#66 Rutger Bregman: Das Coronavirus macht Schluss mit dem Egoismus

00:00:00: Broadcast thank you for being on the show well thanks for having.

00:00:08: Yeah hello and had secret come to Ireland dissens podcast does vodka blakeman on the gas to adhesive or her.

00:00:16: Podcast I know that V sticks and then kind of APA and Powerful know he can in theory but I have like traumas and I'm good then boho top inferior listen wouldn't Irish Barney buzzards.

00:00:27: Yet such a needle and I noise bullfrog leaked in conduct has that entitled cardassian as mentioned made a frantic I don't get mines in our silent as to Hassan egoismus.

00:00:40: We are placing your badass wiesn this mention one Twisters fact for also have it knocked a corona-krise.

00:00:46: Does interview you have to admit become instead of English for a leader keine lust of harm gets and a touch of his own in swiftly here form of dissens podcast Punk the the link naturally organ and show notes.

00:00:57: So we it's up I lost my name is Lucas ondreka fish past medicine.

00:01:01: Music.

00:01:10: Okay you wrote a new book it's called human kind of hopeful history the main claim of your book is that it is empathy compassion and kindness that make us human beings

00:01:19: the corona-crisis sometimes seems to bring out a darker and more selfish side and us what do you make of that well

00:01:25: I mean if you follow the news and look on social media there are certain examples of.

00:01:32: You know people behaving in a selfish way you know hoarding hoarding stuff in the supermarkets are fighting over toilet paper or whatever

00:01:40: but I think that if you zoom out a little bit

00:01:43: then you see that actually the vast majority of the behavior right now is pro-social in nature you know it's people actually helping each other you see so many

00:01:54: groups originating on social media WhatsApp groups and Facebook groups you know people saying we got to help each other I think that for every hoarder for every ego is there are a thousand.

00:02:06: Civilians who are willing to do the best to stop the virus from spreading and for every Panic buyer there are a thousand nurses you know working their ass off so I think that's important to do right now is to zoom out and look what most people are actually doing

00:02:20: what do you think it is that it's difficult for us as humans to zoom out and see the bigger picture

00:02:25: that seems to be that most people in the crisis situation like the corona-pandemic behave in a kind and compassionate way and that selfish behavior is the exception

00:02:33: well I think the real question would be why is it so difficult for journalists because to be honest I think that most people actually.

00:02:41: Which share my opinion you know been talking about it with my neighbors you know people on social media how many of my readers most people say

00:02:49: you know look Redgrave basically what you described in your book I see it happening right now we have an extraordinary amount of evidence from sociology about you know what happens after natural disasters for example you know after two nominees or earthquakes

00:03:03: and you know more than 500 case study since the 1960's show that every single time you get an explosion of altruism Corporation you know

00:03:12: Rich poor Young

00:03:14: old left-wing writing you know everyone's helping each other it's just that the media and the news is often full of different kind of stories you know rumors about looting and violence and plundering and all kinds of nasty stuff

00:03:28: it's just that later scientists discover that something different has happened but during this crisis I get the feeling that actually the vast majority of people would agree that most.

00:03:38: Behavior right now is cooperative in nature it's just that journalists keep going on about these panic buyers in hoarders you can go

00:03:47: I don't know yeah I guess I had to ask ya sleep but journalist would say that good news are no news at all

00:03:54: exactly exactly I think the news is mostly about stuff that goes wrong right corruption crises terrorism violence so if you watch

00:04:02: the news whole day at the end of the day you know exactly how the world doesn't work

00:04:08: because you've only been hearing about these exceptions right you have a completely upside-down world view and twisted view of human nature there's even a term for this in Psychology right they call it mean world syndrome

00:04:21: it's something you get I watching too much of the news yeah before turning it to your book Radtke I would like to ask you

00:04:29: what do you think we'll the corona-pandemic due to our society's how will it change our societies I think it's like a real test right now for us and also a turning point when it comes to politics and also economic so

00:04:43: what's do you make of this turning point and do you see some hope for real and could change in that yeah well the first thing

00:04:52: I have to emphasize is something that most people already feel in their bones right now which is that we are living you know.

00:05:00: Through world history in the making right now yeah this is bigger than the financial crash of 2008 it may even be bigger than you know 9/11 in the long run it really seems to be a shifting point and historians have long known that crises and shifting points you know can change everything for societies

00:05:19: the thing is though that I mean I do not predict the future I think that's nonsense the only thing we can do is sort of the sketch scenarios and and possibilities right.

