Louise O'Neill: 'It would be easy to become disillusioned, to lose all faith'
Louise O'Neill, author. Picture: Moya Nolan
When the International Literature Festival of Dublin asked me if I would interview Rutger Bregman, the Dutch historian and author, I was racking my brain trying to remember why the name was so familiar. Then I remembered that in 2019, someone sent a video of Bregman into my university Whatsapp group with the caption – “wow, this guy is brave.”
Bregman had been invited to speak at the World Economic Forum at Davos on the basis of his first book, Utopia for Realists, where he argued for a shorter work week, basic income paid to everyone, and the opening of borders worldwide.
At the forum, he remarked on how “bewildering” it was that “1,500 private jets have flown in here to hear Sir David Attenborough speak about how we’re wrecking the planet.” He told the audience that people at Davos used the “language of participation and justice and equality” but that “nobody raises the issue of tax avoidance and the rich not paying their share. It is like going to a firefighters’ conference and not talking about water.”
The reaction from the assembled billionaires seemed chilly, at best, but the clip was widely shared online, garnering millions of views. Soon after, an uncomfortable interview with Fox News in which Tucker Carlson told Bregman to “go fuck yourself” (after the Dutch man accused Carlson of hypocrisy) went viral.
In short, at the age of 32, Rutger Bregman is already a bit of a folk hero, someone who isn’t afraid to speak truth to power. Yet, despite everything, he still strikes me as an eternal optimist. In an interview with a Canadian newspaper, Le Devoir, he said that “…a society needs dreams, Not nightmares. Humanity is improving, conditions of life, work, and health too. And it’s time to open the windows of our minds to see it.”
Perhaps it’s not surprising then, that his latest book, Humankind: A Hopeful History, dismantles the myth of Richard Dawkins’s ‘Selfish Gene’, arguing that human beings, when left to their own devices, are fundamentally good. He takes some of the most famous psychological studies in the world, ones most of us are familiar, and radically reframes them. Like The Bystander Effect, based on the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens, where it was wrongly reported that 38 bystanders watched as she was killed and did nothing.
He interrogates Gustave Le Bon’s theory on the ‘Psychology of the Masses’, a book read by both Hitler and Churchill, outlining how the Blitz didn’t cause widespread panic in London, as it was hoped it would by the Germans, but instead prompted cooperation and goodwill. The Stanford Prison Experiment, too, often cited as evidence that even with the best of intentions, ordinary people can act in monstrous ways, is debunked here, with Bregman highlighting the flaws in how the experiment was conducted.
Perhaps most interesting of all, is his exploration of how a fictional tale, that of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, has been held up as ‘proof’ of our inherent immorality, when in fact, the only example of a real-life Lord of the Flies, negates that.
In 1965, a group of schoolboys from Tonga were shipwrecked alone on an island for a year and when they were rescued, it turned out the boys had formed a strong bond, taking care of one another in order to survive. Humankind draws from history, psychology, philosophy, economics, biology and more and is an utterly compelling read, I would very much recommend it.
At the moment, it can feel difficult to get on board with Bregman’s theory, no matter how well argued and researched the text is. The pandemic has shown the selfishness of many people we know and love, those who have viewed the lockdown restrictions as a personal affront rather than accepting we all had to make sacrifices to protect the most vulnerable in our society.
And what of the demonisation of immigrants in the right-wing media, even as photos emerge of a drowned Syrian child, lying face down on a beach in Turkey? The horrors that are taking place in Palestine, a cycle of abhorrent violence that seems almost unbreakable? The senseless murders of Black men and women in the United States, videos of modern-day lynchings flooding our timelines? Terrible, unspeakable things happen in our world everyday, more innocent lives lost.
It would be easy to become disillusioned, to lose all faith. And still, I want so badly to believe in the goodness of humanity. I keep coming back to the fable Bregman uses to illustrate his proposition: “An old man says to his grandson: ‘There’s a fight going on inside me. It’s a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil–angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant, and cowardly. The other is good–peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest, and trustworthy. These two wolves are also fighting within you, and inside every other person too.’ After a moment, the boy asks, ‘Which wolf will win?’ The old man smiles. ‘The one you feed.’”
Humankind: A New History of Human Nature by Rutger Bergman. You won’t be able to put this one down.
Palm Springs. Stuck in a time-loop, two wedding guests re-live the same day over and over again. A funny and charming movie. Available on Amazon Prime.
