Humankind by Rutger Bergman
6 out of 10It appears as though we have domesticated ourselves. What dogs are to wolves, we are to our wild ancestors. This is not a new revelation. Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau philosophized about the nature of man centuries ago.
It is up for debate (or scientific discovery) as to when humans adopted a "survival of the friendliest" strategy. And what are the consequences? Perhaps intelligence is a serendipitous byproduct. How has our nature changed since the dawn of agriculture? Perhaps there is a more obvious in-group/out-group dynamic in which we permit cruelty towards outsiders.
Rutger Bergman hypothesizes that people are innately kind. Even on a battlefield, it is common for soldiers to avoid excessive killing. TBH, his cherry-picked examples are not very convincing. It makes more sense to say that brains are malleable and that the population is large enough to show a lot of variance.