Good-Natured: On the Roots of Human Kindness

Originally published in 21 March 2025 on Substack: https://substack.com/home/post/p-159540266

Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, in his beautiful work Humankind: A Hopeful History (2020), turns our collective gaze toward the innate goodness of humanity. In this Substack series, I have and will explore themes inspired by Bregman’s argument—that human nature is, at its core, good—and bring in reflections from my own research among hunter-gatherer communities. Bregman revisits and reinterprets famous stories and examples that argue for the inherent evil of human beings, revealing how these cases have often been misunderstood or misrepresented. Stories that highlight the darker side of humanity tend to align with public opinion and thus sell better, he notes, but that doesn’t make them accurate.

Bregman begins his exploration with a powerful account of the London Blitz—and later the strategic bombings in Germany—during World War II. The military commanders responsible believed that sustained bombing would crush civilian morale and plunge society into chaos, ultimately giving them a strategic edge. They were wrong. Civilians regarded the bombings as a necessary evil, and in the face of destruction, human kindness blossomed. Despite the deaths and destroyed homes, people helped one another in a calm and polite manner. Many have even remembered the London Blitz with a strange fondness—a time when people were kind to each other.

Another striking story in Bregman’s book is that of a real-life Lord of the Flies scenario. William Golding’s 1954 novel depicts English schoolboys stranded on a deserted island, descending into savagery. Bregman went to great lengths to find a real-life equivalent and discovered a 1965 case where six teenage boys were shipwrecked on an uninhabited island near Australia (see Tongan Schoolboys). They survived for 15 months, and when they were finally found by chance, all were in good health—one had broken his leg, but the others cared for him, and by the time they returned, his leg had fully healed. The boys had grown food, built a gym, and kept a fire burning the entire time by rubbing sticks together.

Throughout Bregman’s work, there’s a deep faith in human kindness, supported by concrete evidence. Ancient hunter-gatherers were not primarily violent, and this also holds true for the last remaining hunter-gatherer groups today. Bregman suggests that humans have self-domesticated through sexual selection, gradually favouring traits that make us more cooperative and less violent. One telling example is from the Battle of Gettysburg, where numerous muskets were found loaded 20 times or more, as reloading provided a perfect excuse not to fire again. Bregman discusses other examples of extreme lengths soldiers have gone to avoid killing another human being.

For many Indigenous societies, violence toward others is an alien and even repulsive concept. Bregman recounts how the U.S. Navy showed Hollywood movies to the inhabitants of the small Ifalik atoll in the Pacific, hoping to foster goodwill. But the movies horrified the islanders. The on-screen violence was so distressing that they felt physically ill for days. Years later, when an anthropologist arrived, the locals still asked, “Was it true? Are there really people in America who kill other people?” There is a deep mystery at the heart of human history: if we have an innate aversion to violence, where did things go wrong?

I’ve been fortunate to spend time in the Kalahari Desert with local Ju/’hoan hunter-gatherers. This experience showed me just how different we Westerners are. Despite decades of exposure to Western culture and every imaginable injustice from our side, they remain open, happy, curious, cheerful, and helpful.

The people I met call themselves Ju/’hoansi, meaning “real people.” Many Indigenous groups refer to themselves, and others with similar lifestyles, simply as “people.” Today, the descendants of southern Africa’s hunter-gatherers, who still speak their ancestral languages, have accepted the general term San, which I have also used when referring broadly to southern African hunter-gatherers. The name likely derives from a derogatory Khoekhoe term meaning “those who live in the bush and eat from the ground,” or possibly from sonqua, meaning “thief.” Other names—Bushman, Boesman, Basarawa, Bakalahari—are colonial impositions. The Kalahari San are gradually moving away from traditional hunting: many now raise chickens and goats and supplement their diets with milk, grains, tea, and sugar. Thus, calling them hunter-gatherers is somewhat misleading.

During my first research expedition, I had three primary goals: 1) find examples of persistence hunting; 2) understand the link between persistence hunting and trance ceremonies; 3) document a persistence hunt. On my first day, it became clear that no one in the camp remembered anyone chasing down and catching a large antelope. Ultimately, however, I uncovered valuable insights into the relationship between hunting and ceremony, crucial for completing my doctoral dissertation Fragments of the Hunt: Persistence Hunting, Tracking and Prehistoric Art (2017).