00:05:29: And right now I see two things happening at the same time okay so in the first place we know that crises can be used by authoritarian rulers to expand their power.

00:05:40: I mean this is the oldest trick in the book Hitler used it with the burning of the reichstag now we see it being done by Orban in Hungary you know who's got this emergency degree in that is now ruling basically by degree we can also see you know an assault on our privacy and measures that

00:05:56: r

00:05:56: You know implemented on a temporary basis now may actually become you know held up and be there for the long term on the other side though I think that.

00:06:06: This crisis could also move politics in a very different direction because now people are realizing that individualism is not going to save us

00:06:16: competition is not going to save us businesses are not going to save us right we need a very different kind of values to get through this crisis all right we need Corporation we need solidarity we need a stronger state

00:06:30: we need businesses to pay their taxes you know and Bam actually businesses are now again begging for Bill out with government so it also could move politics in a very different direction just also look at you know the whole discussion around

00:06:43: the value of work and different kind of jobs yeah you know around the world there are now lists being drawn up with the so-called vital professions and you know what.

00:06:53: It turns out it's not the bankers it's not the hedge fund managers it's not the marketeers it's the doctors the nurses and the garbage collectors and I mean who do right so

00:07:05: and this could have long-term implications because for years and years.

00:07:10: You can say remember the corona-crisis right and remember during the height of the epidemic.

00:07:16: Who did we rely on not the CEOs and the bankers.

00:07:20: No but I'm the nurses and the cleaners right so this could influence politics for a generation it will make use of it.

00:07:28: So yeah I can only obviously I can only sketch the scenarios into possibilities and say that this will be a shifting point.

00:07:35: We just don't know in which direction is going to go yeah I do you think the left or the progressives in this world are like prepared because there's also this other side right that authoritarian nationalism that could rise exactly

00:07:46: I don't know yet but I am hopeful.

00:07:49: I am hopeful that we've done better work than we did before the financial crisis of 2008 I mean the financial crisis of 2008

00:07:56: also could have been a wake-up call right or a moment that could have been used by

00:08:01: progressives in Europe and the us but what you actually solve is it so she democracy was pretty much destroyed in Europe it was losing everywhere and it seemed that.

00:08:11: You know people had gone into a coma sort of kind of a dreamless sleep you know where there was hardly any utopian thinking I think the biggest problem

00:08:21: back then with the left was that it only knew what it was against

00:08:25: right it was against austerity Against The Establishment against homophobia Against Racism it's a phenomenon that I call Underdog Socialism or loser socialism all this infighting right

00:08:39: very bad at building coalitions or very bad of actually thinking about power and how you can change institutions mostly interested in

00:08:47: sort of being right or something like that or.

00:08:51: Rather be right and loose than be a little bit wrong and win right but my hope is that things have changed here and that we are now.

00:09:02: Better prepared just look at what's been happening in the US for example I mean the whole Overton window you know the whole window of political possibility has shifted a huge amount in the past five six years if you look at even a guy like Joe Biden right now and I'm not a huge fan

00:09:17: but Joe Biden's climate plan is more radical than Bernie Sanders climate plan of 2016 right if you look at the tax plan of

00:09:26: Peter Budaj right it's like three or four times as radical

00:09:31: as the tax plan of Hillary Clinton in 2016 still I think Bernie would have made a wonderful president but yeah but he he has won the Battle of ideas I guess that's my point

00:09:41: yeah even if he won't be president in a way he has already won.

00:09:45: Yeah I think it could go both ways and as Progressive and leftist we have to get involved obviously.

00:09:51: But with guy let's talk about your book which is kind of the book of the hour because you asked exactly the question which view of us as human should shape politics after the corona-crisis ordering the corona-crisis

00:10:03: in English it's called humankind a hopeful history the original Dutch title is

00:10:09: Dem is the men's and dog here I hereby pronounce that right exactly yeah most people are good would be the translation in English yeah and in German it's called mm condo Goot and annoy geschichte Des mention this book is basically a big argument we hinged upon this topic about what's the nature of the human species

00:10:28: whether it's good or evil and you argue that as humans we are good what evidence is it that you can put forward that we are not selfish and the strongest rules over the others but friendly and compassionate yeah

00:10:42: well what we have seen in the past 15 to 20 years

00:10:46: is that scientists from very diverse disciplines right so anthropologists archaeologists sociologists and psychologists that they've all moved

00:10:57: to a much more hopeful view of humanity okay and.

