Managed Individualism
For the past three decades, scientists and popularizers have tried to tell us that we and all other animals are inherently selfish, and that the evolution of morality is an almost impossible affair, since nature cannot provide the caring for others needed for morality. I call this “Veneer Theory,” since it assumes that human morality and kindness is just a thin veneer over an otherwise nasty human nature. (Frans de Waal, 2011)
Perceptions Matter, a landmark report by the Common Cause Foundation highlighted how powerful ‘Veneer Theory’ has become. They showed two things, firstly: the majority of people aren’t in fact ‘inherently selfish’; they are, by and large, more concerned with being benevolent and they care about nature, justice and equality. Secondly, however, they also showed that the majority of us subscribe to something like Veneer Theory — we assume that our fellow human beings are inherently selfish, individualistic, obsessed with things like image and status.
The key finding, however, is the first one, as Rutger Bregman argues in his new book: ‘Most people, deep down, are decent.’ It’s possible therefore to flip Veneer Theory on its head and argue that ‘human selfishness and individualism is just a thin veneer over an otherwise moral and kind human nature.’ This is what de Waal, Bregman, Common Cause Foundation and many others, from many different disciplines, are helping us to see.
***Just to be clear, most of us ‘look after number one’ to some extent; we have to, and we can be prone to bouts of selfishness. Furthermore, there are genuine psychopaths out there who take selfishness to extreme levels. But for the majority of us, usually, once we’ve satisfied our basic physical and emotional needs, we are quite quickly drawn to cooperation, friendship, justice, peace, fairness and equality. Sadly though, as Perceptions Matter shows, we tend to think this not to be case; we tend to think that other people first try to satisfy their basic needs and then, when they have, they spend the rest of their time trying to satisfy their wants.***
Belief in Veneer Theory — the original not flipped version — goes some way, I think, to explaining why we perceive our fellow humans to be individualistic, when deep down, most of us aren’t. If you believe that ‘society’ is a constant struggle to keep a lid on an underlying ‘nasty human nature’, it shapes the way you relate to your fellow humans at both micro and macro levels.
At the micro level, when you assume people are individualistic, you tend to treat them that way; and when you do, they’re more likely to act individualistically. They’re also more likely to treat you as individualistic too, it’s a vicious cycle. For example, if I think that you are not the sort of person who would willingly share a packet crisps; I might decide not to share my packet of crisps with you. Then, a week later, when you’ve got the crisps, you’ll remember that I didn’t share my crisps with you and you’ll keep your crisps to yourself.
What’s worse, values are like muscles — the more you exercise them, they stronger they get. If we constantly reinforce the idea that image, status, power and the possession of crisps are important, we lead people into thinking that these things are important (i.e. really really important). Which provokes an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance for them as their deeply held selfless values clash with the value they’re being told to place of these more selfish goals. This can lead them into existential crisis territory; I know, I’ve been there — your instincts are telling you to not obsess over image, status and crisps, because other things are way more important, but all around you are messages telling you that ‘successful, sexy, popular, lovable people drive fast cars, wear designer clothes and eat delicious crisps.’
But it is at the macro scale that things are most interesting. At a macro scale, as a society, if we subscribe to Veneer Theory, we condemn ourselves to trying to manage individualism, just to prevent it from getting out of control. Once we’re in this paradigm of assuming individualism is the default, we play off people’s individualism to get things done. Sometimes, yes, this is done for selfish money-making reasons (you might have seen EE’s latest ‘Get EE or get network envy’ advertising campaign), but this is also done to make us behave ‘well’ — witness the many examples of environmentalists appealing to our concerns about status or image or wealth to try and incentivise us to recycle, volunteer, ride bicycles, buy organic, or switch to an electric vehicle.
These appeals to our self-interest values are everywhere; it is little wonder we assume that so many of our fellow humans are selfish — that idea is being reinforced all the time.
So, when you are designing a campaign and you are of the belief that most people are inherently selfish, you are likely to be thinking (probably subconsciously): ‘well, I wish people weren’t so selfish, but they are, so we just need to work with what we’ve got’. Ad campaigns, behaviour change programmes, teaching, governing and so on (anything that is a ‘one-to-many’ intervention), becomes a balancing act of appealing to self-interest values just enough to get the result you’re after, but not too much, because we don’t want to go too far down that road lest we smash through the thin veneer and unleash the ‘nasty human nature’ that we — wrongly — assume lies beneath.
This is what I mean by ‘managed individualism’, this is the society I think we live in. And for me, it is a slightly bonkers way to live.
Why? Because it is built on an outdated and now heavily debunked paradigm about human nature. Managing individualism shouldn’t be the priority, because our individualism isn’t the sum total of who we are; we’re way more cooperative than selfish. Managing individualism is akin to reinforcing its hold on prevailing values and attitudes and behaviours, the more we exercise those individualistic values the stronger they become and the more individualistic society becomes; i.e. there is less crisp sharing.
If we were to listen to the findings of the hundreds of studies that show that what is really below the thin veneer is a human nature characterised by compassion, kindness and cooperation, things could be a lot different.
At both micro and macro levels, we could be making appeals to compassionate values instead of individualistic values. Which could then unlock a more compassionate society where our natural propensity for cooperation is allowed to flourish.
Welfare systems would look different — maybe something like Hilary Cottam lays out in her new ‘Welfare 5.0’ paper. Economic systems would look different — maybe something like Jason Hickel describes in Less is More. Environmentalism would look different, it would apply the recommendations made by Common Cause. Government would look different — maybe something of the Leaderless Revolution Carne Ross explores would come to the fore. We wouldn’t push up against the Moral Limits of Markets that Michael Sandel identifies quite so much.
Sure, things would not be perfect, there would still be some truly bad eggs, but we’d come to realise, like our hunter-gatherer ancestors did, that they are a tiny minority, who can be easily managed. Life would look different. Love would look different. And we’d share our crisps more often.
What is needed is nothing less than a paradigm shift in how we think about human nature. It looks to me like it is underway, these are two signs I’ve seen already this week:
The stories coming out of the UK climate assembly are a great sign — the willingness to change and to make ‘sacrifices’ was clear. More than anything it showed that people care and want action to be taken.
Business leaders are recognising that young people coming into the workforce want to work for companies that follow B Corps principles, that is another great sign.
I’ll end with a third, the Big Issue commissioned Rutger Bregman to be its editor this week; a great sign in itself. Here is an observation he made in his guest editorial, it points to where things may be heading:
If you were young in the 1990s, it was avant-garde to be cynical and nihilistic. Irony was cool, values were passé. If you’re young now, it’s avant-garde to protest and occupy, to engage and stay true to your values. Activism is the new realism.
Staying true to your values is no longer passé, it is avant-garde. We should be doing everything we can to nurture this, because it is contagious — the more we see people being true to their values, the more it encourages us to be true to our values. Actions speak louder than words, kindness rubs off and this is how the paradigm shift in how we think about human nature will happen.
So lets focus less attention on the crass, but few, examples of individualism and more on the millions of examples of compassion and cooperation. Go forth and share stories of what we’re really like; share stories of our collective human kindness. And more importantly, go and be those stories.
Banner image by Clara Don, via Creative Commons.
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