THE GREATEST LIE EVER TOLD: Human Nature is Evil

And Why this is So Important to Understand

I am repeatedly confronted with the claim that human nature is evil. I mean, just have a look around! Look at the wars, the greed, the suffering, the hate, the ignorance. We are beings of pure selfishness: people are only out to benefit themselves and don’t care about anyone else around them. Many people, including myself for the longest of times, believed that coming to any other conclusion is the fruit of naivete or ignorance, thereby cementing this conclusion as the only rational and logical choice to come to.

But I’ve come to believe that the idea of human nature as essentially bad, evil, or selfish is not only false but deeply, maliciously harmful.

And I want to explain why this is so, why it’s so important to correct this malignant misunderstanding, and what it even means to say that “human nature is good.”

Let’s start with the latter.

Human nature is good means that it’s essentially cooperative or altruistic; people have a basic disposition to want to do good in the world, they desire peace and bounty and joy naturally, they want to help others, they want to turn the world into a paradise, and they want everyone to be happy.

Now, yes, it’s true, humans are capable of the most appalling acts of cruelty and hatred and murder and genocide; I’m not denying these occur, since it would be naïve to do so. But I’ll be making the case that these are reactions to fear, trauma, scarcity, and power systems, distortions of something more primary: our deep, evolved tendency toward love, cooperation, and empathy.

People are manipulated into hate.

Let’s look at some evidence.

Anecdotal Evidence

“What is it that the child has to teach? The child naively believes that everything should be fair and everyone should be honest, that only good should prevail, that everybody should have what they want and there should be no pain and sadness. The child believes the world should be perfect and is outraged to discover it is not. And the child is right.”

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman

Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, in Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, describes an experiment where a one-year-old is watching a puppet show with three characters. “The puppet in the middle rolled a ball to the puppet on the right, who passed it right back to him. It then rolled the ball to the puppet on the left, who ran away with it. At the end of the show, the “nice” puppet and the “naughty” puppet were brought down from the stage and set before the boy. A treat was placed in front of each of them, and the boy was invited to take one of the treats away. As predicted, and like most toddlers in this experiment, he took it from the ‘naughty’ one – the one who had run away with the ball. But this wasn’t enough. The boy then leaned over and smacked this puppet on the head.”

Does this show that we’re born “good”? Not according to Bloom, who states that what this experiment, and others that he trawls through in the book, shows that we’re born with an evolved propensity to moral judgment. In other words, “certain moral foundations are not acquired through learning. They do not come from mother’s knee, or from school or church; they are instead products of biological evolution.” That these foundations exist doesn’t automatically make us “good”. As Bloom goes on to write: “But we possess ugly instincts as well, and these can metastasize into evil.”

This doesn’t invalidate my initial point that we are innately good; it merely goes to show that there are certain ethical impulses within us that are innate, in the same way that the development of five fingers on each hand is innate.

Rutger Bregman wrote a brilliant book called ‘Humankind’ that explores this idea that humanity is not selfish or cruel but, rather, actually very kindhearted. He argues that humans are, essentially, good.

Bregman takes aim at several events in history that have come to define this dog-eat-dog ethic that we take for granted, starting with the Stanford Prison Experiment, which is another lie that we’ve come to believe. A brief recap: the experiment placed volunteers into a prison, with some selected to be "guards" and others selected to be “prisoners”. The “guards” were instructed to prevent prisoners from escaping. Over the course of five days, psychological abuse of the prisoners by the "guards" became increasingly brutal, forcing Philip Zimbardo, the lead researcher, to end the experiment on the sixth day. We’re told that this shows us unequivocally that when given power, ordinary people become tyrannical and cruel.

What actually happened, according to Bregman, was not at all what was claimed. The participants were coached and pressured by Zimbardo to behave in sadistic ways and in private interviews, several guards admitted they were acting, trying to live up to the role Zimbardo had described. Far from being a spontaneous collapse of empathy, the cruelty was scripted, with one guard later admitting he modeled his behavior on a sadistic prison warden he saw in a movie. Further, Zimbardo wrote the conclusions of the experiment up before it had even begun.

Humans don’t naturally turn to evil when given power. They’re highly suggestible and will often try to fit into the roles society gives them. The experiment actually reflects the power of ideology and authority, not innate cruelty.