00:11:01: They often even don't know it from each other right because the real specialized in their own Fields I had one conversation with the prominent psychologist who

00:11:09: did research on the so-called bystander effect you know how people behave during emergency say someone is drowning or you know someone's being attacked in the street and then how the people behave and this psychologist had shown that actually in ninety percent of all cases

00:11:24: people help each other you know based on CCTV

00:11:27: foods that you know like real incidents in the real world so I was talking to this psychologist and I told her you know about

00:11:34: similar things happening in biology you know we're also

00:11:38: biologists have moved to a more hopeful view of human nature they talk about survival of the friendliest these days and they show that actually from Millennia I was the friendliest Among Us who had

00:11:50: the most kids and so had the biggest chance of passing on their genes to the Next Generation okay and and then that psychologists said to me.

00:11:58: Oh my God so it's happening there as well.

00:12:01: So this is really what I try to do in the book I'm just connecting the dots I'm zooming out and I'm showing that something bigger is going on.

00:12:10: In science right now

00:12:11: yeah I mean you're sketching out evolutionary biologists psychologists but also numerous scientists what I was amazed with that you kind of destroyed some experiments that shape

00:12:23: my opinion about how human nature is I mean I learned in school about

00:12:27: experiments like the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram shock experiment yeah me too which

00:12:33: basically even until today even though there is evidence to the contrary even until today they shape of you about how people behave in

00:12:41: extraordinary circumstances and how they do evil things so

00:12:45: what do you make of these two experiments and maybe explain a bit how you stumbled upon evidence that contradicts those learning from these experiments so let's start with the Stanford Prison Experiment right this is one of the most famous experiments

00:13:01: that has been done in Psychology in the 20th century and up until this day it's still in almost every textbook around the globe you know for psychology students so it's really really famous.

00:13:13: It happened in the beginning of the 70s the researcher here was Philip zimbardo an American professor and what he did is he had 24.

00:13:23: Students that he divided up in so-called guards and prisoners and he put them in a fake prison in the basement of Stanford University

00:13:32: and he basically said you know just do do what you want as the guards just Implement your own regime but then after six days the experiment had to be canceled because you know all kinds of horrible stuff was going on you know the guards behave from terribly sadistic ways and so the message of

00:13:49: the experiment was look this is what's below the surface

00:13:53: you know and human nature civilization is only a thin veneer and if you put people just a little bit of a different context if you give them the freedom to abuse other people they will do so these students were

00:14:06: pacifist hippies but still deep down you know they were evil set is right and even Philip zimbardo himself was swept up in the experiment as this story that he later told

00:14:16: so this is an incredibly famous experiment and it's always being used to explain all kinds of atrocities in history right.

00:14:25: I think it became most very famous obviously because it was used as an explanation for the horrors of the second world war and the Holocaust with the message that

00:14:33: you know there's a Nazi in each of us if you get rid of that thin layer of civilization then you know people reveal their true selves and we're all selfish and world beast now

00:14:43: I used to believe this for quite a while as well I mean I've written about this in earlier articles and in books it was only about researching this book that

00:14:52: basically discovered.

00:14:54: That it was a hoax okay it's a total hoax the whole experience is if it's it's what Donald Trump would call fake fake science but being right so we know now based on archival material is that actually

00:15:07: zimbardo specifically instructed his students to be as sadistic as possible okay there many of those students said

00:15:14: I don't want to do that you know if it were up to me we were just have drink tea and have a nice time together but then zimbardo said no no you got to do this you have to do this because I need these results.

00:15:27: Right I want to prove that prisons are horrible environments so then we can go to the Press.

00:15:33: And basically help reform the prison system in the United States and that's what you want right your Progressive hippies come on help me with this and so they went too long

00:15:43: and then the story zimbardo later told.

00:15:46: Was just basically a lie there's there's a book published in French just last year by a French sociologist to politics Shea and the title of that book is

00:15:57: the history of a lie and so I think that is really the right terminology here with the Stanford Prison Experiment because it's just it was theater you know it's and it's just extraordinary to think that this

00:16:11: fake scientific experiment is still in the textbooks of millions of psychology students around the globe.

