@rutgerbregman: I’ve never been a fan of the self-help genre. If you ask me, we’re living in an age of too much introspection and too little outrospection. A better world doesn’t begin with me, but with all of us, and our main task is to build different institutions. Another hundred tips for climbing the career ladder or visualising your way to wealth won’t get us anywhere. So perhaps we should forget about self-help, and focus on helping others. That might be the best way to help ourselves as well :) The story goes that the philosopher Thomas Hobbes – who famously argued that people are fundamentally selfish – was once strolling around London with a friend, when he stopped suddenly to give a beggar some money. His friend was surprised. Hadn’t Hobbes himself said that it’s in our nature to be selfish? The philosopher didn’t see a problem. Witnessing the beggar’s suffering caused Hobbes discomfort, so it felt good to give the man a few coins. Ergo, his action was motivated by self-interest. For the last couple of centuries, philosophers and psychologists have racked their brains over the question whether there is such a thing as pure selflessness. But to be honest, that whole debate doesn’t really interest me. Because just imagine living in a world where you got a sick feeling every time you performed a kind act. What sort of hell would that be? The wonderful fact is that we live in a world where doing good also feels good. We like food because without food we’d starve. We like sex because without sex we ’d go extinct. We like helping because without each other we couldn’t survive either. Doing good typically feels good because it *is* good. —> Adapted from my book ‘Humankind: A Hopeful History’

Rutger Bregman

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Friday 14 August 2026 11:34:44 GMT