In another example, Bregman points to a real Lord of the Flies scenario that actually occurred. In the fiction book Lord of the Flies, a group of schoolboys stranded on a desert island descend into savagery and violence, killing each other in a frenzy of tribalism.

In 1965, six boys from Tonga, aged between 13 and 16, ran away from their Catholic boarding school and were stranded on a remote island called Ata for over a year. The boys formed a cooperative community, setting up a garden, catching rainwater, building a gym, and creating a schedule for chores and watch duties. They set up a rule: if there was an argument, they would separate for a few hours and then reconcile. One boy broke his leg, and the others cared for him for months until he healed. And when they were finally rescued, they were in good physical and mental health, and the rescuing captain was amazed by their cooperation.

Even in extreme isolation and hardship, children spontaneously cooperated, cared for each other, and built community. Human instinct isn’t toward domination or savagery but toward connection and mutual aid.¹

Bregman tackles another assumption: the popular belief states war is hell because humans are inherently violent and, once unleashed, ordinary people become brutal killers.

In December 1914, during World War I, British and German soldiers along the Western Front independently agreed to a temporary ceasefire on Christmas Eve. “We were conversing as if we had known each other for years,” [John Ferguson of the Scottish Regiment stationed just north of the Belgian town of Ploegsteert] wrote. “What a sight – little groups of Germans and British extending almost the length of our front! Out of darkness we could hear laughter and see lighted matches. […] Here we were laughing and chatting to men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill!”

“Gifts are exchanged. The British offer chocolate, tea, and puddings; the Germans share cigars, sauerkraut, and schnapps. They crack jokes and take group photographs as though it’s a big happy reunion. More than one game of football is played, using helmets for goalposts. One match goes 3-2 to the Germans, another to the English, 4-1.”

The ceasefire lasted several days in some sectors; this wasn’t an isolated case but was widespread. “Fully two-thirds of the British front line ceased fighting that Christmas. (…) All told, more than a hundred thousand soldiers laid down their arms.” The officers in charge were alarmed by this spontaneous comradery and quickly rotated troops, issuing orders to resume fighting, quickly shutting down the love.

Most soldiers don’t want to kill. Warfare often depends on intense dehumanization and discipline to override natural reluctance to harm others. When left to themselves, even in the middle of war, people often choose peace.

Most soldiers are forced to kill.

Evolutionary Cooperation

And this goodness isn’t just a cultural artifact or the result of human society, but it runs far deeper. Goodness, which we can usefully substitute with “cooperation” in this context is, in fact, widespread throughout the natural world.

It’s an unfortunate legacy of the Victorian era to think of nature as governed solely by violence and ruthless competition. Tennyson famously described nature as “red in tooth and claw,” while Herbert Spencer’s interpretation of Darwin’s theory (he was the first to coin the term: “survival of the fittest”) fueled a popular image of nature as a brutal, zero-sum struggle. Thomas Hobbes, whom we shall meet soon, claimed that life in the state of nature was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

But this portrayal is profoundly misleading.

Yes, nature has its horrors. Parasitoid wasps lay eggs inside other insects, their larvae devouring the host alive. Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, a parasitic fungus, hijacks the bodies of ants to further its life cycle. Lions do indeed eat baby impalas. But these disturbing examples are not the full story. To treat them as representative of nature as a whole is negligent.

As the anarchist and evolutionary theorist Peter Kropotkin argued in his 1902 book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, cooperation, not competition, is the primary driver of survival for many species. “Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle,” he wrote. Kropotkin emphasized that animals which cooperate, such as wolves hunting in packs, birds warning each other of danger, and ants building colonies, fare much better than those that live solitary, combative lives. He applied this insight to human society as well, suggesting that mutual aid is deeply embedded in both our biological and cultural evolution, and that the idea of a “brutish” human nature is more a political distortion than a biological truth.

Modern science continues to confirm this view. Evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson explains it succinctly: “Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.” This elegant formulation highlights an important paradox: within a group, selfish behavior might provide short-term advantages but over time, it’s the cooperative groups that persist, grow, and pass on their values. Human societies, he argues, have developed norms, religions, institutions, and moral systems precisely because these mechanisms promote internal cooperation and group cohesion, which are essential for long-term survival.

