A talk given on November 9, 2024, for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola
In 1954, William Golding published Lord of the Flies. You probably read it in middle school, but on the off chance you didn’t, it follows a group of school children who crash on a desert island. Alone, they try to set up order and leadership and government to survive, but over the course of the story, that fragile order crumbles into chaos. Violence and anarchy drag them down like gravity.
It’s unavoidable, the book seems to say. We may try to pretend otherwise, but take a good look: This is what humanity is.
Most of us know Lord of the Flies, but did you also know that in 1965, Golding’s nightmare scenario actually happened?
Six boys between 13 and 16 decided to run away from their boarding school in Tonga. Their plan was to “borrow” a fishing boat, then go on an adventure to Fiji, then head back, no harm done. Their plan was going great, until shortly after setting sail, a storm caught them, sending them adrift without sails or a rudder for 8 days until they finally crashed onto the deserted island of ‘Ata.
They were there for fifteen months.
After over a year, a fisherman found them, and as the fisherman approached the island, this is what they saw:
Six boys in perfect health and excellent spirits. No carnage. No bloodshed.
Instead, the boys had established a routine of dividing chores, collecting rainwater, tending a shared garden. They’d set up an exercise routine. They’d made instruments so they could play music. Anytime there was conflict—and there was conflict—they had this established ritual of separating until they could calm down, then coming back together to work through it. At one point, one boy had even broken his leg, and the others nursed him back to health.
It wasn’t Lord of the Flies.
It was Eden.
So, let me ask you this:
Which of these stories is the way things really are, and which is the anomaly?
I know which one I’m more tempted to believe, especially after a week like this—a week that left me angry, then sad, then afraid. It’s no wonder so many of us would be quick to call Lord of the Flies realistic while writing ‘Ata off as a fluke.
In reality, though, what if it’s not the fluke? What if, despite all the evidence to the contrary, we’re not living in a Lord of the Flies world? What if ‘Ata is actually the way things are? If people are inherently good and empathetic—and Lord of the Flies is the fluke? If this week is the fluke? What if we are in a truer and more beautiful than we usually let ourselves believe?
Before I go any further, I know how that sounds.
Bear with me. I promise I’m not one for empty idealism. I want to be realistic. I do. Part of healthy spirituality, though, is learning to check the small stories we think we’re living in against reality—to root ourselves in a story that’s bigger than we are. We use different tools to do this. Prayer. Meditation. Community. Sacred texts. Science. One of the texts that I’ve held as sacred for a while is a book by a Rutger Bregman—a Dutch historian and researcher. It’s called Humankind: A Hopeful History.
In the book, Bregman does these vast sweeps through evolutionary and social history to look at this question and try to sort out a realistic answer: Which story is true? Are we living in a Lord of the Flies world, or the world of the boys of ‘Ata? Putting aside our reactions, which are often skewed towards negativity and confirmation bias, what does it mean to be “realistic” in a moment like this?
This is a question I have to come back to—in moments where I’m tempted to jump off the edge into rage, despair, or cynicism. Bregman’s book has become a touchstone for me.
So, I’d like to explore it for a little while. I’d like to look at a story that may point us towards the existential resilience we need to look this week in the eye, understand it, feel our feelings, and then, as we go, to do something about it.
So, let’s start with Bregman’s first claim, as unlikely as it sounds:
People are good.
In 2007, a group of scientists wanted to study the differences in innate intelligence between humans and chimpanzees. They wanted to try to figure out what humanity’s evolutionary advantage really was, so they devised this series of simple problems and presented them to a group of toddlers and a group of chimps. Surprisingly, they found that at first, chimps and humans did about the same. Humans didn’t pull ahead. More surprisingly, though, they found that when they made the tests harder, the chimps pulled ahead. Quickly. Innate intelligence, it seemed, was not the evolutionary advantage we thought it was.
But then, as they kept going, they found something even more interesting. The chimpanzees differed from the humans in that they tried to work out each puzzle on their own, even when several were working at the same time. The toddlers, however—they got involved with each other. They helped. They learned. When one figured it out, they’d all learn from it and progress together. Soon, with this skill, their scores blew the chimpanzees out of the water.
Humans, unflattering, are about on par with chimps when it comes to natural intelligence. When it comes to working together, though, Bregman calls us “ultra-social learning machines.”
