There have been many societies based on the idea that people can be convinced to be unselfish. They've all failed. Bregman has an impossible uphill battle against a vast historical record.
Reading the synopsis https://www.amazon.com/Humankind-Hopeful-History-Rutger-Breg... it appears Bregman has made a mistake. He posits that cooperation is unselfish. This is incorrect. He's right that cooperation works, but people cooperate for selfish reasons. If I grow bananas and you hunt fish, we cooperate and trade the results, and we are both better off. We cooperated for selfish reasons.
Now, if you grow fish and I just take it from you because I felt I deserved it more than you, you are going to be mad at me and might fight me. This is how it is in our selfish interests to cooperate.
> But if we believe in the reality of humanity's kindness and altruism, it will form the foundation for achieving true change in society,
Many societies have been founded on this model, with a 100% failure rate.
It isn't Bregman's premise that people can be convinced to be unselfish, but rather that they are kind an unselfish by nature, and that it is modern society that made us egoistic.
The book does a far better job of making the argument than I, or its synopsis, ever could.
Reading the synopsis https://www.amazon.com/Humankind-Hopeful-History-Rutger-Breg... it appears Bregman has made a mistake. He posits that cooperation is unselfish. This is incorrect. He's right that cooperation works, but people cooperate for selfish reasons. If I grow bananas and you hunt fish, we cooperate and trade the results, and we are both better off. We cooperated for selfish reasons.
Now, if you grow fish and I just take it from you because I felt I deserved it more than you, you are going to be mad at me and might fight me. This is how it is in our selfish interests to cooperate.
> But if we believe in the reality of humanity's kindness and altruism, it will form the foundation for achieving true change in society,
Many societies have been founded on this model, with a 100% failure rate.