Bregman’s book reignited a question that has long troubled me: if ancient and modern hunter-gatherers are egalitarian, nonviolent, and friendly, why do modern societies periodically elect authoritarian despots? The San of the Kalahari go to great lengths to avoid envy; anyone behaving selfishly or possessively is swiftly admonished.

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (2006) writes that necklaces and other ornaments were common gifts among the San when researchers first visited in the early 1950s. This gift economy was called xaro (or hxaro). Valuable or desirable items and clothing were quickly given away as xaro gifts to prevent envy, preserving the delicate structure of small communities. Xaro partnerships could last a lifetime. The gift giver waited patiently for reciprocation, which would always eventually come. These gifts were carefully considered—metal knives or ostrich shell jewelry, for example—and the relationships they forged reduced jealousy, ensuring reciprocity and generosity. Trance dances were another key method of relieving social tension.

As seen with xaro, people invent ways to strengthen social bonds. In the San people’s case, avoiding envy was paramount. If someone produced something special and desirable, the person was eager to gift it away as xaro, preventing envy and securing her place in a chain of social esteem.

In the 1960s, American social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted obedience experiments to measure how far people would go in obeying authority, even when it involved immoral or inhumane actions. Participants were instructed to administer what they believed were dangerous electric shocks to others (who were actually actors). The study concluded that under authority, humans could commit extreme cruelty.

Milgram (1974) described this as obedience or “agentic state”—the individual sees themselves as an instrument for another’s wishes, not responsible for their own actions. This mentality was apparent after WWII, as the Nazi regime’s capacity for cruelty was examined. Philosopher Hannah Arendt, in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), describes how destruction operated through a bureaucratic machine, where hierarchical actors worked together to solve the mundane and ”banal” problem of genocide.

Bregman argues that Milgram’s experiments are often cited as evidence of human cruelty, but they actually show that people commit harmful acts only under persuasion, believing they are doing good—like helping researchers get results. Milgram found that direct orders led to defiance; harsh commands didn’t work.

Psychologists Alexander Haslam and Stephen Reicher (2012) replicated the experiment and noted that participants wanted to collaborate with the persuading researcher. They were even grateful to be part of the study. Participants retrospectively appreciated the chance to contribute to human understanding.

The Myth of Progress

According to Rutger Bregman, good intentions were also behind the infamous Stanford prison experiment in 1971 (Zimbardo 1972). The same applied to David Jaffe, who originally came up with the idea and inspired Professor Philip Zimbardo to carry it out. When Jaffe persuaded the prison experiment guards to be more aggressive, he referred to the noble goals of the study. In other words, violent behaviour was encouraged, and the participants genuinely wanted to help. We are, by nature, good natured, as the Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal (1996) has persuasively shown through his research on primate behaviour.

In the Kalahari, a small group of people still live a life that vaguely resembles the lifestyle of their hunter-gatherer ancestors. Many traditional skills remain well remembered, such as where to find edible plants and how to track animals. However, this is increasingly coloured by a shift toward a more Western way of life. They now drink black tea sweetened with sugar, and eat cornmeal with milk. All of this supplement a diet that was, until recently, sourced almost entirely from the natural environment.

A young hunter named Kxao introduced us to local plants. He showed us how a delicate leaf growing next to a bush belonged to a tuber plant rich in water. After digging it up, Kxao carefully refilled the hole and replanted the leaf so the tuber could continue living. He also cleaned up the mess left by a porcupine, which had rummaged through the ground in search of wild onion roots. Kxao tidied the area and replanted the fragile onion stems, explaining that the tubers are toxic to humans, but the young shoots are very nice and taste like spring onions. He also showed us plants that only kudu antelopes and other animals consume.

Humans have lived in the Kalahari continuously for about 100,000 years—perhaps even 200,000. It might seem like their way of life hasn’t changed, but this can be deceptive. They have coexisted with pastoralist neighbours since at least the 1950s and have interacted with other settlers for thousands of years. It would be wrong to say that their culture represents something ancient. The truth is that their lifestyle is just as susceptible to cultural changes—new ways of doing and thinking—as ours. What might appear ancient to us is actually their unique version of modern life style.

