Oren Harman

How kind is humankind?

Kinder than we imagine, says Rutger Bregman — with ‘proof’ of our cruelty often based on flawed experiments

A fireman rescues a toddler after a bombing raid in London in 1940. Our true colours reveal themselves in times of crisis, according to Rutger Bregman. (Getty Images)

  • Humankind: A Hopeful History

    Rutger Bregman

    Bloomsbury, pp. 496, £20

Augustine had it that ‘no one is free from sin, not even an infant’. Machiavelli deemed that humans are ‘ungrateful, fickle hypocrites’, and even the founding father John Adams, the paragon of American democracy, was sure that all men would be tyrants if they could. Thucydides, Luther, Calvin, Burke, Bentham, Nietzsche, Freud — all were wrong about our natures.

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