Understanding One Another
Human Capacity for Empathy and Altruism
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
Adam Smith and David Hume praised humanity’s capacity for empathy and altruism, yet political and economic institutions continued to assume selfishness. Presenting Rutger Bregman’s argument from Humankind: A Hopeful History, Doug turns to Hume’s essay ‘Of the Independency of Parliament,’ with its maxim that every person must be treated as a knave. The closing question is whether pessimistic institutions make their own assumptions come true.
A Note on the Original Text
Doug’s writings are presented as originally written. Spelling, punctuation, and grammatical irregularities have been retained to preserve his words and the integrity of the original record.
ORIGINAL WRITING
The content in this post is based on the book Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman.
“Influential rationalists like Smith and Hume made a point of emphasizing the vast capacity humans show for empathy and altruism. Why then, if all these philosophers were so attuned to our admirable qualities, were their institutions (democracy, trade, and industry) so often premised on pessimism? Why did they continue to cultivate a negative view of human nature?
We can trace the answer in one of David Hume’s books, in which the Scottish philosopher articulates precisely this contradiction in enlightenment thought: ‘It is therefore, a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave: though at the same time it seems somewhat strange, that a maxim must be true in politics, which is false in fact.’
In other words, Hume believed that we should act as though people have a selfish nature, even though we know they don’t. When I realized this, a single word flashed through my mind: nocebo. Could this be the the thing that the Enlightenment—and, by extension, our modern society gets wrong? That we continually operate on a mistaken view of human nature?
Some things can become true merely because we believe in them—that pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When modern economists assumed that people are innately selfish, they advocate policies that fostered self-serving behavior. When politicians convinced themselves that politics is a cynical game, that’s exactly what it became.
Can we use our heads and harness rationality to design new institutions? Institutions that operate on a completely different view of human nature? What if schools and businesses, cities and nations expect the best of people instead of assuming the worst?