Throughout all the years writing on my blog, I have posted different articles sharing the thoughts of these greats. Most of them are lost to the internet, and no one really reads them unfortunately. That’s a bit of a shame, as it took me a lot of work to put them together. So here I share them again.

Boethius – The consolation of philosophy and how a man about to die found happiness.

Epictetus – The wisdom of a Stoic master and the secrets to living a good life revealed.

Diogenes of Oinoanda – The secret to happiness and living a life of pleasure.

Marcus Aurelius – How to gather the strength to survive in adversity.

Plutarch – Tips on how to keep a tranquil mind in a turbulent world.

Galen – How to correct the errors of your mind.

Also check out the articles in my Marcus Aurelius mini-series:
The Introduction
The Discipline of Desire
The Discipline of Action
The Discipline of Assent

If you want to learn how to be funny, there is no better guide than the Ancient Romans. Here are some tips from them:

Tips on humor from the ancient Romans.

And if you want to improve your fitness, then maybe apply some techniques from the way the ancient gladiators used to do it.

Train like a gladiator: The real ancient Roman gladiator workout.

And if you want to read something analyzing where the current world is heading, read my classic on the fall of the Roman Republic. It is now even more relevant than when I wrote it.

11 Lessons from the fall of the Roman Republic: It is disturbing how relevant they are for today.

If you want to read even more stuff like this, then check out my ancient wisdom section.

“I don’t care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.” — Emile Zola

Emile Zola was a 19th-century French author, renowned for writing in a “naturalistic” style. His novels depicted the nitty-gritty details of everyday life, warts and all.

He rejected the Romantic themes of authors like Alexandre Dumas or Victor Hugo, and rather focused on the mundane parts of existence. No lofty ideas. No larger than life characters. No sublime beauty.

Instead, he described struggles. His works examined normal people facing existential problems. There was no sugar-coating. He wanted to portray reality as it really was.

Dark. Raw. Real.

Naturalists looked at how circumstances, emotions, and forces of nature shape human lives. For them, these outside constraints are what drives a person’s destiny.

“Man is not alone. He lives in society, in a social condition; and consequently, for us novelists, this social condition unceasingly modifies the phenomena. Indeed our great study is just there, in the reciprocal effect of society on the individual and the individual on society.” — Emile Zola

While many elements of the thinking of writers like Zola are similar to existentialism, there is one huge difference. Whereas philosophers like Sartre or Camus believed people are free to choose (despite their circumstances), naturalists saw life as pretty much fixed.

There is no free will. Only determinism. Can’t do much about it.

Showing life how it really is

Naturalism wasn’t only reflected in literature. In the 19th century, it pervaded different aspects of society. Philosophy. Theater. And of course, painting.

One aim of naturalist painters was depicting people in their natural and social environments. As noted by Rebecca Seiferle, naturalism was about incorporating the subject into the context.

“Naturalism is often equated with Realism, but it was only defined some decades later — experiencing its heyday during the 1870–80s — and was more concerned than the older movement with a hyperreal visual compositional precision; and with integrating the human figure into an enveloping landscape or scenario.”–Rebecca Seiferle

Naturalist painters depicted normal people in their everyday activities. Often, they focused on the lower, working classes. Their aim was to capture the scene in a hyper-realistic manner, with all the imperfections in tow.

In this way, these painters put on canvas the same types of ideas writers like Zola put on paper with their pens.

Coming across a painting that reflects the pain of everyday reality

Art is meant to invoke emotions. Whoever is looking at a painting should feel something. This feeling is deeply personal, and can be quite different from the painter’s original aim.

My most powerful encounter with naturalism dates from a while back. As I was exploring the Fin de Siecle (end of the 19th century) exhibit at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, I came across a painting.

The way it was set up harkened back to the Middle Ages. It was a triptych, a panel painting divided up into three sections which can be folded into each other.

On the painting, you could see three scenes. One taking place in the morning, one at lunch time, and one in the evening.

It was the story of a working class family. On the left, they were walking to work. In the middle, they were having lunch, their only break in the day. On the right, they were depicted on their walk back home.

