![]() ![]() ![]() From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Pinker, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. It's a notion that drives newspaper headlines and guides the laws that shape our lives. ![]() If there is one belief that has united the left and the right, psychologists and philosophers, ancient thinkers and modern ones, it is the tacit assumption that humans are bad. Over centuries, marriageable daughters were reduced to little more than commodities, to be bartered like cows or sheep.The “lively” ( The New Yorker), “convincing” ( Forbes ), and “riveting pick-me-up we all need right now” ( People ) that proves humanity thrives in a crisis and that our innate kindness and cooperation have been the greatest factors in our long-term success as a species. Sons stayed on the paternal plot to tend the land and livestock, which meant brides now had to be fetched for the family farm. The rise of private property and farming brought the age of proto-feminism to an end. Some theologists even suspect that the story of the Fall alludes to the shift to organised agriculture, as starkly characterised by Genesis 3: ‘By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread.’29 Settled life exacted an especially heavy toll on women. Farmers, by contrast, had to toil in the fields and working the soil left little time for leisure. And why not? Nature provided everything they needed, leaving plenty of time to relax, hang out and hook up. For one thing, anthropologists have discovered that hunter-gatherers led a fairly cushy life, with work weeks averaging twenty to thirty hours, tops. “Rousseau saw the invention of farming as one big fiasco, and for this, too, we now have abundant scientific evidence. They have the ultimate secret weapon to defeat their competition.ĭe meeste mensen deugen. In a hierarchically organised society, the Machiavellis are one step ahead. The reason, says Professor Keltner, is that power causes people to lose the kindness and modesty that got them elected, or they never possessed those sterling qualities in the first place. Time and again we hope for better leaders, but all too often those hopes are dashed. It’s not surprising that American ‘democracy’ exhibits dynastic tendencies-think of the Kennedys, the Clintons, the Bushes. Even now, though any citizen can run for public office, it’s tough to win an election without access to an aristocratic network of donors and lobbyists. It was never the American Founding Fathers’ intention for the general populace to play an active role in politics. Take the American Constitution: historians agree it ‘was intrinsically an aristocratic document designed to check the democratic tendencies of the period’. It’s also important to realise this model was originally designed to exclude society’s rank and file. Instead we’re allowed to decide who holds power over us. “ Rousseau already observed that this form of government is more accurately an ‘elective aristocracy’ because in practice the people are not in power at all. ![]()
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