00:16:38: You know it was basically the same setup again around 24 people put in a in a prison and this was

00:16:46: you know the early days of reality TV set the BBC help to get some really exciting footage right of you know repeating the Stanford Prison Experiment because that will be great for Ratings but then they work with two British psychologist who said

00:16:59: yes will work with you but

00:17:01: on the condition that we will not interfere so we will not give instruction to the prisoners and the BBC said yes they agreed and that was a terrible decision for them

00:17:11: because it turned out that you know became the most boring reality TV ever nothing happened you know it's just the prisoners in the guards they became friends at the end of the couple of days they had set up a pacifistic commune and they were just you know playing cards and drinking tea together in the lounge area

00:17:28: it's horrible I had to watch all these episodes four episodes of an hour-long I'll never get those those hours back because it was so

00:17:37: it was so boring yeah I mean makers have reality TV have known this for a long time.

00:17:42: If you put people on an island if you put them in a villa somewhere far away and you just give them the freedom to do whatever they want.

00:17:52: Nothing happens you know they just become friends it's terrible for Ratings it's really terrible

00:17:57: so what you got to do is you got a lie to them you got a manipulated them you got to deceive them and then maybe something small happens that you can take out of context and then blah blah blah and then I mean it's a hard job you know to make good reality television.

00:18:10: Should be respectful to people because it's fine it's really hard the general inclination of people in normal circumstances is just to connect and to make friends.

00:18:20: Yeah but even the light of these fake experiments to Stanford Prison Experiment for example or reality TV we know it's fake of obviously but even in the light of that you have to ask why do people in history

00:18:32: do bad things to other people right and there's a lot of example of that and you mentioned one yourself dollar cost and the first thing that shot to my mind when I read like the first pages of your book was like what about Auschwitz and you yourself you mentioned that in you.

00:18:49: Okay so look out what about Auschwitz how do you explain that well this is obviously one of the ironies of my book right if you want to ride it

00:18:56: book about the kindness and goodness and human nature then you have to go on for hundreds of pages about all the horrors in history you know the ethnic cleansing

00:19:06: the wars the Holocaust and it's true right we are not on the

00:19:12: the friendliest species in the animal kingdom were probably also the cruelest species and I mean I've had never heard of a penguin.

00:19:19: Who said you know let's lock up another group of penguins and exterminate them right this is these are singularly human crimes.

00:19:28: And the question only becomes bigger once you sort of discard this veneer Theory right if you do not believe that Civilization is a thin veneer.

00:19:37: And if you do not believe that people are fundamentally deep down selfish and aggressive then the question only becomes bigger how could it be

00:19:44: that people who have evolved to be friendly to cooperate to work together and if it is true that that is our true superpower as a species right

00:19:53: that we can work together in such a big scale then why do we do these horrible things I cannot pretend obviously to give a short answer to that question I mean.

00:20:03: I go on for hundreds of pages about it and I still think it's too short I mean you can write library's full of books what I can do is sort of give the beginning of our an answer

00:20:11: so for biologists have come up with

00:20:14: recently is sort of this new theory of the evolution of humankind right and they call it survival of the friendliest as I said for Millennia was actually the friendliest Among Us who had the most kids and had the biggest chance of passing on their genes but there is a dark side

00:20:30: to friendliness right friendliness can also be Conformity and people who.

00:20:38: You know want to be liked find it hard to go against their own group and if you really care about your own group you may start.

00:20:47: Disliking the other group the out-group right so what psychologists and biologists now suspect is there is a deep connection here between our empathy.

00:20:56: And Oksana phobia right so we feel empathy for our own group and we start disliking the other group we have a.

00:21:03: Bottle button for tribalism in our brain and I think this plays a an extraordinary important rule in you know the big disasters in atrocities in human history.

00:21:14: Is that as you start to care more about your own group you find it hard

00:21:18: to go against your own group and the go against your own leaders so often in history you see that friendliness can stand in the way.

00:21:28: Of justice and of the truth so that that is I guess one of the big paradoxes of my book is that I argue that human beings have evolved to be friendly.

00:21:37: And sometimes that's exactly.

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00:22:48: Okay if we take your proposition for granted that it is not civilization that is saving us from becoming animals but that humans are fundamentally kind and good yeah

00:22:57: what follows from that view for our view of civilization and capitalist progress yeah of course well a couple of things in the first place.

