When Things Fall Apart

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.7 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Climate change, political unrest, random violence - Western society can often feel like what the filmmaker Warner 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?

Transcript

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0:00.0	An old man says to his grandson,
0:08.4	there is a fight going on inside me.
0:11.0	It's a terrible fight between two wolves.
0:15.4	One is evil, angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant and cowardly.
0:21.8	The other is good, peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest and trustworthy.
0:26.8	These two wolves are also fighting within you and inside every other person too.
0:33.8	After a moment, the boy asks,
0:38.8	which will for win?
0:40.8	The ultimate smiles, the one you feed.
0:45.8	What we assume in other people is what we get out of them.
0:57.8	Our view of human nature tends to be a self-affilling prophecy.
1:01.8	If we assume that people are fundamentally selfish, then that's how they will behave.
1:07.8	If we assume that people are fundamentally decent, then maybe we can create a very different kind of society.
1:13.8	This is Rutger Breggman.
1:15.8	I'm a Dutch historian and I'm the author of the book, Human Kind, a hopeful history.
1:20.8	But this story doesn't start off hopeful.
1:23.8	There's a very widespread assumption that human beings are basically selfish, brutal, barbarian.
1:30.8	And this is author Rebecca Solmit.
1:33.8	Cowardly, just sort of despicable in that civilization is some sort of structural overlay
1:40.8	that keeps us from realizing our true brutal natures.
1:43.8	Preventing is from doing what we would really do if we could do anything we wanted,
1:47.8	which would be rape, loot, pillage, mirage, steel.
	...

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