Brian Hare, a cognitive neuroscientist who studies bonobos, dogs, and human evolution, along with Vanessa Woods, a science writer and journalist, authored the book Survival of the Friendliest, which makes the case that: “It was friendliness—not aggression—that drove the success of our species.” Their central argument is that humans evolved to be ultra-social, and that our cognitive abilities, especially theory of mind, empathy, and communication, are built on a foundation of cooperation. Domesticated animals like dogs evolved friendliness traits in much the same way. Hare points out that selection for friendliness (what he calls “self-domestication”) reshaped the human brain and behavior, making us better at working together, sharing, and building communities. Importantly, the book debunks the myth of “man the killer ape” and shows that prosocial traits were not accidental—they were crucial adaptations for survival.

Eric Liu, a civic educator and founder of Citizen University, focuses more on the societal and philosophical implications of cooperation. His key idea is this: “True self-interest is mutual interest.” This simple but profound statement reframes the idea of “selfishness.” Instead of thinking in zero-sum terms (my gain is your loss), Liu argues that long-term, sustainable flourishing only happens when people recognize their fates are intertwined. Cooperation is pragmatic and realistic; it accounts for what we can readily perceive of the evolutionary trajectory of life, as argued by social psychologist Geert Hofstede too, who observed that “the irreversible success of groups is a constant in the evolution of life on Earth.”

Evolutionary theorist Martin Nowak goes so far as to say, “Cooperation is the architect of complexity in the biological world,” echoed in the work of researchers like Jeremy Lent (The Patterning Instinct), Peter Turchin (Ultrasociety), Nicola Raihani (The Social Instinct), and Robert Wright (Nonzero) who all arrive at similar conclusions: cooperation is the foundation of life’s greatest achievements.

A very important final point. It would be remiss to say that competition plays no part whatsoever in the grand complexification of life. To make that claim would be to ignore a large part of the puzzle since cooperation occurs in order to compete at higher and higher levels. Competition and cooperation are thus the universal yin and yang that require one another; you cannot have one without the other. It’s just that competition serves cooperation, not the other way around. Competition is the means through which we achieve greater cooperation.

Why “We are Neither Good Nor Evil” is Also Wrong

There will be those who say that human nature is neither good nor evil, that we are merely reacting to externally imposed conditions and that it’s the circumstances that make us good or evil. In other words, human nature isn’t good or bad, since good and bad don’t even apply in this particular context. These are merely human constructs applied to a world where there’s no such thing as good and evil. A virus isn’t evil; it’s only evil relative to the suffering that it may cause a living organism.

There is some truth in this view, I will concede, as it is clear (given the examples I’ve provided above) that external circumstances play a role in shaping who we are and become and, further, good and evil seem to be relative depending on the species, or the culture, or the individual.

However, ultimately, this view is empty because it fails to take into account the nature of existence itself. We are reflections of the Whole, the All, God, Allah, Brahman, the Godhead, whatever name you prefer. And to say that we are neither good nor evil is to imply, however subtly, that the All is likewise morally neutral since we “popped” out of the universe.

But that’s simply not true.

In fact, it couldn’t be further from the truth. Ultimate reality is pure goodness, pure love, a state of being that we are all, consciously or unconsciously, drawn toward. To claim that human nature is morally neutral is, knowingly or not, to deny the fundamental goodness of God for we are made in the image of the Whole, the All. And to forget that is no small error. It is to mistake our true nature, and in doing so, to drift from the source of meaning itself.

I understand why atheists may dismiss this argument; without a lived or intuitive understanding of God, it may sound abstract or unconvincing. But that doesn't make it any less true.

Here’s the deeper issue: Even though we are reflections of the universe’s ultimate love, we are constantly being taught to hate ourselves and to doubt our natural inclination toward love, empathy, and cooperation.

How? You may ask. Through that great deceiver of the masses known as Hollywood.

The Media

Take the Matrix, one of the most famous films ever made. The entire movie (the first one) is a condensed version of the universal metapattern which I will explain in another article (the pattern that governs every process in existence.) In it, there’s a famous scene where Agent Smith confronts Morpheus, telling him that: “Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure.” It’s one of the most well-known examples of a recurring motif in film and television: the idea that humanity is a destructive force, likened to a virus or a parasite. Mind you, even when such sentiments are voiced by archetypal villains as in the above case, many people seem to agree with them!

