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But the dynamic during disasters is almost always the same: adversity strikes and there’s a wave of spontaneous cooperation in response, then the authorities panic and unleash a second disaster.
Dictators and despots, governors and generals – they all too often resort to brute force to prevent scenarios that exist only in their own heads, on the assumption that the average Joe is ruled by self-interest, just like them.
It implies that we need a different kind of leadership. A company with intrinsically motivated employees has no need of managers; a democracy with engaged citizens has no need of career politicians.
What dogs are to wolves, we are to Neanderthals.27
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. Instead we’re allowed to decide who holds power over us.
small minority born with sociopathological traits. Such individuals wouldn’t last long in nomadic tribes. They’d be cast out of the group and left to die alone. But in our modern sprawling organisations, sociopaths actually seem to be a few steps ahead on the career ladder.
The tragedy of war is that it’s the best facets of human nature – loyalty, camaraderie, solidarity – that inspire Homo puppy to take up arms.
James professed that some things just have to be taken on faith, even if we can’t prove they’re true. Take friendship. If you go around for ever doubting other people, you’ll behave in ways guaranteed to make you disliked.
Things like friendship, love, trust and loyalty become true precisely because we believe in them. While James allowed that one’s belief could be proved wrong, he argued that ‘dupery through hope’ was preferable to ‘dupery through fear’.
more democracy, more openness and more humanity are precisely what’s not easy. On the contrary, tough talk, retaliation, shutting down borders, dropping bombs, dividing up the world into the good guys and the bad – that’s easy. That’s looking the other way.
That’s how good overpowers evil – by outnumbering it.
