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Books

Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman

Rutger Bregman gives a hopeful spin on our species.

Human beings are selfish. This is a core premise of both old and modern theories of politics, economics, and philosophy. It is a notion that has over the years been proved by psychologists, zoologists, and biologists, who then go on to explain how our social world is constructed on this selfish basis. Highly influential books have been written by the likes of Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene, 1976) or Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of our Nature, 2011) purporting to show that humans are selfish by nature. But suppose it isn’t true? What if, rather than being inherently selfish, humans are in fact inherently kind?

Rutger Bregman has addressed this question in his book Humankind: A Hopeful History (2020).

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