When Things Fall Apart (Throwback)

Throughline

NPR

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.6 • 16.4K Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2024

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Climate change, political unrest, random violence - Western society can often feel like what the filmmaker Werner Herzog calls, "a thin layer of ice on top of an ocean of chaos and darkness." In the United States, polls indicate that many people believe that law and order is the only thing protecting us from the savagery of our neighbors, that the fundamental nature of humanity is competition and struggle. This idea is often called "veneer theory." But is this idea rooted in historical reality? Is this actually what happens when societies face disasters? Are we always on the cusp of brutality?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This message comes from the podcast, Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy.
0:04.4	ABC News, legal contributor Brian Buckmeyer covers the rise and fall of Diddy, the allegations, and his defense, with real-time updates straight from the courtroom.
0:14.1	Find Bad Rap, wherever you get podcasts.
0:25.6	An old man says to his grandson, There is a fight going on inside me.
0:30.2	It's a terrible fight between two of wolves.
0:35.0	One is evil, angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant and cowardly?
0:39.3	The other is good, peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest and trustworthy.
0:45.3	These two wolves are also fighting within you and inside every other person too.
0:56.0	After a moment, the boy asks, which wolf will win?
0:58.0	The ointman smiles,
1:00.0	the one you feed. What we assume in other people is what we get out of them.
1:14.6	Our view of human nature tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
1:19.6	If we assume that people are fundamentally selfish, then that's how they will behave.
1:25.6	If we assume that people are fundamentally decent,
1:28.6	then maybe we can create a very different kind of society.
1:31.7	This is Rutger Bregman.
1:34.1	I'm a Dutch historian, and I'm the author of the book,
1:37.0	Humankind, A Hopeful History.
1:39.0	But this story doesn't start off hopeful.
1:41.7	There's a very widespread assumption
1:43.8	that human beings are basically
1:46.3	selfish, brutal, barbarian. And this is author Rebecca Solnit. Cowardly, just sort of despicable,
	...

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