00:23:05: I wouldn't say that human beings are naturally fundamentally or intrinsically good in fact in the first chapter I point out.

00:23:13: You know that we have a good side and obviously a not-so-good side right.

00:23:17: What I am saying is that what you assume in other people is often what you get out of them so if you assume that most people are selfish are aggressive and you name it then you'll start designing your society around that idea.

00:23:31: You know you'd start designing your institutions your school's your democracies the workplace around the idea that people are selfish and you will create the kind of people that your theory presupposes

00:23:41: hmm so this is interesting about our theories of human nature it's not just strictly about what is true or what is false it's also bad.

00:23:49: What ideas can become self-fulfilling prophecies I think that's important to keep in mind then the other question about.

00:23:56: You know the role of civilization in human history well the standard story that we've always been told was that.

00:24:05: This March of progress story that at least they taught me in school right that

00:24:11: a long time ago when we hunter-gatherers we were in this war of all against all we were very violent and we were this Brutus

00:24:19: cavemen right or as Thomas Hobbes the philosopher called as we lived existence is that were nastya brutish and short but then

00:24:27: came civilization you know then we invented agriculture we started building Villages and cities and we invented money and writing in the wheel and every

00:24:36: Milestone of civilization make things a little bit better for us and so our task is just to strengthen That civilization you know to hold on to it

00:24:47: as best as we can because if the veneer of civilization goes away then we'll go back to our you know

00:24:54: dark evil selves once again this is the story that you know kids around the globe are still being told I think yeah but if you look at the latest evidence from anthropology and archaeology you find a completely different picture completely different picture

00:25:08: so

00:25:10: we know that for hundreds of thousands of years we lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers right so 95% of our existence when we were nomadic hunter-gatherers how do nomadic hunter-gatherers live.

00:25:22: Well we can study them the tribes who

00:25:25: still live around the globe right or lived so in the 19th or 20th century and were studied by Anthropologist and what you find is a quite consistent picture of

00:25:34: tribes that are quite egalitarian you know there's equality between the Sexes and there's relatively little hierarchy you find people who are pretty healthy.

00:25:44: So they have nice and very diet you know they have a bit of fruit bit of vegetables bit of meat they have enough exercise they don't have all these infection diseases that we have today.

00:25:55: And they have a relatively relaxed lifestyle as well so their work week is I don't know 20 30 hours at Max now if you compare that that lifestyle of the nomadic hunter-gatherer to the people who

00:26:06: overseer got civilized right the urbanites and the the farmers it's a huge difference so civilization the most part of the history of civilization was a huge disaster what you see once we.

00:26:20: Settle down and started domesticating species and doing agriculture is that People's Health deteriorated.

00:26:28: You fire you see this when you study skeletons from nomadic hunter-gatherers and compare it to a farmer's for example you see that there are much shorter and thinner bones and

00:26:37: teeth and you name it they didn't have a very very diet anymore which is grains grains grains all day they had to work very hard on the land you know no pain no grain.

00:26:47: It was just a much worse lifestyle.

00:26:51: But what you also see is that actually the history of War start with the history of civilization so for Wars there's there's

00:26:58: no archaeological or almost no archaeological evidence for war.

00:27:02: Group violence among nomadic hunter-gatherers but then once we settle down you suddenly find all this archaeological evidence right cave paintings

00:27:10: skeletons with damaged bones etc etc so

00:27:14: the picture here really changes is that actually the people who were living nasty brutish and short lives this is with a civilized people while the nomadic hunter-gatherers have much better lives now now why have we forgotten this I think an important reason is that.

00:27:29: Just very recently in the past 50 200 years we've seen so much progress right

00:27:35: we are richer we are healthier we are wealthier right now than ever before and world history is that we have forgotten that actually the vast majority of the history of civilization

00:27:45: was a huge disaster and obviously the question is how sustainable is this right because now.

00:27:52: We are relatively rich in healthy Etc but we also have the environmental crisis ecological crisis species dying out on a crazy scale so.

00:28:03: We don't know if we can still live like this a Centre or two centuries or three centuries from now

00:28:08: that's the big gamble we're taking yeah so if you zoom out a very different picture emerges of the history of our species what you see is that actually for hundreds of thousands of years we had a relatively good lifestyle what do you say that we were Angels right there was a question there was jealousy but

00:28:25: on average it was a much better lifestyle than the lifestyle that became officer that came after that or farmers in urbanites it's just that recently we had this.

