If I were to tell you that humans are by nature a pretty nasty bunch, all selfish and uncaring, only out for what they can get at the expense of others, not interested in collaborative effort except when it benefits them, and likewise loving and helpful only when they have some ulterior motive of personal advantage, you'd think I was maligning our fellow beings, right?
You wouldn't?! Well, I hope you would. I hope you'd know that there are better things that can be said for humankind. OK, then, so what if I were to switch it round and say that I was only kidding; in fact, humans are by nature really cool, full of altruism and concern for others of their kind, sharing and co-operative, with self-interest a mere phantasm and far-reaching empathy the rule? You'd say, 'Yes, that's the one, Norm. Thanks for putting us on the right track.'
Well, if you did, you'd be just as deluded as if you'd plumped for the 'nasty bunch' version. Anyone who has failed by this late date in the long march of humankind to register that there are two sides to the story of human nature needs to adjust his or her specs. Jeremy Rifkin may be one who needs to do that:
The new understanding goes hand-in-hand with discoveries in evolutionary biology, neuro-cognitive science and child development that reveal that human beings are biologically predisposed to be empathic. Our core nature is shown not to be rational, detached, acquisitive, aggressive and narcissistic, as Enlightenment philosophers claimed, but affectionate, highly social, co-operative and interdependent. Homo sapiens is giving way to homo empathicus.
Fresh ideas about human nature throw into doubt many of the core assumptions of classical economic theory. Adam Smith argued that human nature inclined individuals to pursue self-interest in the market. Echoing Smith's contention, Garrett Hardin wrote a celebrated essay more than 40 years ago entitled "The Tragedy of the Commons". He suggested that co-operation in shared ventures inevitably failed because of the selfish human drives that invariably surfaced.
If this is universally true, how do we explain hundreds of millions of young people sharing creativity and knowledge in collaborative spaces such as Wikipedia and Linux? The millennial generation is celebrating the global commons every day, apparently unmindful of Hardin's warning. For millennials, the notion of collaborating to advance the collective interest in networks often trumps "going it alone" in markets.
And so on, through to 'a vast extension in empathic consciousness'.
Not to forget the dark side, hey.