59. The Mean World Syndrome
It’s
that time of the year when the Hay Festival is on. This festival represents a
unique opportunity to partake in inspiring and thought provoking debates in an
atmosphere of tolerance and open mindedness. I strongly recommend it.
Yesterday, one of the sessions was a talk with Rutger Bregman, the brilliant Dutch
historian, one of the most exciting social thinkers of our time. Bregman
changes the frame of reference by starting from the premise that humans are, in
the most part, good and intrinsically motivated. And this is not just a hopeful
opinion. In his work, he provides plenty of evidence for this. Modern economy
and policy making are based on the central idea that humans are selfish. This
premise is crippling. National social policy, trade agreements and employment
conditions are designed to control for abuse and cheating and fundamentally
limited in their scope. It is high time we change the World and, to do so, we
must shake off the Mean World syndrome and believe in us, humans
Length: 1,000 characters
Comments
I recently read a post about prisoner's dilemma ( M. Flood y Melvin Dresher) which could explain why are we selfish ( not individually but in group).