My research visit to the Kalahari called into me to question the legitimacy of modern industrialised civilisation and Western notions of “progress.” The San peoples once inhabited all of southern Africa, from Victoria Falls down to the Cape of Good Hope. Around 2,000 years ago, Khoekhoe pastoralists arrived from what is now northern Botswana and spread all the way to the southern tip of Africa. The Khoekhoe were quite similar to the San, but the main difference lay in their nomadic lifestyle and domesticated animals.

A few hundred years later, the first Bantu peoples arrived in the region. Compared to the smaller-framed San and Khoekhoe, the Bantus were giants. They originated from the Gulf of Guinea, in what is now Nigeria and Cameroon, where their migration began 3,500 years ago. However, it took thousands of years for their culture to reach southern Africa.

The Bantus had the advantage of technology. They were among the first farmers south of the Sahara, making pottery, keeping livestock, and crafting tools and weapons from iron. They also drank cow’s milk and had the genetic ability to digest lactose—unlike the hunter-gatherers of the south. These cultural adaptations and innovations enabled the Bantus to conquer much of sub-Saharan Africa. Today, Bantu languages are the most widely spoken on the African continent, with similar words found in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa.

The Bantu expansion dealt a heavy blow to the San, who had managed to coexist with Khoekhoe settlers. Now, the San were forced to vacate areas suitable for farming and grazing. Conflict ensued between the San, Khoekhoe, and Bantu. The San were branded as cattle thieves for killing livestock that intruded their lands. However, the real death knell for the San came in the late 1600s when the first European settlers began to seriously colonise southern Africa. Europeans allied with both the Khoekhoe and the Bantus and dehumanised the San, hunting them for sport.

Europeans devised derogatory terms for their new neighbours, like the infamous “Hottentots”—a Dutch slur meaning stutterer, used for both San and Khoekhoe. Due to physical and linguistic similarities, settlers lumped them into a single group, Khoisan.

Initially, the San lived alongside European settlers, who sometimes attempted to teach them new ways. Farmers even gave them livestock, but the San, accustomed to sharing everything equally, slaughtered the animals and distributed the meat evenly. The concept of owning animals was foreign to them because ownership defied sharing. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) began a full-scale war in the early 1700s against the indigenous peoples of northern South Africa, who were resisting settler expansion.

The VOC was the biggest megacorporation of its time—the founder of the world’s first stock exchange—and held near-sovereign powers: it could wage war, imprison and execute suspects, mint money, and establish colonies. By the end of the 18th century, the VOC authorized privately formed commando units to evict and, at times, kill any Khoisan they found. In 1792, they began paying bounties for captured Khoisan.

By the early 1800s, the Khoisan genocide in what is now the Cape Province and southern Namibia was nearly complete. In northeastern South Africa and present-day Lesotho, the Khoisan sought refuge. But in 1830, Dutch settlers reached these regions, kidnapped Khoisan children, and killed their parents. The seasonal animals that had sustained them for hundreds of thousands of years were hunted to extinction in the Drakensberg mountains, leaving the San starving.

Those who remained resorted to cattle theft, which was often punished by death. Between 1845 and 1872, colonial police forces ruthlessly hunted and killed all San they could find. The last San chief, Soai, was brutally murdered by members of the Sotho, a Bantu-speaking group, who disemboweled him on the banks of the Orange River in 1872. All San men were killed; women and children were marched to Leribe, where their descendants lived into the 20th century. The Khoisan who survived were forced to assimilate.

As late as 1870, only ten percent of Africa was under European control. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck convened the Berlin Conference in 1884–1885, bringing together leaders from Europe, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and the United States. Fourteen non-African nations were represented. A small group of white men determined the future of Africa and its people.

The Berlin Conference is often regarded as the formalisation of Africa’s colonisation. Its general act stated that any nation that claimed a portion of the African coast also gained the interior lands beyond it—without needing consent from local populations. King Leopold II of Belgium was granted control over what he dubbed the Congo Free State, initiating one of the bloodiest resource extractions in history. Over the next decade, around four million Congolese were brutally killed. The actual death toll might be higher; the Congolese population fell from 20–30 million to just eight million.

