Rutger Bregman
Appearances
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
You're going to create the kind of people that your theory presupposed. So...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
obviously you know humans are capable of the of the most terrible atrocities we do things that penguins would never think of doing right um concentration camps genocides apartheid you name it but then on the other hand we're also um capable of incredible altruism and i think that you know shifting that perspective a little bit and assume and assuming the best in people and also designing our our systems of government of companies you name it around that um
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
could be a great way of making this world a much better place.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Well, you invited me back, Trevor.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Well, here's an interesting story, Trevor. So there are two species of primates who are like 99% genetically similar to us. On the one hand, you got the chimpanzees who indeed behave pretty much like you just described. So like a tribe of chimpanzees meets another tribe of chimpanzees that they never met before, you know, and it can get pretty violent.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
We also have the bonobos, and they're pretty much the opposite. So if two groups of bonobos meet each other, what they'll have is an orgy. That's basically their way of saying hi. So this has been a question that's been asked by primatologists for a long time. Are we the chimpanzees or the bonobos? Maybe we're both.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Yeah, well, that's the problem if you write a book about human decency is that you have to go on for hundreds of pages about all the terrible things we do. Look, for me, it all starts with this question, how have we conquered the globe, right? Why have humans been so successful compared to other species? And for a long time, we like to believe that it is because we are so smart, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Because we have these huge brains that take up, what is it, 20, 25% of our energy. But then, you know, scientists started studying other animals. And again, as you just said, they're pretty similar to us in many respects. There's now a new group of scientists who think that what has made us special as a species is something called survival of the friendliest.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
It's really the case that throughout our history, it was actually the friendliest among us who had the biggest chance of passing on their genes to the next generation. Because that basically helped people to work together on a scale that no other animal has been able to do. Now, the technical term for this is self-domestication syndrome. We know this with animals that we have domesticated, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Seep and dogs, they've turned very friendly. And what Charles Darwin already noted is that these domesticated animals have certain traits in common. You know, you can see that it's in their genetic profile, but they also get like these floppy ears or white spots in their fur. And most importantly, they look a little bit more childlike and they also become more playful.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Now, what's so interesting, if you study the skeletons of humans over the past thousands of years, what you see is the popification of humanity. So we literally look much friendlier, more childish than we look 50,000 years ago. Humans have become cuter over time. Exactly, exactly. So... This is my grand theory of human nature. I call it homo puppy.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
That's the term I hope to be remembered for in the annals of science. But it's very much contrary to the way people often think about how we have conquered the globe, right? That we murdered all the Neanderthals or something like that. Well, actually, modern scientists think pretty much the opposite. So I believe that theory.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
You've got a picture of him on... Of course! ...near your bed or something.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Well, no, I didn't get another invitation to go to Davos. It was something I said, I guess. Tucker Carlson, I also never heard from him again. But apart from that, you know, yeah, people invite me back.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Hmm. So often people say, oh, becoming a parent really made me more idealistic because, you know, that was the moment when I realized that we really need to take care of future generations. You know, actually, quite often I see the opposite is that people, I don't know, maybe turn inward a little bit. So I've been actually trying to fight that. Oh, but you feel it, though. It's pulling you then.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
I think it's fine. You know, this discussion really reminds me of this news story from, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago when a Danish woman was arrested in the US because she had parked her stroller with, I think, her baby in it next to a cafe while she was getting takeaway coffee. And she was arrested for child neglect.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
While in Denmark, where she's from, you know, that's like entirely normal to do. I mean, that's life.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Yeah, and important that it's in the interest of those in power for us to be cynical about human nature, right? Because that justifies the hierarchy, that justifies all these power differences.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
You know, as I was going on a book tour, making this argument that humans have evolved to work together and that we are the product of survival of the friendliest, what really struck me is that I got most pushback from journalists And I think it's logical. I mean, journalists spend most of their careers, their days, writing about what goes wrong, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So people who actually are more tuned into the news, who are addicted to the news, they're often much more cynical. And I got most praise, actually. I received a lot of emails from hitchhikers. There's this one, I forgot his name, this guy who is the professional hitchhiker. He's been really going everywhere. And he's like, yeah, that's my experience. You can go everywhere.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
