The latest view from archaeology shows the opposite picture emerging, he said. it's one of the secrets of our ability to cooperate on a huge scale.'īut he said when people think of political leaders, they often cannot imagine them blushing anymore, which could be part of the problem.īregman said for a long time, human history was viewed as a march of progress with people in the past living lives that were, as British philosopher Thomas Hobbs said, 'nasty, brutish and short' but then we were supposedly rescued by civilisation. 'And I think actually this power to blush, you know this shame that we can all feel, it helps us to trust one another. 'Why do we do that? Why has that given us an advantage in our evolutionary history - that we involuntarily give away our feelings to other members of our species? People who want to be liked sometimes don't rise up against injustices and very often progress starts with people who are willing to be uncomfortable or are willing to make other people uncomfortable.'īregman said one of the questions that the book examines is the strange phenomena of why humans blush and are the only animals to do so. 'But we know all know that this yearning to be liked can sometimes stand in the way of justice and of truth seeking.

Hunter gatherers who were friendly were more likely to survive as they would likely have more offspring and pass on their genes and friends could help them survive in a very harsh environment, he said.

'This shame that we can all feel helps us to trust one another' - Rutger BregmanĪ short summary of Humankind: A Hopeful History would be that 'most people deep down are pretty decent, but power corrupts', Bregman said.īregman said there is a friendliness paradox.

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