Humans are selfish, and everyone strives to maximize their own interests – biology, psychology, economics, sociology, politics, ethics all say, on the one hand, a steady stream of evidence for this meta-proposition, on the other hand. Aspects build on this meta-proposition theory.
Hard-hearted theorists justify the law of the jungle, while soft-hearted theorists go to great lengths to invent a mechanism to explain that although people are selfish, they have developed kindness, mutual assistance, and the rule of law. “Mutual aid of blood relatives”, “Invisible hand”, “Contract theory”, whether these theories are successful, no one knows.
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The proposition that everyone is selfish is not only the magic weapon of theorists, but also seems to have become the consensus of ordinary people.
Bregman’s difference is that he pulls from the bottom of the pot, fundamentally denying this imaginary meta-proposition, and flatly claiming that “the vast majority of people are quite decent at heart.”
True, many best-selling literary works and film and television works support the meta-thesis that human nature is inherently evil. “Survivor” is a worldwide hit, “Lord of the Flies” has sold tens of millions of copies, and its author Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. But these works, after all, are fiction, fiction. Is reality similar to this? Bregman uncovered the true story of six Tongan boys who were stranded on Atta Island for more than a year, where what happened was almost the exact opposite of Lord of the Flies.
Are the seeds of selfishness deeply planted in our genes? “The Selfish Gene” sold well around the world, but it was questioned in the biological community. In fact, Richard Dawkins himself abandoned the claim that human beings are inherently selfish in subsequent editions of the book. In response to Dawkins, Bregman introduced a decades-long experiment conducted by scientists Belia and Lyudmila in a fox farm in Siberia. The conclusion of this experiment was summarized in Bregman’s words. , is “survival of the friendliest”. The survival and development of human beings in the animal kingdom largely depends on the trust between people. Only people blush, and only people have the whites of the eyes—the whites of the eyes that reveal the direction of the gaze or focus, which are products of communication.
Of course human beings have their cruel side. In the recent 20th century, there were two world wars, the Japanese murdered the Chinese, and the Nazis murdered the Jews, but the view that human beings are becoming more and more cruel is unfounded, Breg Mann cites Stephen Pink and other sources to show that humans are not inherently warlike, and that, over time, their warlikeness has been suppressed.
Well, Dawkins’s theory may be a bit roundabout, but there are also many psychological experiments that have concluded that human nature is inherently evil. Most of the knowledgeable people in the market have heard of Zimbardo’s prison experiment. Some college students were divided into two groups, 9 serving as prison guards and 9 serving as prisoners. In the course of the experiment in just a few days, the “prison guards” turned into a group of vicious people, and the “prisoners” became extremely anxious and frightened.
Milgram’s electric shock experiments are also famous. The experimental project recruited some people to act as “teachers”, and some experimental team members acted as “students” strapped to chairs in the next room. The teacher asks the question, the student answers, and if the answer is wrong, the teacher is asked to press the shock switch. The voltage of the shocking device was continuously increased until the students screamed and even fainted. These performances of the students were faked by the team members, but the subjects did not know it. Although they expressed sympathy for the “students”, most of them still obeyed the order and kept shocking these students in extreme distress. From this, Milgram concluded that humans would blindly obey and do terrible things. These experiments are well-known, widely disseminated, and written into textbooks, however, Bregman cites various sources suggesting that such experiments were directed, and some were even hoaxes.
But it seems that the metathesis that human nature is evil is not just made up by biologists and psychologists. Examples can be found everywhere in reality. In the 1960s, in the Kew Gardens apartment in New York, a young lady, Katherine, returned to the apartment in the early morning. A murderer attacked her next to the apartment, and Katherine died unfortunately. Many people in the nearby apartment heard her cry for help. Some pushed open the window and shouted “Let go of that girl.” However, during the half-hour-long murder, no one offered a helping hand.
The murder was later known to Americans as a typical case of indifference. However, the news reports about the Kew Gardens murder were greatly untrue. Later investigations showed that the neighbors were awakened from their deep sleep by cries for help. Two people immediately called the police, and a female neighbor who was woken up later rushed out of the apartment to find them. Seriously injured Catherine, and it was in her arms that Catherine died.
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We can read a lot of brutality, evil, and perversion in social news, but we must remember that news is not a balanced portrayal of the overall state of society. What’s more, some reporters for various purposes overgeneralize, distort the facts, and even fabricate the facts. According to news reports, Hurricane Katrina turned the city of Orleans into a barbaric society, and Bregman’s in-depth investigation reveals that the truth is far from that. Bregman writes that the results of numerous studies suggest that “news is a mental health hazard”.
People in the real world are not as bad as this kind of news renders. Bregman then tells the story of the Danes who rescued thousands of Jews who were about to be rounded up under the nose of the Nazis. Of course, in most cases, people did not fight evil like the Danes in this operation, which Bregman admits is an exception, but he also cites a few other instances where under normal social conditions, people Will spontaneously help others, rescue others.
In the eyes of those theorists who insist on the metathesis that everyone is selfish, ordinary people may not and need not be selfish, but that is only because they are not rational enough. Rationality always teaches selfishness. As a model of rationality, economic man always pursues profit maximization. Really? Are you determined to open a bookstore because the bookstore is the most profitable? Maybe you’ve lost your mind? Of course, a business cannot survive without profits, however, there is a long way to go between earning a profit and maximizing profits.
In response to the above, Bregman made various investigations to explain that “most people are quite decent in their hearts” and that we humans are “the kindest species”. Humans are more like bonobos, with a “natural aversion to inequality,” than aggressive chimpanzees. So, the question is reversed: where did the mercenary acts, the heinous atrocities come from? Part III of this book will answer this question.
The first source of atrocities that Bregman lists may come as a surprise: empathy. Yes, empathy is the source of goodness, but using empathy inappropriately can have dire consequences.
The second source of brutality: power. Experience and experimentation have shown that in a small group it is usually not a Machiavellian evil monarch but a friendly, good-natured person who is pushed to be the leader. However, power is like a narcotic, and these people often become ignorant of the pain of others when they have power. The leaders of large-scale human societies are not “good ones” from the very beginning, and such so-called civilized societies seem to naturally need some kind of inequality to give one person or a small group of people great power. From this point of view, “for a long time, civilization has been a disaster”.
Psychological experiments that lead to grand and surprising conclusions are always suspicious – if the conclusions of physics experiments are different from those of our common sense, we will probably give up the latter, but when it comes to our own thoughts and feelings, we Why should we believe a so-called experiment instead of the conclusions taught by life experience? There are certain things that are bizarre in the news and in reality, but we may not necessarily start from this to summarize the current state of the world. Selfish genes, rational economic people, and others, and their ears are full of cocoons. It is not without question and refutation. Han Shaogong’s article “Individualism is Harming Individuals” is a good example. Today, Bregman has spent his energy to re-investigate the truth and stand up to question popular stereotypes, which is worth applauding.
However, the cheers stop there. I am mostly skeptical of Bregman’s conclusions. I believe that under normal social conditions, especially when there is no major conflict of interest, most people are quite kind, but it does not seem that human nature is inherently good. The author believes that human atrocities are decreasing, and it seems that human beings are improving, but now it is precisely those bad guys who are most likely to climb to the top, and civilization is said to be a disaster. As for the “ten principles of survival” in the conclusion, which advocates tolerance, understanding, and love for yourself, I will not list them all here. They are definitely good, and maybe they will work, just like chicken soup, but I Still don’t believe anyone can invent “the best way to eliminate hatred, injustice and prejudice”.
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