It's Working

In the introduction to his book Humankind: a Hopeful History, Rutger Bregman writes: 

"If we believe most people can’t be trusted, that’s how we’ll treat each other, to everyone’s detriment. Few ideas have as much power to shape the world as our view of other people. Because ultimately, you get what you expect to get. If we want to tackle the greatest challenges of our times - from the climate crisis to our growing distrust of one another — then I think the place we need to start is our view of human nature."

If this sounds like magical thinking to you, that suggests to me that maybe you've not spent enough time with young children. I mean, sure, like all people, they can be unreasonable, impulsive, and frustrating, they make mistakes and harm other people, sometimes even intentionally, but they can be trusted.

Of course, they can't be trusted with secrets: they're far too honest for that.

They can't be trusted to brush their teeth or always recognize when they need to pee: they're far too grounded in the present moment to fret about the prospect of future cavities or to interrupt their play to go to the bathroom.

They can't be trusted to know or even care about their A-B-C's, 1-2-3's, or P's and Q's: they're far too curious about the actual world and the people they find there to attend too much to our adult-ish abstractions.

They can be trusted, however, to try too hard, to care too deeply, and to be unashamedly awkward. They can be trusted to be open about their enthusiasms, joys, sorrows, and fears with equal vigor. They may be selfish at times, but they can be trusted to not be intentionally mean. And when equipped with both the facts and the freedom to act on those facts, they can be trusted to opt for fairness and compassion.

That last assertion might strike some as more of that magical thinking, but having spent most of my adult life among children who I've sought to set free, I've seen it time after time.

When told they must give up their seat on the swings to another child, they can be trusted to grip the chains more tightly as they refuse to budge. But when informed that someone else is waiting for a turn, I've learned that they can always be trusted to give up their swing within minutes, if not seconds.

I've found that the less I command and the more I inform, the more I can trust young children with their own freedom.

The clinical symptoms of what professor and theorist George Gerber called "mean world syndrome" are cynicism, misanthropy and pessimism. This syndrome causes people to believe that they live in a world that is more violent a dangerous than it actually is and tends to afflict the people who consume the most media. It's what causes people to label trust in fellow humans as "magical thinking." As Gerber put it in his 1981 Congressional testimony, "Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simply, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures . . . They may accept and even welcome repression if it promotes to relieve their insecurities."

As we learn in preschool, when people feel less free, they are less inclined to be fair and compassionate. In other words, it becomes a vicious cycle: distrust leads to repression which leads to more distrust. You get what you expect to get.

Making us distrust one another is, of course, good for business, and clearly makes for successful politics, but as Bregman points out, it also makes it nearly impossible to solve any problem that demands collective action.

Spending more time watching television (or doom scrolling or partisan podcast listening or whatever) teaches us that people can't be trusted. Spending more time with actual people, like we do in preschool, teaches us just the opposite. Over the past year, I've made a conscious effort to stay away from the news and to limit my viewing, listening, and reading habits to things that celebrate fairness and compassion. But the biggest shift I've made is to spend as much time as possible with other adult people.

I got accused the other day of being "too trusting" and of "thinking the best of everyone."

It's working.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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