In other words, humans aren’t the apex species on this planet because of our intelligence. Neanderthals even had bigger cranial cavities than we do.
We’re not on top because we’re the strongest, either—neanderthals had us beat there, too.
Where we succeed is in our capacity for connection.
Did you know we’re the only species that can blush? We’re also weird in that we have an unusual amount of whites in our eyes, so we always know where one another are looking. We’re also the only species to have embarrassingly versatile eyebrows, wearing our feelings right on our faces. We have no shells, no claws, and no fangs… We’re not the strongest or most aggressive or even the smartest…
If the goal is survival of the least vulnerable or most aggressive, we are embarrassingly under-equipped.
Our real evolutionary superpower, it turns out, is that we’re evolved for connection. For empathy. For vulnerability. These lead us to learn from and help one another. We may think we’re in a Lord of the Flies, dog-eat-dog kind of world, but if we look at what we’re actually good at, we get a totally different picture.
You know something else that shocked me? Because we’re evolved for empathy and connection, it’s actually remarkably difficult to get humans to hurt each other.
In World War II, S.L.A. Marshall conducted this study on American troops to learn how to make them more effective killing machines. What he found was that of the 16 million Americans who fought in World War II, the number of soldiers to actually ever fire their gun was between 15-25%. Most casualties came from mortars—from attacking at a distance, where we didn’t actually have to see what we were doing. And then, when we are coerced into killing, the result is often a struggle with what’s called “perpetration-induced traumatic stress.”
Humans have evolved for cooperation. We’ve evolved for kindness. It’s what our bodies want to do. So this brings up the obvious question:
If that’s true, then why are we so evil towards one another so much of the time?
The answer, according to Bregman, goes back about 12,000 years.
Bregman writes that millennia ago, when humans were nomads, we used this evolutionary superpower to survive and innovate and grow. We formed groups that were equitable, with no real hierarchical leadership, and members were free to come and go across groups as they wanted. In modern nomadic groups, like the !Kung people of the Kalahari Desert, we see that there is little tolerance for violent, ambitious, or egomaniacal members. Their behavior is always checked before it can get out of hand. We also see this in Bonobos—our closest genetic relatives—closer even than chimpanzees. Sure, now and then when the group needs to address a large task or challenge, leadership may step up, but after, they were quick to step down or risk being pulled down.
About 12,000 years ago, though, something changed.
Humanity made a move from nomadic hunter/gatherers to settled farmers, and Bregman writes that the progression goes something like this:
- An agrarian lifestyle requires that you stay put, which means owning property.
- When there is private property, there’s a need to organize labor and defend that property.
- When you have a structure in need of organization and defense, you need leaders.
- When you have leaders with power, then you have people who want to protect that power—often by force—and so they design systems to do just that.
It’s like an If You Give a Mouse a Cookie of violence.
Long story short, whereas before, it was easy to keep egomaniacal or violent behavior in check, now it’s not so simple. We’ve been conscripted into the service of something else, often in the name of “order” or “security,” and that shift laid the groundwork for inequality and entrenched power structures.
Bregman calls this “the curse of civilization.”
Now, that might not sound like it connects to this question of why good people do terrible things, but it gets more interesting.
Did you know that when you look at the psychological profiles of someone who has done terrible things—suicide bombers or terrorists, for instance—you find their profiles are shockingly ordinary? In interviews with extremists—and even with Nazis after World War II—researchers found that ideology is usually not even close to the primary driving force behind their behavior. Ironically, it’s empathy.
We do things because that’s what other people in our tribe are doing. We want to connect and work together, it’s what we’re hard-wired to do—the more fear or the more intense the need for connection, the more extreme we’re willing to be. Researchers found that ideology like religion or nationalism is usually just a justification—backfilling a reason for behavior we were inclined to do, anyway. Bregman tells one story about a terrorist captured with a copy of “The Koran for Dummies” in his pocket because he knew very little about the radical Islamic ideology he was supposed to be fighting for. I think we see the same thing with Christian nationalism.
So, I say that to get to this:
While the psych profiles of people who do terrible things is surprisingly “normal,” the profiles for people in leadership—the kinds of people most apt to rise to power—are not.
This minority group ranks disproportionately high for psychopathic tendencies such as a severely diminished capacity for empathy, narcissism, a total lack of shame when it comes to just lying or manipulating, willingness to say whatever they have to in order to secure power…
Does any of this sound familiar?