You can go every country. And people are basically friendly to strangers pretty much everywhere. And I was like, well, that is lived experience, right? That is very different from the journalist mindset where you continuously are on the lookout for newsworthy things. It's a problem with the goodness, right? As Trevor said, it's the water we swim in.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
It's very easy to miss because you're just used to it. And by the way, one final thing. I had a pretty different experience actually moving to New York. Yeah. I mean, I like my neighbors in the Netherlands, but in the Netherlands, right, our social circle is much more closed off. But I, you know, I moved here to Brooklyn and everyone's so friendly. Everyone's so kind.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Everyone's like, no, welcoming to the neighborhood. Like my neighbor literally said, yeah, you can have sleepovers. You invite people, you know, in my apartment. It's all fine. So I don't know. Maybe that's just Brooklyn. But my experience was pretty different.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Well, I mean, this was just after I had gone to Davos and indeed I had said some nasty things about billionaires and their massive tax avoidance and their massive tax evasion. And then, you know, how they keep whining about their philanthropy. Well, maybe, you know, just start with paying your fair share in taxes.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Be a man, be heterosexual. It works incredibly well. So yeah, you're absolutely right. And part of me wonders this as well. As I think about this book I wrote, Humankind, is it just one big expression of privilege? Is it a telling fact that I wrote that book?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So then Tucker Carlson invited me on his show because apparently he liked it that I had, you know, stuck it to the global issue or something like that. And I was like, well, you know, you're also the elite, you know, you're part of the problem. Like you're, what is it? A millionaire funded by billionaires. So he didn't like that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah, I agree with all of that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
It's a good question. Depends on where you live, I guess. I mean, I just moved to New York and it feels like you need to be a multimillionaire even to raise kids here.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
I guess that depends. But it's easy to forget how wealthy people are when they live in rich countries.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Where I'm from, the Netherlands, if you have just a median income, which is about, what is it, 35,000 euros annually. So what is that, $40,000 or something? You're part of the richest 3.5% in the world. So... Remember Occupy Wall Street where people were saying we are the 99% and they are the 1%?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
My favorite story in the book is about this moment in 1965 when six boys shipwrecked on an island near Tonga. I had asked myself the question if there had ever been a real Lord of the Flies. And it turns out there was. Six boys were at this boarding school in Nuku'alofa, the capital of Tonga. They were really frustrated. They thought school was boring. And they were like, let's go on an adventure.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
And they borrowed a boat from a local fisherman and then ended up in a storm on the very first night. They drifted for eight days, incredibly hungry, incredibly thirsty, but miraculously survived and then washed up on this island that was totally forgotten, uninhabited. And they survived there for 15 months.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
And it's a real example of survival of the friendliest, because if they were really like nasty and not working together, well, we wouldn't be here able to tell their story. Now, what's happening there? I think it's really a combination of things.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Obviously, it's Tongan culture, right, which is a very cooperative culture with very essential skills where kids learn to swim, you know, basically in their first year already. So that's obviously essential. I also think, though, that it is a part of human nature what we see expressed there. As I said, survival of the friendliest.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
It's kids working together and exhibiting traits that are also very much part of who we are as a species. You know, to Trevor's point again, this is one of those things where you can hold two seemingly contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time. Yes, we're incredibly selfish, cruel. We're also one of the most cooperative and altruistic species in the animal kingdom.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Yeah. And this is particularly the case when you look at natural disasters. So look at how disasters are portrayed in series and movies, and it's the same thing all the time. Civilization is a thin veneer, and people very quickly turn into animals, beasts, barbarians. They start raping, looting, plundering. And that's also how the press often behaves.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
The most famous case here is Katrina, 2005, the terrible flooding. And the press was full of these horrible stories of people getting shot, of the looting and the plundering. Well, actually, we have got 60, 70 years of empirical evidence of anthropologists, sociologists going into these places and actually interviewing people, doing the rigorous empirical research.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Well, actually, from a global perspective, very often the people who say that stuff on TikTok or Instagram, they're actually part of the top 5% in terms of income.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