For me, the most striking part was how well the painting conveyed the feelings of pain and resignation. The somber colors. The slumping postures. The dejected faces.

Look at the faces of the family walking in the morning on their way to work. The precariousness jumps at you straight away. These were chalk sellers, and made a living by walking around all day. It was hard work for very little money.

Their only break was at mid-day, when the entire family gathered for lunch.

The scene reminded me of the story of Sisyphus, with one crucial difference. Whereas Albert Camus made him smile despite his predicament, Frederic’s characters stay somber and dejected. There is no bright spot in their fate.

Art that speaks to you across the ages

Leon Frederic was a Belgian artist who was born in 1856 and died in 1940. Throughout his lifetime, he saw enormous changes take place.

Belgium was a country that rapidly industrialized. Fueled by the coal mines in the country’s south, a string of factories rose up all around. Whether gathering the coal, creating widgets, or struggling to make a living in other ways, life was tough for the vast majority of the population.

The average worker worked long hours for very little pay. Kids as little as 5 years old would often spend as much as 14 hours a day in incredibly dangerous positions.

There was no safety net. You got injured? That meant losing your job.

Frederic tried capturing this societal turmoil in his paintings. Moving through realist, naturalist, and symbolist stages, and combining it with inspiration from Old Flemish Masters, his artwork reflected the struggle of his day and age.

Unless you are a fanatic of 19th century French and Belgian art, you probably never heard of Leon Frederic before, or seen any of his work. That’s a shame. I find his early paintings incredibly powerful.

His “Chalk Sellers” is a masterpiece of emotion. It brilliantly captures the human condition.

The family depicted in the painting lived in harsh everyday conditions. It never changed. Day in and day out, it was always the same. What’s worse, these people were born and probably died in the same conditions.

While Frederic’s artwork depicts a scene from the 19th century, the lessons are universal. We are lucky that most of us don’t have to live through these types of horrible conditions, where even the smallest kids had to work from dusk ‘til dawn.

However, this eternal circularity of pain is ever-present in our age as well. It might be a different type of pain, but it is there nevertheless. For most people, it is impossible to escape.

Looking at this painting, you are reminded of the human condition. Life is hard, and full of suffering. Outside circumstances give it shape, and you can’t escape their influence.

An earlier version of this article was originally published on “Medium” here.
Credit: 1; Photo found in Wikimedia Commons

“At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.”
― Chico Mendes

The year 2019 was the year of fire. The news cycle was full of images of the huge fires that laid a path of destruction in Australia, the Amazon, California, and other places around the world. Yet, in the following years this had largely disappeared from the mainstream media coverage.

While from 2020 to early 2022 we were facing a global pandemic, the old problems hadn’t disappeared. They are still here. Fire. Heat. Dust. Recurrent, and stronger every year.

Are we living in a dystopian movie? Sometimes, it seems so. Pandemics, wars, giant fires. All here. Present and accounted for. Things have gotten bad.

In 2020, California experienced its first “gigafire”. The state was covered by an orange hue due to all the forest fires burning around. What’s worse, these blazes are changing in their essence, their properties getting more destructive. Fires apparently even generate their own weather now.

The Amazon is experiencing the highest levels of deforestation in many years. Scientists are predicting the worst. If we don’t do something soon, a tipping point could be reached. The rainforest would become history, turning into a grassy savanna.

The world is burning. And it will continue to burn, if we don’t do something about it.

How bad is the damage around the world?

“When this world is burning how can there be laughter and how can there be joy? Why do you not seek the light, you who are surrounded by darkness?” — Buddha in the “Dhammapada”

According to famous conservationist David Attenborough, the natural world now covers only 35% of the planet. When he was a kid in the 1930’s, the percentage was almost double that number.

In the past decades, we have lost much of the green covering of the Earth. With it went many species of plants and animals. Others are on the brink of extinction.

Much of biodiversity is irreparably gone. And even while one third of the planet is still wildlife, much of that is not super healthy. Only 3% of the world’s ecosystems are still intact, and undisturbed.

