It's a belief that unites left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It's behind the headlines that surround us and the laws that affect our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief run deep in Western thought. Human beings, we are told, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest.
L‘humanity puts forward a new argument: it's realistic, even revolutionary, to assume that people are good. The instinct to cooperate rather than compete, to trust rather than distrust, has an evolutionary basis that goes back to the beginning of time.’Homo sapiens. By thinking the worst of others, we bring out the worst in our own politics and economy.
In this major work, international bestselling author Rutger Bregman takes some of the world's most famous studies and events and reframes them, offering a new perspective on the last 200,000 years of human history. From the real life of Lord of the flies to the Blitz, from a fox farm in Siberia to an infamous murder in New York, from Stanley Milgram's shock machine at Yale to Stanford's prison experiment, Bregman shows how believing in human goodness and altruism can be a new way of thinking - and the basis for achieving real change in our society.
Rutger C. Bregman is a Dutch popular historian and author. To find out more about him, click here.
It's time for a new vision of human nature.
Excerpt from Bloomsbury.com
