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An old man says to his grandson, There is a fight going on inside me.

It's a terrible fight between two of wolves.

One is evil, angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant and cowardly.

The other is good, peaceful, loving, greedy, jealous, arrogant and cowardly.

The other is good, peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest and trustworthy.

These two wolves are also fighting within you and inside every other person too.

After a moment, the boy asks, which wolf will win?

The Altman smiles, the one you feed.

What we assume in other people is what we get out of them. Our view of human nature tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If we assume that people are fundamentally selfish, then that's how they will behave.

If we assume that people are fundamentally decent, then maybe we can create a very different kind of society.

This is Rutger Bregman.

I'm a Dutch historian, and I'm the author of the book, Humankind, A Hopeful History.

But this story doesn't start off hopeful.

There's a very widespread assumption that human beings are basically selfish, brutal, barbarian.

And this is author Rebecca Solnit.

Cowardly, just sort of despicable, and that civilization is some sort of structural overlay that

keeps us from realizing our true brutal natures, preventing us from doing what we would really do

if we could do anything we wanted, which would be rape, loot, pillage, maraud, steel.

...