Humans Get Along More Often Than We Give Ourselves Credit For

Humans have a bunch of things that we are pretty unified about.  We don’t like killing.  We don’t like stealing.  There are definite things in the area of disgust and so forth that everybody seems to react to. It’s sort of built into us and so when you think about it there are seven billion of us now and contrary to the evening news we all get along, kind of.

That’s got to be because we have a commerce, a natural commerce for understanding social relationships.  Sure there are troublemakers.  Sure there are horrible people. If it’s even one or two or three percent of the whole population that is a lot of people that can make trouble for other people.

But the vast majority seem to be operating on pretty much a common set of assumptions in many moral judgments. 

In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

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