Skip to content

Humans Get Along More Often Than We Give Ourselves Credit For

There are seven billion of us now and contrary to the evening news we all get along, kind of.
Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

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.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

Related
The hospital where Rainn Wilson’s wife and son nearly died became his own personal holy site. There, he discovered that the sacred can exist in places we least expect it. During his talk at A Night of Awe and Wonder, he explained how the awe we feel in moments of courage and love is moral beauty — and following it might be the start of our spiritual revolution.
13 min
with

Up Next