E JE BRU NDIN | OPINION
D O N ’ T READ THE NEWS January 2021 WHAT IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD TODAY? WHERE HAVE WE BEEN, WHERE ARE WE, AND WHERE ARE WE GOING? WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, FAMINE, CLIMATE CRISIS, ASTEROIDS HITTING THE EARTH, FUTURE PANDEMICS, ARMS RACES, OVERCROWDED REFUGEE CAMPS, SUPERVOLCANOES, FASCISM AND ALTERNATIVE FACTS ARE ONLY A FEW OF THE NUMEROUS PROBLEMS THAT HUMANITY FACES. IT CAN GET OVERWHELMING WHEN TRYING TO PROCESS ALL OF THIS. HOWEVER, THE NEWS TENDS TO PRIORITIZE WAR OVER REALITY—WHEN, IN FACT, HUMANS ARE DOING PRETTY WELL.
OPINION BY Eje Brundin
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s a student of Peace and Conflict Studies at Lund University, I see patterns of polarization, violence, and the breakdown of states everywhere I look. Democracy is in global decline, rape is used as a weapon of war, nuclear arms deals are failing and social media is polarizing us into frightening bubbles of self-righteous, aggravating rhetoric. The problems are huge and complex, and affect people and families all over the world. Being hopeful is difficult, but let me help. When we see war and cruelty, there are deep patterns of cooperation that we tend to overlook. We read about war, murders, environmental degradation, and then think that
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human nature is greedy, selfish and cruel. However, when we say that the winners write the history books, we forget what made the writer a winner: human cooperation. You have a war? That is two or more sides, each one cooperating to win over the other. You have a nuclear bomb? It was created by scientists that cooperated through sharing knowledge. You have THE PERSPECTIVE in your hand? I am happy to say that we cooperated to get this delivered to you. Human cooperation is everywhere and we take it for granted. War and nuclear bombs are horrific things, but where cooperation has created death and destruction it is also the solution. Cooperation is what makes humans unique. In the widely read novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the stranded boys slowly descend into chaos and
are described to hold a beastlike quality in their human core. Rutger Bregman, a Dutch historian, found the real-life example of Lord of the Flies. It turns out six boys stranded on an island in Tonga constructively cooperated to survive for more than a year. One even broke a leg, and the others compensated to let their friend heal. Lord of the Flies is a good novel, but that’s all it is. In reality, we usually do better. We are the only species on the planet that can cooperate in large numbers with other unknown humans. This is an incredible advantage we have over other animals. Animals like wolves or monkeys can only cooperate in small numbers and not outside their circle or kin. Put ten million chimpanzees in Paris and you get chaos, but in the same space ten million humans manage to cooperate and co-exist. Human reality tends to lean toward cooperation and