And time and time again, they found that disasters actually bring out the best in people. So every single time, doesn't matter where it happens, whether it's Japan or the US or South Africa, you get an explosion of altruism. Because once things really get serious like that, people are like, okay, we've got to stick together. We've got to survive together.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Sure, there are always some examples that then will get magnified in the press. But like the big headline story should be, oh, people are working together once again.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Yeah, it's really extraordinary. Child mortality has been declining massively. On the other hand, though, I also understand why people are really scared. In many respects, I'm pretty terrified. Do you guys know this website called Our World in Data? It's my favorite website. Our World in Data. Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
It's really a great website that has the best collection of data on what's going on in the world, basically. And the guy who founded that is a statistician called Max Roser. And he always says that there are three statements that are true at the same time. So the first statement is the world is bad. I mean, that is true.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
There are millions of kids dying from easily preventable diseases every single day. There are billions of animals being tortured in factory farms right now. Autocracy is on the rise. So there are lots of bad things. The second statement is also true, that the world is much better. We have made extraordinary progress.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
And you won't see that if you just follow the news, because the news is about what happens today instead about what happens every single day. It doesn't teach you all that much about the big structural trends. And the third statement is also true, which is we could do so much better.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
If you take a look at the resources we have, how many talent we have, how much capital we have, we should already have abolished poverty around the globe. We should already have abolished most terrible diseases. Like the fact that malaria still exists, that tuberculosis still exists. I mean, that's just an outrage. So yeah, as you can see, I've got mixed feelings about this.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
I think it's one of the most fascinating questions. You can basically ask about history. So... If you look at all these civilizations we've seen, whether it's the Romans or the Aztecs or people in the Middle Ages, people throughout history have believed that they are the most civilized, right? Yeah. That they are on the right side of history.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So the Romans, for example, thought that they were so civilized because they didn't sacrifice children for the gods. That's a good move. Yeah. Then they did have the Colosseum, you know, and they did throw naked women for the lions, etc. But that was just good entertainment during lunchtime.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Okay. So today we like to see ourselves as really civilized because we've, you know, officially abolished slavery and the slave trade. We've got, you know, universal suffrage. In many countries we now have gay marriage. So surely we got to be the most civilized, right? Yeah. Well, that would be very coincidental if we turn out to be that one civilization who got it all figured out.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
I think it's quite likely that the historians of the future will look back at us. And I'm not just saying like, oh, the MAGA Republicans. No, I'm talking about me, about you. We're probably doing some things that are terrible, like moral catastrophes. And today, we have lots of progressives and liberals who care deeply about human rights and about all the injustices.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
But keep eating factory farmed meat of animals that have been horribly abused. So that for me is one of those examples where the historians of the future could be like, they're going to look at us. What the hell were these people thinking? How could they unthinkingly keep participating in that crisis?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
I was a quite fanatic carnivore. Yeah, well, then what changed? I guess reading. So I think the final notch came from Yuval Noah Harari. You had him on the show as well, right? So he wrote this book called Sapiens about, you know, the big picture, right? The history of humanity of the last hundreds of thousands of years. And in that book, he doesn't make any moral judgment whatsoever.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So he talks about the Nazis and he's like, I don't know, describing it as... You know, just another culture, right? Just another way of, you know, the way humans can behave. And then at the end of the book, he talks about the way we treat animals. And he has this offhand remark where he says, well, this is probably the biggest crime in all of human history.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
And I thought that was very convincing, just by looking at the numbers. Because, like... The total number of people who ever lived is estimated at 117 billion. The total number of animals that we slaughter every year is 80 billion. So it takes us just a year and a half to slaughter as many animals as the amount of people that ever lived.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
And then if you look at the latest science, like every other week, there's a new paper coming out about how sentient, how sensitive, how intelligent chickens are, cows are. And I also felt so ignorant once I started digging into it. Like, for example, the fact that cows give milk. I was like, yeah, cows give milk. That's what they do. Well, actually, they have to be pregnant every year.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
