This crisis can be a shifting point,
where we move from the era of selfishness and competition
to a different era
that is more about cooperation and solidarity.
Hi everyone, my name is Nikolay and I'm a video producer here at Mashable.
I wanted to do a video series that looks at
how we can create a more sustainable and more equitable future.
This is my first time at Davos and
I find it quite a bewildering experience, to be honest.
I mean, 1,500 private jets have flown in here to hear
Sir David Attenborough speak about how we're wrecking the planet.
And, I mean, I hear people talking the language of participation and justice
and equality and transparency,
bu then, I mean, almost no one raises the real issue of tax avoidance, right?
And of the rich just not paying their fair share.
I mean, it feels like I'm at a firefighters conference
and no one is allowed to speak about water.
My name is Rutger Bregman, I'm a writer and a historian
and I've written two books.
My first book was called 'Utopia for Realists'.
It's about how seemingly crazy ideas can actually become reality.
And my new book is called 'Humankind: A Hopeful History'.
Tell me a little bit about what you mean by "a hopeful history,"
what is the aim of the book?
What I'm trying to do in the book
is to redefine what it means to be a realist.
So often, when people say, "Oh, you've got to be a bit more realistic,"
what they actually are saying is, "You got to be a bit more pessimistic."
You know, "you gotta be a bit more cynical." Right?
We equate realism with cynicism.
And I think it's actually the other way around.
It's realistic to be a bit more hopeful about who we are as a species.
Because in the last 15-20 years, we've seen this sort of silent revolution in science
that so many scientists from so many different expertises
have come up with a new, more hopeful view of who we are.
What they're trying to say is that we have evolved
to work together to cooperate and to be friendly.
You know, today, if you just switch on the television
and look at the millions of peaceful protesters.
What they're basically saying is that they believe in something.
That they don't think that everything is hopeless, and that nothing's ever going to work out.
They believe in change.
And that is, I think, a really good reason to be hopeful about the future.
Because cynicism is another word for laziness.
But if you actually say, "Well,
I don't think that people are angels – we're clearly not
and we're capable of the most horrible things,
but I do believe that deep down we all have this striving for connection
and this longing for friendship, etc."
And if only we could just build a whole society around those ideas.
You can build totally different kind of schools
that actually give kids the freedom to explore and to
develop their creativity.
You can build workplaces that have very few managers
and have a much more egalitarian culture
that actually relies on intrinsic motivation, right?
And, again, gives people the freedom to decide for themselves
how they want to contribute.
You can build a very different kind of democracy
that is not about career politicians anymore,
but is about average, regular citizens
participating in decision-making.
Because all the time,
what you see is what you assume in other people is what you get out of them.
If you assume that most people are lazy and only want to watch Netflix on the couch,
then you're going to treat them in that way and that's how they're going to behave.
If you turn it around,
if you assume that most people are pretty decent,
that they want to work with you, that they want to cooperate,
then you're going to create the kind of people that your view of human nature presupposes.
Why does assuming that we, by nature, are violent and selfish – why does that
have such a deep impact on our society today, essentially?
A cynical worldview has always been in the interest of those at the top.
Of those in power.
Because if people really are savages, if deep down we're all so selfish,
then we need hierarchy, right?
We need managers and we need CEOs and kings and queens and generals and
the army and the police, right, to keep us in check.
So this whole theory – veneer theory, right?
The notion that civilization is only a thin veneer
and that everything goes to hell,
once you give people geniune freedom –
this is one of the oldest ideologies in Western culture
and it comes back again and again and again
as a legitimization of inequality and hierarchy.
I mean, you see it right now in the United States.
Right now, I think the nation needs law and order.
Because you have a bad group of people out there and they're using
George Floyd and they're using a lot of other people to
try and do some bad things and what
we do – and I, we have it totally under control.
You know, when politicians make the argument of
law and order, right?
Bring in the police, bring in the troops, etc.
They're basically saying, "You guys can’t trust each other," you know?
The hard truth is
you won't be safe in Joe Biden's America.
And it's just easier to rule people who are scared.
Now here you also see the revolutionary potential
of a more hopeful view of human nature.
Because if you actually believe that most people are pretty decent,
then maybe you don't need all these
inequalities and power differences anymore, right?
And maybe you can get rid of all those managers and kings and CEOs and
of the army and the police, etc.
Maybe that's not necessary anymore.
Or maybe you can at least totally reimagine
what that would look like.
So for me, hope is all about the possibility of change.
And this is also what history teaches me.
I think that history is the most subversive of all the sciences
because it just shows you that things can be different.
There's nothing inevitable about the way we've structured
our economy and society right now.
Now, I should just point out that
I understand that people are sometimes pessimistic, right?
And cynical.
But then I think it's also, too, important to remember
that they want you to be cynical.
Because cynical people, they think it's hopeless anyway, right?
They don't go out to the streets to protest.
So all these millions of protesters, they reaffirmed some belief
in the basic decency of people, right?
They have some kind of hope.
The fact of the existence of this massive protest movement, peacefully protesting,
I mean, again –
this is extraordinary, if you think about it.
If you look at the horrible police violence
is that still, the vast majority of people just have such an amazing self-control
and go out on the streets day after day after day.
And that gives me so much hope,
because we have an extraordinary amount of evidence from sociology
that it's actually peaceful movements that are more effective.
And the results blew me away.
From 1900-2006,
non-violent campaigns worldwide
were twice as likely to succeed outright as violent insurgencies.
And there's more.
This trend has been increasing over time, so that in the last 50 years
non-violent campaigns are becoming increasingly successful and common,
whereas violent insurgencies are becoming increasingly rare
and unsuccessful.
This is true even in those
extremely brutal authoritarian conditions,
where I expected non-violent resistance to fail.
As a final question,
can you show me, or can you sort of describe a vision of a future that
that is better than what we have now, based on this refined idea
of the human nature?
Well, let's zoom out a little bit.
If we look at the last 40 to 50 years,
I think we can say that those decades
have often been, you know, governed by the values of selfishness and competition.
Right?
If you look at the 1970s and the 1980s, the 1970s was called the "Me" Decade.
The 1980s saw the rise of Ronald Reagan and [Margaret] Thatcher
Now everything is changing, right?
There is a new generation coming that is
so much more progressive than any other generation that ever existed on the planet.
Zoom out a little bit again and look at the last five, six, seven years.
Ideas that used to be totally unrealistic and unreasonable
and were not part of the mainstream are now taken seriously.
Universal Basic Income, shorter working weeks, higher taxes on the rich,
a Green New Deal.
You know, a vast majority of Americans is actually in favor of those ideas.
So I think that should give people hope.
And then if you connect it to the current moment, you know, the coronavirus pandemic.
Well, those at the top thought – and, we've got many examples of this,
of politicians believing that people will be very selfish
and they'll start looting and plundering, etc.,
and hoarding toilet paper.
And sure, we've seen a little bit of that behavior.
But it's pretty clear that the vast majority of the behavior has been cooperative in nature, right?
People working together.
So maybe this crisis can be a shifting point,
where we move from the era of selfishness and competition
to a different era
that is more about cooperation and solidarity
because we simply need it, you know?
If you look at the great challenges that lie ahead, and especially climate change,
we need a totally new view of human nature and who we are
because we can only solve these challenges if we work together.