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There is a persistent myth that by their very nature humans are selfish, aggressive and quick to panic. It’s what Dutch biologist Frans de Waal likes to call veneer theory: the notion that civilisation is nothing more than a thin veneer that will crack at the merest provocation.4 In actuality, the opposite is true. It’s when crisis hits – when the bombs fall or the floodwaters rise – that we humans become our best selves.
An old man says to his grandson: ‘There’s a fight going on inside me. It’s a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil – angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant, and cowardly. The other is good – peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest, and trustworthy. These two wolves are also fighting within you, and inside every other person too.’ After a moment, the boy asks, ‘Which wolf will win?’ The old man smiles. ‘The one you feed.’
Cynicism is a theory of everything. The cynic is always right.
I looked down at the first page. ‘Life has taught me a great deal,’ it began, ‘including the lesson that you should always look for what is good and positive in people.’
Human beings, it turns out, are ultrasocial learning machines. We’re born to learn, to bond and to play. Maybe it’s not so strange, then, that blushing is the only human expression that’s uniquely human. Blushing, after all, is quintessentially social – it’s people showing they care what others think, which fosters trust and enables cooperation.
We’re open books; the object of our attention plain for all to see. Imagine how different human friendships and romance would be if we couldn’t look each other in the eye. How would we feel able to trust one another? Brian Hare suspects our unusual eyes are another product of human domestication. As we evolved to become more social, we also began revealing more about our inner thoughts and emotions.
In the words of Rousseau: ‘Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.’