They have to be pregnant, basically. And then we take away all these calves, which is like... a product that we very often can't use. So we, we abuse those calves in a terrible way as well. Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So there's a famous philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, in the late 18th century who already made the point. It's not about how smart animals are. It's not about can they talk, can they reason. It's about can they suffer. I like that. That's the essential point. There was a recent scientific committee who published this big report about when you cook crabs alive, well, they suffer immensely, right? Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
I think that matters. Look, I'm not fundamentally against eating meat. Not at all. What I'm against is factory farming. And I think it's really important to acknowledge as a consumer in the world today is that, what is it, 95, 98% of all meat comes from factory farms.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So if you say, well, I'm radically going to cut down the amount of meat I eat, you know, I'm just going to eat meat that was hunted or something like that, or that was really raised in an ethical way. I mean, that's fine. But then please also acknowledge that you will have to eat 5% as much or something.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Oh, absolutely. You know, I'm a pretty old fashioned European social Democrat. So I think that sometimes some tasks are best done by the government, sometimes by civil society and sometimes by markets, right? I wouldn't want the government to try and invent an iPhone and to market it to customers. You know, they're probably going to be really bad at it. Just look at the Soviet Union.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So actually one thing I like about having moved to the United States is that, yeah, some cliches are really true. There's a much more entrepreneurial culture here. So a couple of my friends launched this journalism platform in Amsterdam a decade ago, and they had this night where they presented the plan, right? We want to revolutionize journalism.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
We want to really change it, not focus on all the bad news, but focus on the structural important things. And what happens in the Netherlands, if you pitch something new like that, you know, like 90% of the people there will say, ah, is that going to work? Ah, probably don't bother. And then if it doesn't work, then they're like, I see you told you so.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
I recently had a dinner like that here in New York where someone invited me to talk to a bunch of journalists and entrepreneurs and blah, blah, blah. And I say, well, I have this idea for starting an organization that helps as many talented people as possible to work on the most pressing issues of our time. And I was like, yeah, absolutely. That's going to work.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Yeah, you're going to build this huge global movement of ambitious idealists. And I can't see why it's not going to work. Go you. And actually, if you're building something new, if you're trying something new, That is really what you want. Yeah, you want that push in the back. That's what you want. Exactly.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So no, I'm not like... This whole debate about socialism versus capitalism, it's like a dichotomy that doesn't exist. Sweden is a capitalist country, right? Denmark is capitalist. It's like... You can be a pluralist. You can have rules. You can have a flourishing economy where billionaires actually pay their taxes.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
And the fact that we think we have to choose between either or, that it's either Elon Musk paying very little in taxes, taking over the government, or the Netherlands or Denmark where you can fall asleep on the street and it's very hard to be an entrepreneur. There's something in the middle, probably.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Okay, let me try and find a way to get back to Davos because I'm actually going to say something nice about billionaires. Oh, here we go. I don't think I've ever done that on a podcast, but here I go. So I was studying the history of malaria, as you may have noticed. I know we recently developed these amazing vaccines for the first time in history. We've got them.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
This has been one of the most deadliest diseases in all of world history. And it took us decades and decades to finally get the vaccine. And I was wondering, why did it take so long? It turns out that actually in the early 80s, scientists already understood that we could develop a vaccine. The problem was that it was mostly poor people in poor countries who were dying from it, and a lot.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So between 1980 and 2020, around 40 million people died from malaria, which is about as much as how many people died in Europe during the Second World War. And for HIV-AIDS, there was a massive movement in wealthy countries because also wealthy people were dying from HIV-AIDS. So we developed amazing medicines against that, but not for malaria. Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
The tragic thing and the embarrassing thing is that it took a tech billionaire, in this case Bill Gates, in the year 2000 to say, okay, well, let's actually finance the research that is necessary, that governments are not doing it. And also not like the liberal governments, like socialist government. Denmark wasn't doing it. The Netherlands wasn't doing it. And...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
I think that is something where sometimes philanthropy can play a role to do that stuff that is so neglected because it's so unpopular to do. And yeah, I think like someone like Bill Gates deserves an enormous amount of credit for it. He really changed the course of history in that respect. So, okay, that's it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So I guess one of the problems with Progressive these days is that they have all these rules of life that are basically about how you live your own personal life. So you're not supposed to fly. You're not supposed to eat meat. You're not supposed to have kids. You're not supposed to use plastic straws. And yeah, to really limit your environmental footprint.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So I do think it's valuable of people who are really privileged, who went to a fancy Ivy League university or something like that, that they really realize that they are very privileged. Maybe you guys remember from 2016 when Trump was first elected, we had this big round of soul searching in the United States and elsewhere as well, all about how is this possible?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