The partitioning of Africa spurred by the conference paved the way for Western incursion into the continent’s interior, ignoring tribal and ethnic boundaries. Territories were politely divided over a cup of hot tea or a glass of chilled gin. In 1884, only a tenth of Africa was under European control. By 1914, only a tenth remained under African rule. Only Ethiopia and Liberia remained independent.

Belgium was not the only nation to violently subjugate its new territories. The 20th century’s first ethnic cleansing took place in German-controlled Namibia, in an event referred as the Herero and Nama Genocide. The Herero (Bantu) and Nama (Khoekhoe) rebelled against their German overlords. With determination, organisation, and modern weapons, the Germans systematically exterminated around 100,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama by driving them into the Kalahari desert, away from drinkable water. By 1905, the remaining locals were imprisoned in the first German concentration camp on Haifischinsel (Shark Island), a peninsula off Lüderitz, Namibia. The camp was closed in 1907 after 1,000–3,000 people had died. By then, the last Southern African hunter-gatherers lived only in the Kalahari Desert.

Shark Island may have hosted the first German concentration camp—but it was not the last. Just over a decade later, in the summer of 1918, the Germans built their next concentration camps in Finland.

Originally published in 21 March 2025 on Substack: https://substack.com/home/post/p-159540266

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Resources:

Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Viking Press. LINK

Bregman, R. (2020). Humankind: A Hopeful History. Bloomsbury. LINK

de Waal, F. B. M. (1996). Good natured: The origins of right and wrong in humans and other animals. Harvard University Press. LINK

Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2012). Contesting the nature of conformity: What Milgram and Zimbardo’s studies really show. PLoS Biology, 10(11), e1001426. LINK

Ijäs, M. (2017). Fragments of the Hunt: Persistence Hunting, Tracking and Prehistoric Art. Helsinki: Aalto University. LINK

Marshall Thomas, E. (2006). The Old Way: A Story of the First People. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. LINK

Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. Tavistock, London. LINK

Zimbardo, P. G. (1972). Stanford Prison Experiment: A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment. LINK

The Second Crisis: Shaping the World Through Artificial Intelligence

Originally published in 24 February 2025 on Substack https://substack.com/inbox/post/157820189

While the first and greatest upcoming crisis is the environmental crisis: climate change, pollution, and mass extinction of species, the second crisis we face is the reshaping of the global order by the AI industry. Technological advancements are accelerating, making economic inequality more glaring than ever, with no end in sight. The potential of AI is difficult to assess, but it is clear that it will redefine our understanding of labor and work itself. This will force humanity to reconsider not only the nature of work but also economic systems as a whole. The greatest threat comes from the question: Can a company, whether American or Chinese, grow so wealthy that it could dictate economic and political decisions at will? Can wealth generated by AI be distributed equitably, empowering citizens worldwide, fostering equality, and reinforcing democracy everywhere? My son captured the irony of computer evolution in a joke: ”We’ve fooled rocks into thinking for us.” What if those rocks turn against us? Is this the new Stone Age?

This second crisis also touches on the erosion of democratic influence, a trend that could have catastrophic consequences for the future of civilisation. Let us not forget the looming threat of nuclear war, which still remains all too possible. The first two months of 2025 have made these challenges very clear.

Like many others, I consider myself an ordinary citizen—one who does their best each day, striving to care for their family. I am an artist, a researcher in human evolution and the prehistory of art, and a Zen buddhist priest. All three of these professions come with an implicit promise of poverty. However, I’ve learned that economic scarcity can be a gift and a privilege, especially for those wishing to understand what financial uncertainty feels like.

This series of writings began during fragmented writing sessions throughout 2021, a time when it seemed, for a brief moment, that the COVID-19 pandemic might be subsiding. After completing my doctorate in 2017, many areas of my life began following an unpredictable path. Despite spending most of my life with modest income and relying on social safety nets, I was poorer than ever while holding a doctorate. This reality prompted me to reflect deeply on economic inequality—one of the core themes of this series.

Seven generations

We live in the midst of mass extinctions and climate change. As a Zen priest, I often ask myself what it means to live in a world where, according to the UN’s environmental program, around 150–200 plant, insect, bird, and mammal species go extinct every day. How could we save these species?

