Rutger Bregman is (Largely) Wrong About Human Nature

Review of “Humankind: A Hopeful History” by Rutger Bregman

Ben Sixsmith
Arc Digital
Published in
7 min readMay 22, 2020

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(Photo by Simone Padovani/Awakening/Getty)

The highlight of Rutger Bregman’s optimistic new book Humankind is his account of a “real life” Lord of the Flies scenario in which six Catholic schoolboys were stranded on an island on the Pacific. Unlike the violent schoolboys in William Golding’s novel, though, these…

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Ben Sixsmith
Arc Digital

Englishman in Poland. Writer. Contributor to @QuilletteM and @AreoMagazine. Likes Conrad, Camus, Kirk and cage fighting.