00:28:34: You know after the Industrial Revolution we have this explosion obviously of economic growth yeah Etc but then the question is how sustainable that is.

00:28:43: Yeah I mean that's that's a big question also of The Narrative of progress and civilization and how far we can change this narrative or alter it to a narrative.

00:28:54: It tackles climate crisis for example how I think about the infection diseases right.

00:29:00: Is a modern civilized disease right it is you get all these infection diseases measles polio malaria.

00:29:08: You get it because we live too close to two animals right nomadic hunter-gatherers hardly had any

00:29:14: infection diseases it's really a product of civilization and this is also you know we know that you know.

00:29:22: Plagues have really been a consistent feature of the last 10,000 years you know again and again you see.

00:29:29: Huge amount of people dying off and dying off and dying off again and again and again.

00:29:34: So Corona is a typically consequence of a so-called civilized lifestyle.

00:29:40: Yeah I totally see that and I agree and he also could mention like how The Narrative of civilization in the past well and even nowadays

00:29:49: is used to colonize parts of the world and to extract wealth for example and the amazonas from indigenous communities so this is a whole story that we have

00:30:00: to be careful about butts

00:30:03: still I wonder if you kind of romanticize in a way or glorify the times of hunters and gatherers because you can't seriously say okay we should abandon civilization and go back to like a Hunters.

00:30:16: Gather a lifestyle yeah of course it's impossible we couldn't do it so what would be like policy proposals that you make out of your view of humans as being good people yeah well sleep well.

00:30:28: I think we need to understand.

00:30:31: Where we come from but I think we need to understand our history so that we connect to the shape our future in the right way as well what we have done in the past couple of decades especially in the western world is that we have designed so many of our institutions around the idea that people are selfish

00:30:47: right this happened in the era that now seems to be coming to an end and that many people would call the neoliberal era right.

00:30:55: So it started basically in the 1950s with intellectuals like Friedrich Von Hayek and Milton Friedman.

00:31:01: Who back then were the real art outcasts but knew they had to develop their new ideas right so back then in the 50s everyone was a socialist

00:31:09: after the second world war it was clear that there was an important role for the state yes so it was really the era of the big government but then these people were already developing.

00:31:20: Their ideas and building a network of think tanks and in other institutions and I think the central idea of neoliberalism was and is

00:31:29: that most people are selfish right and that you have to structure your markets in your schools and your democracies and everything around that idea and so we did.

00:31:39: So when the crisis came in the 1970s the oil crisis and stagflation these ideas that happened developed for years were picked up by politicians like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and so

00:31:53: in the 30 years after that you know we started designing all our societies

00:31:57: around it and even social democracy was infected by it by what they called the third way you know of Tony Blair Tony Blair.

00:32:05: That is a phony Blair telling ya and this this obviously.

00:32:14: The resulted in the financial crash and and increasing inequality and I think more anxiety and epidemic of loneliness as well maybe it's too early to say but I think you could argue that now this

00:32:26: this air is coming to an end and we realized that we actually need a new view of human nature a new sort of self-fulfilling prophecy and I would like to call this sort of the neo-realist era where we move to

00:32:39: a more optimistic and more hopeful view of human beings and say that actually people are

00:32:44: you know on average pretty decent and that we can design our institutions around that idea right this movement already started I think 20 25 years ago I mean many of the sciences that I interviewed for this book you know we're you know we're doing their pioneering work

00:32:59: two decades ago but now it has grown into something much bigger and in the second half my book I also talked about you know entrepreneurs or School leaders or you know even prisons.

00:33:12: That are experimenting with the you know designing your institutions in a different way that's really the most important thing you know it's not just about.

00:33:20: Self-help you know how you live your own life but it's really about institutional change because different institutions produce different people.

00:33:29: Yeah I quite like that perspective but

00:33:31: on different occasions you talked about things like Universal basic income open borders and a 50 hour work week so those like concrete proposals that fit your worldview in a way or that could lead to

00:33:46: people seeing themselves as or seeing others as better people well my previous book Utopia free list was about.

00:33:54: Basically about the process how utopian ideas can become reality so as I mentioned these neoliberal ideas in the 1950s they were completely utopian they were not being taken seriously they were on the fringes of public debate

00:34:08: but then they started moving towards the center and they became reality right so there's this famous Milton Friedman quote where he set that.