This theme also appears in Stranger Things, where Vecna tells Eleven that humanity is fundamentally broken, violent, and beyond saving. “You see, humans are a unique type of pest, multiplying and poisoning our world all while enforcing a structure of their own. A deeply unnatural structure. Where others saw order, I saw a straitjacket; a cruel, oppressive world dictated by made-up rules: seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, each life a faded lesser copy of the one before! Wake up, eat, work, sleep, reproduce, and die! Everyone is just waiting, waiting for it all to be over. All while performing in a silly play, day after day.” Funnily enough, this is absolutely spot on as a way to describe human society – but it’s not humans that are responsible for it! That’s quite a crucial piece of information that’s missing.

Similarly, in The Three-Body Problem, humans are referred to as “bugs” by superior alien intelligences; insignificant, chaotic creatures doomed to be swept aside. In Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Ultron reflects on humanity’s inability to change: “When the Earth starts to settle, God throws a stone at it. And believe me, he's winding up.” He sees humanity’s endless cycle of war and destruction as justification for extinction.

In The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008), the alien Klaatu arrives with a stark warning: “If the Earth dies, you die. If you die, the Earth survives.” The premise is that humans have become a threat to the planet itself, and outside intervention is required. Cloud Atlas (2012) spans multiple timelines, all of which reinforce the idea that human civilization is trapped in cycles of greed, violence, and self-destruction. In the distant future, the remnants of modern society are viewed as arrogant and self-destructive.

In Princess Mononoke (1997), the clash between industrial humans and the gods of the forest presents humans as a destructive force that cannot live in harmony with nature. The film doesn’t outright condemn humanity but suggests it is out of balance with the world.

There are also thematic parallels in other media. In the game Horizon Zero Dawn, humanity is nearly wiped out by ecological collapse and rogue AI because of unchecked technological ambition.

Over and over and over again, we are confronted with the theme that humanity is entirely out of harmony with the natural world, that we are a uniquely pestilential species destined to destroy our own habitat, and that it’s us, in fact, who are the anomaly that needs to be corrected. Do you seriously think that all of this media isn’t jeopardizing our subconscious minds, rewiring us so that we direct our ire inwards?

This is the doctrine of Original Sin, repackaged for the modern, secular masses. It’s one of the most malicious lies that’s been shoved down our throats because it places the blame for the carnage witnessed in the world squarely with humanity.

It’s pure propaganda.

And on top of all the propaganda that we’re fed, we are incentivized to hate and hoard wealth and act selfishly on account of the criminal financial system which traps us in cycles of debt and fear.

The Economy

To understand how our economic system actively incentivizes selfishness, even cruelty, we need to look at how it’s structured. Mike Jones, writing for The Resilient Tomorrow Substack, explains it plainly:

“Our economy is structured so that in order to access the basics of life—food, transportation, shelter, childcare—you need money. That means you need a job (or some form of income). And that job must generate enough value for someone else to justify paying you.
In other words, your ability to access life’s essentials depends on someone else deciding you’re worth it.
This is not a bug. It’s the core feature of a consumer-based, extractive system.
You work to earn money →
You use that money to buy access →
You lose time, so you buy back time through convenience →
You need more money to pay for that convenience →
So you work more.
This cycle isn’t wealth-building. It’s containment. It’s the hamster wheel dressed up in hustle-culture language.”

Now think about the implications of this. In a system where your most basic needs are locked behind a paywall, you’re forced to sell your time and attention, your most precious, non-renewable resources, to the highest bidder and you’re not free to pursue what you value most; you must prioritize what pays.

And if you don’t want to be stuck at the bottom, your options narrow fast: either work yourself into exhaustion or outcompete others by becoming more efficient and more ruthless than everyone else, losing your humanity along the way. This is how people end up exploiting others. Not necessarily out of malice, but out of necessity.

The economic game we’re playing is based on ‘winner-takes-all’ dynamics: it’s Monopoly. And what happens in Monopoly? People hoard resources and bankrupt their friends. Not because they’re evil, but because that’s how you survive and, ultimately, how you win.

So ask yourself: when people are forced to play a zero-sum game just to survive, should we be surprised by selfishness?

In this kind of system:

People act selfishly because otherwise, they starve.

People hoard resources because otherwise, they suffer.