So, back to this question of why, if we’re so good, are we so evil towards one another so much of the time.
The answer is, we’re usually not.
Most of the time, we’re pretty decent towards one another, though negativity and confirmation bias keep us in this story that we’re not. When we are terrible towards one another, though—when we build concentration camps and hold lynchings and take up arms—it’s because our natural capacity for empathy has been tampered with.
It has been manipulated and narrowed by a small group of narcissists with psychopathic tendencies a disproportionate amount of power, who are highly skilled at using myths and half-truths to narrow our empathy to include an us and exclude a them, and we do it for the sole reasons that they tell us to, and our friends are doing it.
In the early sixties, Stanley Milgram at Yale did a study where he put one participant in charge of an electroshock machine and another connected to the machine, and every time the one connected got a question wrong, the one operating would administer a shock. An “authority” in a lab coat would stand behind the one operating the machine, instructing them to increase the voltage each time.
They said it was to measure the effect of negative reinforcement on learning, but in reality, the one receiving the shocks was an actor, and so was the guy in the lab coat. The machine wasn’t real. There were no shocks. The real experiment was to see how much pain a “normal” person would inflict just because an authority told them to.
The answer was a lot.
65% of the participants went all the way up to 450 volts, even with a warning label on the machine telling them not to, and even with the participants screaming, all because the man in the coat told them to. Authority can mess with our hard wiring for empathy.
That statistic I gave earlier about only 15-25% of soldiers in World War II actually firing a gun? In most cases, those 25% only actually fired their weapon because they had an authority over their shoulder, watching, telling them to.
We are naturally empathetic and kind—evolved for cooperation and vulnerability—but those same features that make us great? They can be hijacked and perverted by a select few, all for the sake of gaining and protecting power.
PHOTO CREDIT: Collection of Alexandra Milgram
So, this leads us to the question:
If we are good people being manipulated into acts of evil, then what are we supposed to do about it? Especially in a situation like this, where the manipulators now seem to hold all the cards?
Here’s what Bregman proposes:
If manipulation of those evolutionary instincts got us into this mess, then recovery of those same instincts can get us out.
Near the end of his book, Bregman tells the famous story of December 1914. On Christmas, 1914, in the trenches of the Western Front, British and German troops were facing off in the bitter cold. Soldiers were sleeping in the mud after a day of fighting, and then, out of nowhere, one soldier started singing “Silent Night.” Their voice echoed into the enemy’s trenches, and soon another voice joined, and another… and then everyone on both sides were singing.
Soldiers started shouting Christmas greetings to one another, going back and forth until one person, bravely, climbed out of their trench with a white flag, signaling a temporary ceasefire. Soon, all the soldiers were singing carols, exchanging presents, and playing soccer. They had been fighting enemies, less-than-human, not like us… but the thing is, enemies don’t sing Christmas Carols. We sing Christmas carols.
With only a song, whatever story their leaders had put into their heads about us and them—whatever manipulation they’d used to restrict their empathy to a small tribe of people—short circuited. The Christmas ceasefire lasted two days before troops were called back to their respective trenches, but even then, they had a hard time continuing the fight. How do you shoot at someone who gave you a Christmas present?
When the leadership found out, they were enraged. Both sides took steps to prevent anything like that from happening again, fearing that shows of solidarity like that could undermine the war efforts—which, of course, they could.
We may think violence and selfishness are like gravity, pulling us down, but the real gravity is cooperation, always pulling us back to the center of who we really are.
I first saw this in an episode of Doctor Who and assumed it was just made up for the show because it was so crazy, but it wasn’t. It was real. People call this story a fluke—a “Christmas miracle”—but you know what’s really crazy? The same exact “fluke” also happened during the Spanish Civil War…
and the Boer Wars…
and the American Civil War…
and the Crimean War…
and the Napoleonic Wars…
Hearing this story in 2006, the Defense Minister of Columbia, who had been fighting guerrilla terrorists in the country for fifty years, thought he might risk changing tactics. Instead of relying on violence or going after the enemy’s ideology (which, of course, it’s rarely about), he coordinated a campaign to put up a series of 75ft. Christmas trees all around the jungle. With colored lights, they had messages on them like, “If Christmas can come to the jungle, you can come home. Demobilize. Anything is possible.”
