The Better Angels of Our Nature

Don't doubt people. Demand better leaders.

On December 20th, I sent a post that included a plea to help me find Broadcast Over Britain, a book published in 1924 by the legendary founder of the BBC, John Reith. I need the book for the history of technology I am now writing but copies are rare in libraries and it’s a collector’s item that costs a fortune in used book markets. So I asked readers for help.

To my astonishment, I received several offers to simply buy the book for me. There are causes considerably worthier than my work, so I declined. Others offered suggestions for searches. Some checked libraries and found copies. A retired professor at the University of Wisconsin told me the book was in the collection of the U of W’s library, so I emailed a librarian — on a Saturday before Christmas, please note — who instantly emailed back that she would find the book and copy it for me when she’s next in the library.

This is important for me but, in the grand scheme, and me aside, this is a very small story. But it’s also an entirely typical story.

The news may be full of people doing awful things to one another, but that’s a grossly distorted reflection of human activity. “Man Helps Elderly Woman Pick Up Dropped Groceries” will never appear in headlines but you can be sure it happens every day. Ditto for “Strangers Answer Man’s Call For Assistance Locating Rare Book.”

I’ve been a journalist of some sort or other for almost thirty years. I’ve worked in dozens of countries, in all sorts of settings, on subjects ranging from talking to torture, palaces to prisons. The one constant is that I cannot do my job without — as Blanche Dubois says in A Streetcar Named Desire — depending on the kindness of strangers. Blanche was delusional, if you remember. I’m not. When I ask strangers for help, most help as best they can. I am enormously grateful for that.

A heartfelt thank you, and Merry Christmas, to everyone who responded to my latest request.

And thank you from this Canadian to the staggeringly long list of people, around the world, who have done so much for me over the decades.

Now, if you’re thinking I must be an usually persuasive person, or perhaps I’m endowed with irresistible puppy-dog eyes, I assure you neither is true. Ask any journalist who has been around the block a few times. We all owe whatever we have accomplished to helpful strangers.

Because being helpful is an expression of our fundamental human nature.

We are social animals. People want to connect with people. People want to be helpful. We enjoy it. Lots of us revel in it. Being helpful to others gives us a sense of belonging and purpose. At its most profound, that feeling can bestow a sense of satisfaction with life neither money nor physical pleasure ever can.

I realize I am dangerously close to Hallmark sentiment here, but this is more than gush. It’s science. We know what makes people happy, and what doesn’t, and what works best is doing good things for others.

Which makes perfect evolutionary sense. Relative to other large animals, humans are slow and weak. Much as we might like to credit our big brains for survival, a brilliant human living alone 50,000 years ago may have figured out to how to craft a sharp spear, but what would that have made him? A slow and weak animal with a pointy stick. Lion food, in other words. Intelligence is not remotely enough to explain why our species survived and thrived to such an extent that there are now eight billion of us. What truly set us apart is our genius for cooperation. And a hardwired desire to constructively work with others — capped off by the sheer pleasure we get from it — is the driving force of that genius.

The obvious retort of the misanthrope is to hold up a thick volume of history and grin malevolently. Look at that record of cruelty! Humans have been doing horrible things to other humans forever. Surely that record suggests we are precisely the opposite of people-pleasing pro-social animals.

But that is to misunderstand what it means to be cooperative.

The Amish societies are highly cooperative. So are Mormon communities. And Israeli kibbutzes. But so, too, was the vast and complex network of people that delivered the Holocaust.

Cooperation is an instinct, but it can be bent toward radically different ends. Farmers can get together and raise a barn; or they can get together and lynch a man. Same pro-social nature. Radically different ends.

This is what makes leaders — meaning anyone in a position to shape a collective’s culture and goals — so important. Leaders can appeal to the “better angels of our nature,” to use the phrase of a wise and good leader, and direct our wonderfully constructive nature toward goals that elevate humanity. Or they can promote fear, hate, and division, and get us to do the sorts of things that cause future generations to look back with shame.

Democracy is in danger as 2025 draws to a close, but those of us who still have a voice in selecting our leaders can use it to drive back the gathering darkness. That will require a great deal of cooperation, but history shows we are more than up to the task. And if we succeed, nothing we do in life will be more helpful, to more people. To contribute to such a cause, however you can, is to know your life matters.

I recently came across an essay by George Boas published September, 1934 in Harper’s. The title caught my eye. It is “A Defense of Democracy.”

This is the opening:

To attempt a defense of democracy these days is a little like defending paganism in 313 or the divine right of kings in 1793. It is taken for granted that democracy is bad and that it is dying.

We’ve been in worse times and made it through simply because good people saw the task and worked together to accomplish it. And felt a deep satisfaction when they finally succeeded.

Let’s get to it in 2026.