We are facing numerous tipping points. Climate is changing. Nature is disappearing. Fires are burning. All this is humanity’s doing.

Scolding hot blazes are wreaking havoc all around the globe. Lots of places are up in flames.

• Amazon — This year, forest fires reached a 15-year high. In August 2022, over 30 thousand fire spots were registered. Since that region is too humid to sustain fire, it is evident that most of these were set by humans.
• Australia — In 2019 to 2020, a series of megafires engulfed much of Australia, destroying huge swaths of forests. Over 3 billion animals were harmed by these fires.
• California — One word describes it, gigafire. Out-of-control megafires are becoming very common in California, and much of the American West.
• Congo — Huge wildfires are burning in big swathes of the Congo Basin. In Angola alone, there are more fires than in the Brazilian Amazon. Much of this is due to people starting the fires. The Congo is also the site of various insurgencies, and frequent military clashes occur there.
• Indonesia — Borneo, Sumatra, but also the other Indonesian islands are experiencing many forest and jungle fires.
• Mediterranean — Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and many other places around the Mediterranean have been experiencing big wildfires almost annually.
• Siberia — Around 3.2 million hectares of forest have burned down in Siberia and the Russian Far East since the beginning of the year 2022. In fact, the fires in Siberia are bigger than all the other fires in the world combined.

There are two main causes of this increase in forest fires. One is general climate change, which makes it easier for fires to start, and then harder for them to get extinguished.

Another reason is humans setting the forests on fire on purpose. This usually happens in order to clear the land for agriculture, grazing, or mining.

The results have been devastating.

Yes, the last few years were full of fire. And we ain’t done yet. According to a United Nations report, wildfires will increase by a third from now until the year 2050. Strap in! We are in for a bumpy ride.

What can we do?

It doesn’t help screaming about a problem, if you are not offering solutions. Luckily, we still haven’t reached a point of no return. We are fucked, but still not that fucked. There’s hope.

However, the hope will quickly disappear if we don’t roll up our sleeves and start doing something. There are some positive examples. Not everything has gone downhill in the past few decades. This can guide us.

One such good example is Costa Rica. This Central American country has managed to regrow its rainforest. Stewart Maginnis, global director at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) described what happened:

“In the 1970s and 1980s Costa Rica had one of the highest deforestation rates in Latin America, but it managed to turn that around in a relatively short period of time.”

Costa Rica was at the brink, but clawed its way back up. It has managed to double the size of its rainforests in just a few decades. Of course, the country is still experiencing problems with forests being cut down, but the trend is inspiring nevertheless.

If we want to take a step back from the edge of the cliff, we need to focus on certain things. That means putting our conservationist hats on. Plant more trees. Protect nature, and work on saving biodiversity. And of course, reduce wasteful consumption.

All this is mixed in with the general work on combatting climate change. After all, if we manage to keep the global temperatures down, then the forest fires won’t be as big, as frequent, or as destructive.

Are we doing enough? I don’t know. It seems as if everything were falling apart, and it might be too little and too late. Yet, I want to remain at least a tiny bit optimistic.

Amid all the doom and gloom, we also need some positive messages. Renewable energy is starting to make a big splash. About 30% of the world’s energy is now produced from renewable sources.

There are of course problems with these alternate sources. Solar, or wind are highly variable on the weather, and storage is still quite inefficient. If this energy storage problem gets solved, it could create a further boost.

A lot of new technologies are being created to help solve the climate crisis, and also reduce forest fires. Many of these have to do with space. Unlike what many detractors are saying, the public and private space industries are part of the solution.

For example, one company is creating tiny satellites to detect forest fires early, before they become large fires. As the CEO Meir Chen says:

“We want to be able to detect events within a time frame that allows people to do something about it right away.”

There are many other innovations people are working on which could help tackle the problem. A so-called “firetech” industry is on the rise, and lots of potential solutions are being put on the table. One idea is to create swarms of drones to help put the fires out.

This is of course something we can solve only if we put our heads together. Different organizations have to cooperate, using new technologies, both on the ground and in space. Better coordination and data sharing is a must.

