Rutger Bregman, the young Dutch thinker, is not to be messed with. As the Guardian wrote, he became an "online sensation at Davos last year when he turned on his audience, condemning the absurdity of the rich taking 1,500 private jets to hear David Attenborough warn of the climate crisis and, above all, their failure to pay their taxes or even to mention the word. He said he felt as if he were “at a firefighters’ conference and no one’s allowed to speak about water." We talked about his new book, Humankind: A hopeful history" to kick off our quarter on what it means to be human. Rutger takes on the eternal question of whether humans are by nature selfish, violent, tribal creatures...or are we something else entirely. I didn't agree with all of his book, but I enjoyed reading it immensely. It was thought-provoking and counter-cultural at a time when too many thinkers fit neatly into political stereotypes. Our conversation did not disappoint.
Rutger Bregman, the young Dutch thinker, is not to be messed with. Bregman, a young Dutch thinker, is not to be messed with. As the Guardian wrote, he became an “online sensation at Davos last year when he turned on his audience, condemning the absurdity of the rich taking 1,500 private jets to hear David Attenborough warn of the climate crisis and, above all, their failure to pay their taxes (or even to mention the word). He felt as if he were “at a firefighters’ conference and no one’s allowed to speak about water,” he said.
We talked about his new book, which examines what it means to be human. Bregman takes on the eternal question of whether humans are by nature selfish, violent, tribal creatures … or something else entirely. I didn’t agree with everything he wrote, but I immensely enjoyed the book: It was thought-provoking and counter-cultural at a time when too many thinkers fit neatly into political stereotypes. Our resulting conversation did not disappoint.