I think the problem with that kind of reasoning is that in the best possible scenario, if you've done everything right, then you have an environmental footprint of zero and you might as well not have existed, right? So then death is the highest ideal. You might as well just kill yourself.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
I think we've got to talk much more about the actual positive things we can do to make this world a much better place. And what history teaches me is that that always starts with groups coming together. There's this beautiful quote from Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, who said that we should never doubt the power of small groups of thoughtful, committed citizens to change the world.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
In fact, it's the only thing that ever has. So I guess we need safe spaces for do-gooders who come together, places where you... Don't have to be embarrassed that you actually believe that some things could be radically improved. So that's, I guess, my most important advice. Find those bubbles, those cults maybe of people who are actually like, yeah, we're not cynical.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
We're actually going to do something. We're actually going to build something.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Well, take a look at all these Ivy League universities. Read the college essays of the students when they come in. And it's all about the big problems they want to solve. They want to work at the UN, solving world hunger. They want to fight the next pandemic. They want to fight the tobacco industry, create beautiful new innovations that make this world a much better place.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
And then the years go by and McKinsey knocks on their door and they end up being a strategy consultant or a corporate lawyer or a banker. And something is lost along the way. And I think that waste of talent is really one of the greatest wastes of our time.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
I would love to live in a society where the most ambitious, talented, driven people who've been given a lot also work on the most pressing and important issues. So that's actually why I've moved to New York. We're kickstarting the US chapter of the school for moral ambition. That's what my next book is called.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So moral ambition is the combination of the idealism of an activist plus the ambition of an entrepreneur. Moral ambition. Okay. We basically want to help as many people as possible to quit those soul crunching, not super socially useful jobs and to work on something that actually matters. I think we got to redefine what it means to be successful.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Successful is not about having that corner office or having that fancy LinkedIn resume. It's about making an actual difference and make future historians proud. That's what being successful really should be about.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
And we were trying to get into the minds of the Trump voters or in Germany, into the minds of the AFD voters or in the Netherlands. into the minds of the Geert Wilders voters. And you know what? Now that Trump has been elected again, I think, can we please not do that again?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
What do you think? Well, I think that meaning is created by humans. And I guess one of our messages to all these, you know, privileged and wealthy people, some of them, you know, who get so rich that they can buy a building on Harvard and have it named after them. The message is like, no one's going to remember you for that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
No one's going to give a shit 100 years from now that your name on is on it. They'll have to ask Chet GPT if that still exists. Like, who the fuck is this guy? And, you know, we talked earlier about the British abolitionists. One thing that struck me is that the British Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded by 12 individuals. One of them was a writer.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So there is a place for someone like me. One of them was a lawyer. So they can be useful as well. But 10 out of 12 were entrepreneurs. People had built their own companies. People had scaled their own companies who may have been in the Forbes 400 if that would have existed at the time. But at some point they thought, you know what? I'm going to build a legacy that actually matters.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
If they would just have been rich or successful entrepreneurs, no one would have remembered them. It's because they took up the fight against the greatest moral atrocity of their time. That's why we remember them today.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
It's a mixture. I think it's fine that people are motivated by, again, multiple things. It can be a little bit of vanity. I mean, if you look back, you know, one of your shows on Netflix, some part of you must think like, oh, this is pretty cool, right? When I have, you know, my new book in my hands, I'm like, oh... This is awesome. That's fine. That's a completely natural motivation.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
At the same time, yeah, I do also genuinely care about the suffering of those who are oppressed, of the animals, all the things that we've talked about. I think it's fine to be motivated by multiple things at the same time.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
