughly
debunked my Malcolm Gladwell as being inaccurate. You could read the book
Tipping Point for details. Here is some quick info:
[https://delanceyplace.com/view-
archives.php?p=3265](https://delanceyplace.com/view-archives.php?p=3265)

------
cousin_it
> _Bregman is horrified by the Holocaust, as anyone who believes in the
> goodness of humankind must be. He suggests that people will indeed do nasty
> things on a mass scale if they are convinced that it is for the greater
> good. It was not inherent nastiness that led to the Holocaust, Bregman
> suggests, but years of indoctrination._

How about all the mega-killers in history - Genghis Khan, Timur, Alexander,
Napoleon? It seems to me that will-to-power is innate, it doesn't require
indoctrination or appeal to greater good.

~~~
vorpalhex
Geghis Khan and Alexander would both make the case that they were helping the
world by uniting it and ending micro-conflicts - the people they killed along
the way were necessary sacrifices who had the option to instead surrender to
something greater. There's also an element of "divine right" at play - they
believed they were fulfilling a religious entitlement.

Napoleon would make a similar argument, likely one more based on a worldview
about exporting French culture and values.

There are very few cases, perhaps the destruction of Babylon, where someone
basically says "yeah, I did it because I was angry and didn't care".

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Would they? It's my understanding that premodern conquerors were quite open
about the fact that their primary goal was acquiring wealth and glory rather
than optimizing the world.

~~~
vorpalhex
I mention the destruction of Babylon by the Assyrians because it's an
exception, and because the king goes on in great detail about how much he
wanted to remove even the idea of Babylon.

Most conquerers obviously felt they were the best person to do the job, but
they were not in it for like, direct personal gain. At some point you conquer
enough to drown in wine and gold long before you conquer as much as they did -
and being in war is not pleasant even as the king. They felt there were doing
something for their people by unifying disparate factions.

~~~
cousin_it
"When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no
lands left to conquer."

Skyler: "If I have to hear one more time that you did this for the family..."
Walter: "I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. I was really alive."

The way I see it, conquerors aren't driven by greed or morality. They conquer
because they enjoy it, are good at it, and want to be the best and greatest.

------
teekert
I read Rutger's book, I also read Ayn's books, I don't even think that there
is a contradiction, if you assume that humankind is kind and has a natural
tendency for kindness. Both books changed me in a way, I love them, both
highly recommended if you ask me.

------
drdeca
We humans are short though.

------
intrasight
Wouldn't load. Get "This site requires Cookies to be enabled to function". The
good news is that that almost never happens.

------
bambax
We help our own, and destroy and torture with great pleasure and no remorse
everything else, including animals, whole ecosystems, and other human beings
we decide, for some reason or another, are "aliens".

The moment we give another human community a special name is the first step
towards abomination.

Being territorial and aggressive towards others is a trait we share with other
species, but we are also superpredators and conquerors and will not rest until
there is no more "others".

~~~
kiba
I like to eat chicken, beefs, and porks for no other reason than it's tasty
food.

Does that make me a bad person?

~~~
dsubburam
Another way to reframe this is to ask if this is a _free_ action, rather than
a good or bad one. Free as in free from animal passions that compel one to act
in a pseudo-deterministic way ("I am hungry so I eat", "I am scared so I
run"), and instead according to higher-order reason and principle only humans
(so far) have access to.

So, if we choose meat for a meal in an automatic way because our tongue asks
for it, it might be an unfree choice. But if we do so after some
consideration, including factors beyond our bodily impulses, it could be seen
as a choice made by a free person.

This my take/interpretation of Immanuel Kant's transcendental freedom[1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative#Freedom...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative#Freedom_and_autonomy)

------
schalab
The deepest separation of labor is female and male. The female energy is
associated with empathy for the child. Male energy is protecting territory.

Some combination of both these energies exist in all of us.

You can say humans have the capacity for love, and also acknowledge there are
people out there who gain pleasure from power over others.

You cant say one is natural and the other is learned.

Even the people who gain pleasure in causing pain, are useful in the right
situations. Hence the trope in fiction of the jailed entity being released to
combat an even greater foe in a dire situation.