My awakening to this reality came in early 2019, when I participated in an Extinction Rebellion event in Finland. I was placed in a small discussion group with a young woman and an older man. The woman’s reaction to the climate crisis was one of the main reasons I began writing about this. She was horrified at what the world could look like in just a few decades. She feared for her generation’s future and the generations to come. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Nation’s philosophy suggests that the decisions we make today should lead to a sustainable world for seven generations ahead. This principle is often applied to environmental decisions—ensuring they are sustainable for the next 150–200 years. Can we actually think on such a scale?

Our species evolved in small hunter-gatherer groups of a few dozen, and later adapted to village communities of around 150 people. Anthropologist Robin Dunbar’s research suggests that the human mind can only maintain meaningful relationships within this group size—a concept known as Dunbar’s number. How, then, can we make decisions that consider the well-being of 7.9 billion people? Can we even comprehend such a task? Must we simply accept that we are falling behind in the face of biodiversity loss, while AI and robots serve the needs of the wealthy?

I believe that we could create conditions where wealth is shared equally, where people can find meaning in doing what they love, while still providing for their families. But for this to happen, we must free ourselves from beliefs that bind our minds, beliefs that prevent such possibilities. We must learn to open our hearts to all forms of life and respect each other as we are. We would truly benefit from being able to see ourselves as others and others as ourselves.

Ethical Roots of Engaged Buddhism

The German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1888–1969) developed the influential concept of the ”Axial Age,” which spans roughly from 800 BCE to 200 BCE, marking the transition from the ancient world to a more familiar era. During this period, significant shifts in thought occurred simultaneously across China, India, and Greece. Thinkers such as Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha), Confucius, and Pythagoras shaped philosophical and religious traditions that still impact the world today. It was also an era when the concept of money emerged, fundamentally changing the relationship between freedom and power.

As a Buddhist priest, I may be somewhat biased, but I believe the teachings of Buddha are particularly relevant when examining the nature and origins of human dissatisfaction. Buddha’s radical ideas—especially the notion that caste systems and idol worship are baseless—resonate deeply in our modern world. His core insight, which we call dukkha (often translated as suffering), points to the inherent dissatisfaction and suffering in life, and how to become aware of it and see what lies beyond it.

David Loy, an American philosopher and Zen teacher, has written extensively about the significance of Buddhist thought in the context of the ecological crisis. According to Loy, the crisis we face is not just ecological but also spiritual, requiring a profound understanding of our place in the world. Is the ecological crisis the world’s way of telling us to wake up or face the consequences?

Loy references Dom Helder Camara’s comment: ”Dom Helder Camara’s comment: ”When I feed the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” This tension between helping and questioning is something that also arises in Buddhist activism. Loy asks whether Buddhists, when engaging in activism, are accused of being too radical, despite the deep ethical roots in the tradition.

The concept of stress is also relevant here. Stress can be a form of dukkha—a psychological and physiological reaction to life’s challenges. But stress isn’t inherently harmful, as Kelly McGonigal, a Stanford psychologist, suggests. It’s not the stress itself that harms us, but how we relate to it. Social support, connection, and understanding stress as a natural response can mitigate its negative effects.

In Zen Buddhism, we approach dissatisfaction and suffering with openness and awareness. Zen, particularly in its modern form, encourages living fully in the present, embracing life as it is. Zen practice aims to break through illusions and social constructs, helping us see the world as it truly is. It is less intellectual and more experiential, emphasising personal realisation in everyday life.

Zen’s journey from India to China and then Japan, and later to the West, has led to many different interpretations and adaptations. My understanding of Zen has been deeply influenced by the teachings of Roshi Frank De Waele, a Belgian Zen teacher, and Roshi Bernie Glassman, who taught “Brooklyn Zen.”

This series is based on themes that are divided five segments, each exploring the history, manifestations, consequences, and possible solutions to human dissatisfaction. It is not a step-by-step guide to solving these issues, but a collection of ideas and themes that I believe are crucial in this historical moment.

The first segment examines historical movements that have shaped our understanding of dissatisfaction and suffering. The second one offers philosophical reflections on the nature of dissatisfaction. The third and fourth segments address the consequences of dissatisfaction, such as climate change, the potential dangers of AI, and economic inequality. The final fifth segment of the series presents cases where dissatisfaction has been addressed and resolved. This section also discusses mystical experiences and practices that could help solve our dissatisfaction.