00:34:17: Basically the task of intellectuals is to develop new ideas and to prepare for.

00:34:23: You know the next Crisis because when that crisis comes everything depends on the ideas that are lying around.

00:34:29: Right so I guess that's all said that the fundamental question of this corona-crisis is what ideas are lying around.

00:34:37: And have we done our homework right.

00:34:40: That will be the real test road cam I wonder how the book maybe transform yourself while writing it so maybe tell us about this journey of how that also informed your own View and change your own

00:34:53: Behavior may be also yeah yeah you know I used to be.

00:34:58: And much more cynical guy I'd studied history obviously I may be its effect an effect of studying history because.

00:35:05: History is a little bit like the news write mostly about wars Wars wars and then if there's not a war we call it the interbellum the in between Wars

00:35:14: and I used to believe all these stories you know from the Stanford Prison Experiment to the Milgram experiment where.

00:35:21: You know normal average healthy people are willing to shock give fatal electric shocks to random strangers I mean I used to believe all these things but then.

00:35:33: You know after high it written.

00:35:35: My previous book Utopia for realists and one of the main ideas and Utopia free of this was the idea of a basic income right giving everyone a monthly grant that is enough to pay for your basic needs.

00:35:45: I had gone over all the scientific evidence basically that shows that this actually works right.

00:35:50: What you get is an explosion of cooperation and people starting new companies and move it to different jobs and kids do much better in school so I collected a lot of empirical evidence that show you know this actually works

00:36:03: but then I went on book tour with this book and I talked to hundreds maybe even thousands of people about you know the idea of a basic income and again and again and again what happened is that after 20 or 30 minutes or so

00:36:16: I wasn't discussing the empirical evidence anymore but.

00:36:21: I was discussing human nature right because this was the most common objection people had was

00:36:26: yeah but what about you man nature are going to be so lazy yeah people are just going to be I mean I'm not gonna be lazy but those other people are going to be so lazy those other people are going to be so selfish and I stopped work after etcetera and I didn't only encounter this on the right.

00:36:41: Also on the left actually maybe even mostly on the left I was astonished by how much paternalism there was among.

00:36:49: You know by peers who look down on the working classes and have this view that the working class is need to be told what to do right.

00:36:57: That they need this explanation from I don't know us intellectuals and writers.

00:37:01: You know how to live their lives and that we need to help the poor to spend their money in the right way or something like that so what I actually realized is that.

00:37:10: The idea of a basic income a guaranteed basic income presupposes a completely different view of human nature

00:37:17: and then I was talking to a good friend of mine his name is David Tran Rye Brook he's I think the most important intellectual in Belgium right now and he had just written a book about

00:37:28: participatory democracy right how we can do democracy in a radically different way by basically

00:37:34: going back to the solution of the ancient Greeks you know it's randomly selecting our politician you know drawing by lot instead of having the all these career politicians and

00:37:44: again he had done a huge amount of you know just studying the empirical work you know these experiments that have been done with these kind of democratic procedures and basically showing it works you know you can bring

00:37:58: very diverse people together left-wing right-wing Rich poor Highly Educated no education really can bring them together around

00:38:06: around table let them have a discussion and you'll be astonished at the Nuance of the discussion and that you know they can arrive at very complex solutions that are standard career politicians would never dream of right so this really really works but he also discovered that

00:38:22: the same thing that I did you know is that after 20 or 30 minutes he would always be discussing human nature with other people so

00:38:30: that's basically what my journey started five years ago when I realized that all these hopeful ideas that we're going around you know.

00:38:37: That could maybe help us exit the neoliberal era that all these ideas.

00:38:43: Presupposed different more hopeful view of human nature but I guess the that I also realized that you know that meant that someone had to write a rather big book you know about about our history and psychology and so I started doing that yeah.

00:38:57: After a while I also realized that this book was simply in the air right so.

00:39:02: Im a hugely privilege guy who you know has the time and the means to research a lot of stuff I'm not

00:39:08: affiliated with any University you know I don't have this publish or perish disease or whatever I don't I can just do whatever I want I write for journalism platform the correspondent that basically gave me a basic income says you know right one essay a month that were happy

00:39:23: that's a good lifestyle yeah if I wouldn't have written this book I'm pretty sure someone else would have because it's simply in the air right now it's simply a synthesis that was.

00:39:32: That's in the air you know it's just I'm only connecting the dots of all these different disciplines and experts and people are already.