People stop sharing because generosity gets punished.

This is not because we are inherently evil. It’s because the system conditions us to act as if we were.

We are not evil because we want to be.

We are evil because we have to be.

So yes, look around you at the infinite waterfalls of ignorance, racism, crime, hate-mongering, and corruption. Take it all in. But, please, for the love of God, do NOT take it at face value and assume that this represents some authentic human impulse. Recognize it for what it is: a distortion, a grotesque side effect of a deeper dysfunction.

Let me offer a metaphor that might help you see it more clearly.

In 2011, authorities discovered 48 mass graves in Tamaulipas, Mexico. Inside were the bodies of 193 Central American migrants. Many had been abducted from buses by the Zetas cartel and forced to fight each other with hammers. Those who refused were executed. The survivors weren't monsters. They were victims of coercion placed in a situation where the only options were horrifying.

Were those people evil? Of course not. They were given an impossible choice: kill or be killed.

This, I argue, is the same trap most people are in. The only difference is that the gun which points at your head is less visible. The greater duress in our lives is not a gun: it’s debt, rent, medical bills, student loans, inflation. But the pressure is just as real. It bends us, distorts us, degrades our relationships, and robs us of our better nature.

We are all under duress from a system that extracts from us while pretending to empower us. A system that operates, quietly but forcefully, like a cop twisting your arm behind your back.

This is the context we must understand if we are ever to make sense of the ugliness we see all around us.

Human nature is not the problem.
Human nature is not evil.
Human nature is good but it’s under pressure.

The worst part is that the pressure is invisible because it’s everywhere. We treat debt, interest, rent, and wage labor as natural facts of life, not as social inventions. But just because everyone is sick doesn’t mean sickness is normal. To borrow and twist a line from The Incredibles: “When everyone’s sick, no one is.”

The first step to healing is recognizing that we’re unwell.

Neurological Basis of Goodness

There’s another reason why I say that human nature is fundamentally good.

The all-encompassing fact that makes sense of all human behaviour is that the human brain is split in two down the middle. I wrote an article here explaining the importance of this here.

To briefly recap:

In The Master and His Emissary and The Matter With Things, Iain McGilchrist shows us that the left and right hemispheres (LH and RH respectively) are not just two halves of a brain but two fundamentally different ways of being in the world. And how do these two views differ?

One view, the left hemisphere view, is of a world composed of static, isolated, fragmentary elements that can be manipulated easily, are decontextualised, abstracted, detached, disembodied, mechanical, relatively uncomplicated by issues of beauty and morality (except in a consequentialist sense) and relatively untroubled by the complexity of empathy, emotion and human significance. They are put together, like brick on brick to build a wall, so as to reach conclusions that are taken to be unimpeachable. It is an inanimate universe – and a bureaucrat’s dream. There is an excess of confidence and a lack of insight. This world is useful for purposes of manipulation, but is not a helpful guide to understanding the nature of what it encounters. Its use is local and for the short term.

McGilchrist calls the LH the Servant, who must do the bidding of the Master; but who is the Master?

In the other (the right hemisphere version), as in the world the map represents, and in the world revealed to us by physics, by poetry, and simply by the business of living, things are almost infinitely more complex. Nothing is clearly the same as anything else. All is flowing and changing, provisional, and complexly interconnected with everything else. Nothing is ever static, detached from our awareness of it, or disembodied; and everything needs to be understood in context, where, if it is not to be denatured, it must remain implicit. Here, wholes are different from the sum of the parts, and beauty and morality, along with empathy and emotional depth, help us to intuit meaning that lies beyond the banality of the familiar and everyday. It is an animate universe – and a bureaucrat’s nightmare. This is a world from which we cannot detach ourselves, since we are part of it and affect it by our relationship with it. The overall timbre is sober and tentative. This world is truer to what is, but is harder to comprehend and to express in language, and less useful for practical issues that are local and short-term. On the other hand, for a broader or longer-term understanding the right hemisphere is essential.”

These are not merely different ends of an equal dipole, not simply Yin and Yang, not simply masculine and feminine. There is thus a fundamental asymmetry to the hemispheres: the Master (RH) is called as such because it is he who perceives the whole, who is able to properly intuit the context which leads to true understanding and mastery, who is able to set the proper course which will lead to prosperity for all. The servant (LH), by contrast, doesn’t understand the proper order between the two, can only grasp at disconnected fragments of information without a proper appreciation of the whole, and is wildly overconfident in his abilities.

