Do you think people are inherently good, or inherently evil?
Like, left to our own devices, will we make decisions that are beneficial or harmful to others?
I have mentioned the Rutger Bregman book, ‘Humankind: A Hopeful History‘ MANY times now on the podcast and this is my inspiration for this episode. For a summary of the brief story below, read the book or see his article in The Guardian.
Spoiler alert, I believe people are basically good, and that the evil comes out when we experience trauma.
Rutger’s awesome book includes the story is that ‘The Lord of the Flies’ (the book by William Golding) has convinced us all that people are inherently evil. The Nobel Price for literature didn’t hurt, but the book has severely damaged our ideas about good and evil.
Golding, apparently, was a pretty disgruntled and troubled fella, so of course he wrote about super dystopian concepts. Also, when real life plane wrecks and isolated survivors really happen, they lean toward good and not some over dramatized cannibalistic evil.
So 2 things there. 1) humans love drama, and 2) there is evidence of people making good choices in the world, despite all the press around the bad ones.
In this Episode I springboard of Bregman’s work. Full post this Friday, right here.