You know, so not another round of soul searching and looking inward and like, oh, all these calls for more empathy and compassion. Well, maybe it starts with actually practicing what you preach. I think that the big betrayal of educated elites in this country and elsewhere has not been a lack of empathy, but a lack of actually contributing to to making this world a better place, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So I think the way to be morally resilient is to make commitments in public. I mean, that's the point of things like marriage, for example, right? You say in public, you know, I'm marrying this person. And the same is true for things like, I don't know, sticking to veganism. I just said on this podcast, right? Yeah, I'm a vegan.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So I guess that makes it much more difficult now for me to not be a vegan in public. I think we could do the same for similar things. Also with our wealth, for example, one thing I've experienced is that it's much easier to give money away if you don't have it. So for this new book, I actually thought, okay, that's like a great resource that we can use to build this movement. You know what?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
I'm giving all of it away in advance because it's so much more difficult once you have the actual money in your bank account. Oh, man, I like that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
You've got so many of these Ivy League graduates, like Harvard, 45% of Harvard graduates go into consultancy and finance. What do they do for a living? Do they really contribute to society? Well, you can ask them, and quite a few polls find out that they're often very likely to consider their own job socially useless.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Yeah, it's another good example where you can believe two things at the same time. So on the one hand, it's important to emphasize that I'm talking about taxing the rich. And in the US, for the first time in history, billionaires now have a lower effective tax rate than working class people. So that's if you look at all taxes combined, it's actually lower than working class people.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
It seems pretty unfair to me. At the same time, Republicans are... correct in their assessment that government is just not delivering. And especially so in blue states and in blue cities. I think one of the most embarrassing things for Democrats right now is that, I mean, Texas, it takes a day in Texas to deploy as much solar energy as it would take a year in California.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Yeah, so many, like the not in my backyard attitude is everywhere there. So this is another example of, you know, what we talked about at the beginning of the show, this progressive hypocrisy where you occupy the moral high ground, but you don't actually deliver. So I totally understand that. When a government doesn't deliver, it does make people more skeptical of paying their taxes.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
On the other hand, why has government been... you know, not been as effective as it used to be. Well, also because it's funding constraint. So it's like this, you get into this.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
I really like the idea. One other thing that might be easier to implement and to actually do... I don't do easy, I just do good. But maybe some magazine could have like the Forbes 400 version of doing good, right? Where like the entrepreneurs who... yeah, really improve the most people's lives that year. Because we know that many of these billionaires and entrepreneurs, they are ego driven.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So I really consider that the big betrayal, that kind of hypocrisy, where people claim the moral high ground, but don't actually live up to it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
They're driven by that vanity. So can't we use that energy and that fact of human nature for good? I would really love to see that because I think it would really drive some of those billionaires out there. It would really drive them nuts if they would be very low on the list and they'd be like, oh, next year I want to get that year.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
This is like the most fundamental currency of society. It's not money, but it's status. It's like, how do you earn respect in a society? One thing that I found out once I was studying these British abolitionists is that they were actually part of a broader cultural shift. So the main British abolitionist was a guy called William Wilberforce, one of those evangelicals.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
And he actually said that it was his life's mission to make doing good more fashionable. On his deathbed, when he was being asked, like, what are you most proud of? He didn't talk about his leading role in abolishing the slave trade. He said he talked about his missionary activities in India. For him, abolitionism was just a part of something bigger, you know? Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
And I think, honestly, that's what we need today. We've got to redefine what it means to be successful. And it's fine if people then do it for, yeah, a yearning for a certain kind of status. But yeah, the way we define success today, I think it's ruining us.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
In my personal life? Yeah. Well, apart from just becoming a father again. Yeah, so I spent 10 years in what I like to call the awareness business. You know, you write books, you write articles, you stand on stages in Davos or in Vancouver at a tech conference. And then you just hope that some other people will do the actual work of making the world a better place.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
And after 10 years of doing that, I became quite fed up with myself. I experienced this emotion. You could call it moral envy. You know, you study some of those pioneers doing their great work today or some of them in the past. And you're like, God, I wish I was like them, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
I wish I was also actually having some skin in the game and actually taking a risk and not just being on the sidelines giving my opinion. There's this beautiful quote from Theodore Roosevelt about, It's really about the people who are in the arena, not about the people who stand on the sidelines and just share their opinions. So, yeah, that's the journey I'm on right now.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