00:39:41: Organizing their institutions in a different way and at the only thing I'm saying is look.

00:39:46: Something bigger is going on here but again how did it change yourself maybe in your personal life so maybe you see the world and some parts differently after the research he did and maybe you act

00:39:58: differently now wow a little bit obviously I couldn't resist.

00:40:02: You know riding one chapter the last chapter of my book which is sort of the self-help e chapter right where I draw.

00:40:09: A couple of rules to live by give us some advice yeah it's sort of the what would your impedance and say hey

00:40:16: If he if he actually live like a crap yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a it's a bit of a joke in his Direction now obviously I should say I'm not a big believer in the self-help genre and we have too much introspection and not enough out respects you're right the real challenge is to build different institutions

00:40:35: but I couldn't help drawing a couple of life lessons so one of the first and maybe most important is is that when in doubt.

00:40:44: We should assume the best hmm you know we often have doubts about other people's intentions.

00:40:50: And then we don't know what other people are thinking for example we're also very

00:40:56: afraid that will be calmed right that will especially by strangers that they will they will rip us off

00:41:02: but then I read a book by a psychologist called Maria konnikova who just done four years of research into you know the methods of professional con artists

00:41:13: and she was asked in an interview you know Maria I mean how has this impacted you I mean you must be very wary of strangers right now right you know what they can do and how can they can rip you off but she answered

00:41:26: well actually the opposite.

00:41:28: I've realized that I should see it as collateral damage that just a couple of times in my life I'll be ripped off and that that is the price that I should be willing to pay for living a whole life

00:41:39: well I can basically trust people around me which is a fantastic thing right

00:41:45: because otherwise the price would be way too high if I if I would never want to be calm never want to be ripped of I would have to de-stress everyone around me and that is I mean that's the price that I'm not willing to pay

00:41:57: so I suddenly realized that actually if you are being called you shouldn't feel ashamed but you may actually feel a little bit proud right and if you never been called that maybe you should ask yourself

00:42:10: is my basic attitude to live trusting enough.

00:42:14: Last question Rutger when you look into the future like maybe 10 or 20 years from now what do you think will happen when more and more people start to change their perceptions of humans as being decent and this becomes the self-fulfilling prophecy that you wish for it to become I don't know

00:42:30: I don't know I think I only scratched the surface the thing is you know

00:42:34: everything starts with the view of human nature political ideology starts with a view of human nature right the only political ideology.

00:42:42: Of the of the modern ideologies that have the same view of human nature as I have was anarchism

00:42:48: right the attic is believe basically the same thing as well which is most people are pretty decent

00:42:53: and power corrupts I mean that is the sort of the short summary of my whole book the only problem with the Anna case was that they were not very good at building institutions

00:43:02: I mean remember the Occupy Wall Street movement right it was the analysis was was right

00:43:08: but then the method it didn't really give us lost the institutional change this is so often a problem among the left and Progressive is that they don't understand institutions the right in the stands this much better they understand power much better than this so often than we do

00:43:23: huh so.

00:43:24: An initial idea was to write another book called the anarchist state so what would the state look like if it would think like a nanak right if we would have.

00:43:35: Centralist tax collection you know that would really reduce inequality but then for example if we organized something like healthcare.

00:43:44: You know just have bottom up Healthcare organizations that work in self-directed teams etc etc can we combine these two things I think we can

00:43:53: Universal basic income is another example right there are a lot of people on the left who say oh it's a neoliberal trojan horse and sure I mean there are right-wing versions of basic income but in our utopian version the best version

00:44:06: you would have a system that would radically reduce inequality give everyone you know the means to make their own choices in their life right have real venture capital for the people so that we can actually see who the real wealth creators are right.

00:44:20: Because if the garbage collectors go on strike it's a disaster if the bankers gone strike while no one really cares.

00:44:27: So I think that was basic income you also see this sort of this

00:44:31: this combination that you could call the anarchist state right it's quite libertarian when it comes to you know giving people the freedom to make their own choices but it's socialist when it comes to giving a people actually the means

00:44:44: to make those choices that is the political direction that I'm interested in and I have no idea what's going to leave but I but I think it's going to be a better place

00:44:53: yeah it's for us to make these anarchists institutions which is we have to redefine power I guess when we don't want to copy the right or the old socialist Traditions who did it wrong yeah.

00:45:05: Rutger thank you so much for the interview.

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