Putting up Christmas trees isn’t a thing enemies do. Putting up Christmas trees is a thing we do. Within a single month, 331 insurgents had laid down their arms and gone home to their families, starting a campaign that kept going in new and innovative ways.
So, if we are good people being manipulated into acts of evil, then what are we supposed to do about it?
We trust our evolutionary superpowers.
We assert our humanity and draw out the humanity in our so-called “enemies.”
We get creative to interrupt the us-and-them stories leaders train us to believe—widening the empathy they narrow.
Enemies don’t sing carols. They don’t put up trees. They don’t ask how my day is going or speak kindly of me. Those are things we do. Not them.
I think this is what the Buddha meant when he said hatred doesn’t cease by hatred, but by love, and what Jesus meant when he said don’t strike back but turn the other cheek. They meant disrupt the stories they try to sell you and give one another a chance to let the gravity of connection, cooperation, and empathy pull us back to the center of who we really are.
Now, please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. I’m not saying that everything is going to be okay. We have done evil things in the past, and we will likely do them again. It doesn’t mean this isn’t a scary time, or the danger isn’t real. What I am saying is that we are not helpless.
I’m saying we don’t live in a world that gravitates towards evil, we live in a world that gravitates towards love, and once we know the true nature of the story we’re living in, then we have the agency to fight back effectively.
At the end of his book, Bregman gives a list of ten suggestions for how to proceed once we see the way things are. I want to close with those, because they are so good.
Ten Rules to Live By if You Want to Keep a Realistic View of the World:
1. When in doubt, assume the best.
Give people the benefit of the doubt that they are inherently empathetic, even if their empathy has been hijacked by manipulative, power-hungry leaders.
2. Think in win-win scenarios.
This isn’t about domination or competition, but collaboration—helping to meet everyone’s needs. That’s what we’re good at.
3. Ask more questions.
As the wise Ted Lasso once said, “Get curious, not judgmental.”
4. Temper your empathy, train your compassion.
Don’t get sucked in to other people’s stories, good or bad. Learn to cultivate compassion while keeping boundaries.
5. Try to understand the other, even if you don’t get where they’re coming from.
The Buddha said there are not “good” or “bad” people, just people trying to get what they need with various levels of skillfulness and unskillfulness. If you engage on the level of ideology, you lose, because it’s about connection. Ideology is often just justification to do what we were going to do anyway to do right by our “tribe.”
6. Love your own as others love their own.
Love those who are close to you, and remember that your enemies have those they love, too.
7. AVOID THE NEWS.
News sources and social media algorithms skew towards the worst parts of who we are—sparking outrage to monetize our attention. Bregman advises us to watch our diet of news, sticking to in-depth feature writing rather than the junk food of push notifications and headlines. Careful with the news.
8. Don’t punch Nazis.
Okay, this one has a specific story to it, so, quick side trail:
There’s this town in Germany where neo-Nazis often come for a pilgrimage. The town hates it, and there are occasional videos of townspeople throwing punches at the Nazi. One year, though, the town realized that the punching wasn’t working; the Nazis kept coming, and so they got creative. There was an upcoming Nazi march scheduled, and rather than try to stop it, they turned it into a charity walk.
For every meter the Nazis marched, they’d donate 10 euros to a charity dedicated to helping people get out of extremist groups.
When the Nazis showed up, they found their path marked off and lined with cheering supporters, thanking them for their participation in the fundraiser. It disarmed the violence and raised over 20,000 euros.
In subsequent weeks, efforts like this caused the charity’s phone calls to spike 300%. Enemies don’t do charities.
Don’t be an enemy.
Don’t punch Nazis.
9. Don’t be ashamed to do good.
Public acts of justice are demonstrably contagious.
Christmas 1914, someone had to be the first to sing.
And finally,
10. Be realistic.
Realism is not cynicism, and it’s not empty idealism. Realism sees the actual story we’re living in—both the dangers and the true nature of what humans have evolved to be—and live accordingly.
And that’s it.
I don’t know about you, but after this week, this is what I needed: to remember the story I’m really living in. To remember that it’s okay not to give up on love and that humans are hard-wired for empathy and cooperation. It’s okay to be afraid. It’s okay to be angry. And when fear and anger threaten to bleed into despair and cynicism, this is the story I need.
I need a story in which I remember that the most practical and realistic way forward, has always been, and continues to be love.
Amen.