And guess who views human nature is a negative light? That’s right, the LH, the servant who is of instrumental use and who should never rule lest pandemonium ensue.

The LH tends to see human nature in a negative light because of how it perceives the world: narrowly, analytically, and in isolation. It focuses on parts rather than wholes, individuals rather than relationships, and behavior rather than context. This fragmented perspective leads it to interpret selfishness, competition, and control as fundamental traits of humanity, rather than symptoms of specific environments or systems. Because it prioritizes abstraction, prediction, and utility, the LH flattens rich and complex human experiences, like love, empathy, and trust, into mechanistic terms, often viewing them as irrational or merely instrumental.

Moreover, the LH prefers what is measurable, controllable, and certain. It distrusts what it cannot quantify, like emotional connection or spiritual meaning, and thus devalues them creating a self-reinforcing worldview: humans are selfish because that’s what the system rewards and the data reflects. But this isn’t an objective truth; it’s a lens shaped by the hemisphere’s limited mode of attention.

It builds a world that incentivizes selfishness, then calls that world "reality." In doing so, it forgets that we are inherently relational beings, shaped much more by love and cooperation than by competition and fear.

The LH is blind to the fact that it’s blind, making arguments with it damn near impossible as it will never admit to that which it can’t perceive to begin with.

Human Nature is Good

So there we have it, the argument that humanity is not ultimately selfish, despite all the selfishness we encounter in daily life. I know it’s a counterintuitive claim, especially at a time when nations are gearing up for war and fear dominates public discourse, but its unpopularity doesn’t make it any less sincere. This is, to the best of my understanding, the conclusion that feels most honest and most human.

I’ve tried to offer a little evidence in favor of a view that affirms our deeper nature: developmental psychology, brief anecdotes, evolutionary cooperation, the goodness of ultimate reality, and the distorting effect of the media and the economy. If you’re deeply entrenched in the LH mindset which tends to dismiss love, empathy, and connection as naive or irrelevant, then this essay probably won’t change your mind. But then again, nothing will.

I’ll end with a quote from C.S. Lewis, who came to believe not only in God, but in a God whose goodness affirms the goodness of humanity. His words offer a powerful challenge to the idea that evil is an equal force in the world:

“Dualism means the belief that there are two equal and independent powers at the back of everything, one of them good and the other bad. (…) If Dualism is true, then the bad Power must be a being who likes badness for its own sake. But in reality, we have no experience of anyone liking badness just because it is bad. (…) Wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way. You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. (…) Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness.”

The selfishness we see is not proof of our nature but a distortion of it.

1. If we compare the famous real-life case of the shipwrecked Tongan boys to another island survival story—the settlement of Pitcairn Island in 1790—we see something far closer to Lord of the Flies. The Pitcairn Islands offered the mutineers of the HMS Bounty, the English settlers and their Tahitian slaves, an ideal refuge: remote, uninhabited, and full of natural resources. At first, the group lived in relative peace. But over time, tensions mounted as the European men began treating the Tahitian women as property, passing them between one another. In 1793, the conflict turned deadly. Several mutineers were killed by the Tahitian men. By the following year, all the Tahitian men were dead, killed either by the widows of the murdered mutineers or each other. Of the original mutineers, only four remained. Two of them took control and established a fragile peace. But that calm was disrupted again when one mutineer discovered how to distill alcohol from a local plant. Drunken violence followed and the two mutineers in control killed the other remaining two. Only then did a lasting peace finally emerge. So, in light of the basic of this story, how can I possibly maintain the basic thesis that humanity is not geared towards domination or murder? Am I not just cherry-picking my information to suit my pre-fabricated conclusions, much like Zimbardo? Unfortunately, I can’t get into too much detail now since this is merely a footnote but suffice it to say that the difference between these two cases showcase the difference between the left-hemisphere and the right hemisphere. I had previously written a short play explaining the difference in worldviews between these two hemispheres; the Western outlook is predominantly left-hemispheric in its outlook, explaining why Westerners in such extreme scenarios tend to auto-cannibalize and self-destruct. Why the West is LH-dominated is a whole other article.