I've basically quit my career as a writer, I guess. It will take a long time to write another book. And I'm now trying to kickstart this organization and to... really turn it into a global movement to help as many people as possible to join the fight against the next pandemic, against the breakdown of democracy, against the tobacco industry, you name it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So a year from now, I hope to have actually achieved something there that is not just about spreading awareness and being on a podcast that a lot of people listen to, but maybe actually... yeah, improving people's lives in a tangible way, that'd be great.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
I mean, life is about many things. It's not just about doing good.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So I've got a toddler of three years old, and if my toddler would compete with a pig with quite a few tasks where intelligence is being measured, you know, the toddler would actually lose. I'd watch that, by the way.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So I think that there are two ways to travel. You can travel in time, obviously, or you can travel in space. And if you go to another country, then very often you realize, oh, wow. So there are different ways to doing things, right? And that's just like history. I think the main lesson of studying history is that things can be different. There's nothing inevitable.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
about the way we've structured our society and economy right now. I've personally always been fascinated by this question of how radical ideas, seemingly crazy ideas, can over the years and decades become reality, both for better and for worse. Actually, I spent about a year studying the abolitionist movement, mainly the British abolitionist movement, because that was the most successful one.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
And what you realize if you go back to, say, the year 1750, and you would have stood on a street corner in London or Pennsylvania or New York, and you would have said, abolish the slave trade, abolish slavery, most people would have said, you're utterly nuts. That could never happen, and we really need this. This is like…
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
fundamental to our economy and then obviously it took many many decades and it started with a small group of really committed black and white abolitionists but it does happen so i've always been fascinated by those processes how the how the crazy can become inevitable what did they do well like what was it that made their movement as successful as it was
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
You know, you could write a very long book about that. I mean, that's what you do. That's exactly what you do. So as I was studying, in particular, the British abolitionist movement, I was like, this is almost like a self-help book for modern day activists and revolutionaries. Because there are so many lessons we can learn from it. One of the first big lessons is that It takes a coalition.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
So very often these days, people are, I think, too purist about their ideals, right? They only want to work together with people who are exactly on the same side. But then you study some of these great movements and you realize that they were actually coalitions of people who very often disagreed. vehemently about pretty fundamental things.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
In this case, it all started with the Quakers, which was a very weird, radical Christian sect. They didn't get much done for a long time until they started working together with the evangelicals. This was in the day when evangelicals were not just on TV trying to make money. So that's one really important lesson.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Another one that is, I think, very relevant today is that in history, very often the right things happen for the wrong reasons. So I really had this epiphany as I was studying the life of Thomas Clarkson, who was one of the main British abolitionists. And He was trying to make the argument in Westminster, in the British Parliament, that the slave trade ought to be abolished.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
And from a modern-day perspective, you would say, well, obviously, your most powerful argument is that this is the most immoral system that ever existed, right? The historians of the future will judge us very harshly for this. Well, actually, that didn't work at all. What Thomas Clarkson did discover is that once he started advocating for the suffering of white sailors on these ships...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
who were dying in droves. Then all the politicians were suddenly paying attention, right? And that was a really powerful political argument.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Yeah, so my very first book was called Utopia for Realists, and it was about all these crazy ideas like, can't we just abolish poverty by giving everyone money, which is called a universal basic income? Can't we abolish all borders around the globe? Can't we move to a much more participatory form of democracy? And at some point, I started to think, what do all these crazy ideas have in common?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
Well, it's a different way of looking at humans. It's a more hopeful and more optimistic view of human nature. There's this old theory which says that humans deep down are just fundamentally selfish. It's often called veneer theory, the idea that civilization is just a thin veneer and that below that lies raw human nature. And I think the problem with that theory is...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman [VIDEO]
It's not just that I think it's wrong. The biggest problem is that it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because once you start assuming the worst in other people, that's how you're going to design your whole society. You're going to have a society with a lot of bureaucracies, with a lot of cameras, with a lot of police. And you're going to bring out the worst in people.