Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

thelancet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 109 posts

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#21

Post by The_Double »

jadbox wrote: post #2

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 h…

Bregman's point in his book is that the belief that everyone is greedy is more harmful than the greed itself.

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#22

Post by Tokkemon »

jadbox wrote: post #2

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 h…

Sidenote, I added a score to this speech in my college days. I think it's pretty good. https://youtu.be/zT5p1N9AoQA

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#23

Post by 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...

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#24

Post by asgard1024 »

Joker_vD wrote: post #10
asgard1024 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#25

Post by 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?

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#26

Post by mdorazio »

cousin_it wrote: post #20
fancyfredbot wrote: post #8

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!

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.

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

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#27

Post by baryphonic »

throwanem wrote: post #6
falcolas wrote: post #3

Tell that to those disappeared by their political competition. To those in Chinese concentration camps for the crime of being Muslim. To those being black bagged in Hong Kong. To those stuck in poverty because they have nothing of value to trade in a capitalistic society.

I think the point may be that systems which produce such behavior are perversions, rather than expressions, of whatever essential nature humanity may be said to have.

These systems are produced by people who believe in claptrap like this, that human beings are innately good but merely corrupted by institutions. How many million have died, from "Kulak" farmers to Chinese peasants, as a result of this kind of thinking which blinds us to thinking we can do no wrong?

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#28

Post by 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.

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#29

Post by sriku »

jadbox wrote: post #2

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 h…

"And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. ….." .. so mixed on hearing that. On one hand, this gives so much hope under the direst of circumstances. On the other, it says a lot about human nature too .. which can steadfastly hold on to destructive beliefs and act on them till the last breath.

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#30

Post by aebtebeten »

zozbot234 wrote: post #15
drivebycomment wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and the article has a direct response to your first part: > 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. For your last point about people in poverty, I would point out that the global poverty has gone down dramatically during capitalis…

> It was not inherent nastiness that led to the Holocaust, Bregman suggests, but years of indoctrination. Arendt's entire report on "The banality of evil" was essentially a direct refutation of that exact argument. Nazi evil was 'banal' in a way, to use Arendt's term, precisely because it was , unambiguously, evil. There was not even the start of a colorable argument that it could be for any sort of "greater" good, n…

The bits I've read/seen recently were definitely leaning far harder on the (as they perceived it) greater good than any "let's unambiguously[1] be evil" rhetoric.

- Goebbels' Sportpalast 1943 speech[2] https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb36...

- Triumph of the Will 1935 https://archive.org/details/TriumphOfTheWillgermanTriumphDes...

- Hitler's Sportpalast 1933 speech https://www.stern.de/politik/geschichte/sportpalast-rede-die...

[1] granted, the ambiguity is up for discussion. But I think any criterion that colours the speeches above as unambiguously evil would also tar many current regimes with the same brush.

[2] a rationale: defending 2'000 years of "western civilisation" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24137060

Post reply on HN