Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
What a marvellous book! A powerful refutation of one of the most deeply entrenched and mistaken assumptions built into our taken-for-granted world view, and thus leading to many wrong-headed practices.
Our biology equips us to understand not only what is, but also what could and what should be. We are ethical creatures; we are nature debating, rationalizing, and thinking with itself.
Are we wrong to believe that competitiveness must and always will be the central animating principle of human action? Media studies scholar Michael Karlberg thinks so. In fact, he believes that another animating principle, mutualism, is both central to human interaction and necessary to aid human society in meeting the myriad challenges it faces regarding climate change, inequality, governance, education and many other issues.
Key to the conceptual confidence trick are assumptions about what people in general are like. It is all based on an implicit modelling of human beings. Certain types of behaviour (the type that allows economists to model people and markets) are called “rational”.
Speaking of Creation encourages humility, reminding us of humans’ relatively small, albeit disproportionately destructive, place in that larger world.
With the emergence of a global civilization, we need to move beyond the “us and them” mentality that lends itself to so much conflict, violence, and self-destruction. An absolutely essential ingredient for this is empathy. Empathy is the act of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, as the vernacular goes.