It’s important not to bury our hand in the sand, but also not to despair. Shouting doom and gloom won’t help anybody. Only concrete actions will.

Instead, according to psychologist Michael Mann the better option is to lead people down the path of engagement.

“If you lead people down a path of engagement, there’s a snowball effect that can lead to greater and greater engagement. So even if that initial action really isn’t doing much to actually solve the problem (like changing light bulbs, using recyclable shopping bags, or driving a more fuel-efficient vehicle or electric vehicle), it leads us down this path of engagement where we realize, “Oh, well you know, that was easy enough to do. Maybe I can do this too.””

You should not think of yourself as a helpless victim of the system. You have agency, and your actions matter. If you are overcome with eco-anxiety, it’s time to act.

According to climate activist Clover Hogan, this will help you feel better:

“If you’re into fashion, why not look at the fact that a third of the world’s microplastics come from the textile industry? If you’re motivated by your gut, why not rethink that 50 percent of fresh produce is wasted in America?”

Yes, fires are burning everywhere, and every year it seems to be getting worse. The positive news is we still haven’t reached the tipping point. There’s still some time left. There’s still hope.

Let’s get to work.

An earlier version of this article was originally published on “Medium” here.
Credit: 1; Photo by Matt Howard on Unsplash

What was even more important is that it was the start of my writing journey. It set me on a path, which I am still walking. There have been ups and downs, but I keep on sharing my thoughts online. While it’s not putting pen on paper like in the old days, it is putting words on the screen, and it does have the same type of effect. It is preserving thought, and learning.

When I was starting my blog I was still in a phase where I was on top. While not a youngster anymore, that period was still one of potential upward trends. Physically and mentally. Unfortunately, I have entered the stage when my body will only go down physically. Loss of testosterone, muscle, saggy skin, and all kinds of other crappy stuff.

However, what is positive is mentally I am still growing. I am still exploring, learning, and figuring out how things work. And I am sharing that knowledge, and the journey to get there with the wider world.

Sometimes it’s pretty hard to motivate yourself to sit down and write, but I still have the willpower to be at least semi-productive. There are tons of topics I have in my pipeline. They have been lingering there for years.

One thing I have learned is how random life really is. And how much luck has to do with how things turn out. Sure, hard work, practice, and smartness all help, but Lady Fortuna is the ultimate kingmaker. Anyways, for those few readers I have, hope you have been enjoying the journey, and will stay with me for many more years.

I promise to share a lot more stuff to help you learn, and see the world differently. I also promise to write about stuff that you can practically use in your own life. To help with your own journey. Wherever you want to go.

Anyways, I write a lot more on Medium now. However, I pop into this blog from time to time as well in order to post content. Hopefully, will be able to do that much more often in the future.

Damn, 9 years! Next year, it will be 10! What a milestone.

Credit: 1;

The first chinks in the armor appeared in 2001, when the Twin Towers in New York City were brought down by hijackers in airplanes. The world woke up from its sleep, reminded there were new dangers lurking ahead. However, in the US, the institutions were still working fine. A level of civility was still inherent in the government. When the George W. Bush and Al Gore election was too close to call, dependent on a few hanging chads in Florida, the matter was resolved gracefully.

Yet underneath, things were starting to boil. Greatly exacerbated by the Economic Crisis of 2008, events went into overdrive. Societies in different countries grew more and more polarized. Radical new ideologies from the right and left sprang up, seized upon by political entrepreneurs seeing an easy path to power and riches.

Authoritarian strongmen around the world began to flex their muscles. In 2014, Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine, seizing and annexing a part of its territory. China’s Xi Jinping drew China on a more authoritarian course, threatening Taiwan in the process. In 2016, Donald Trump was elected US President. His rule damaged the American institutions, sewing distrust, which culminated in the shameful sacking of the US Capitol by a radical mob of Trump supporters on the 6th of January, 2021.

All this happened, as the planet was heating up in the background. Numerous fires constantly ravage vast swaths of land in different countries around the world. Freak storms and flooding fortify the damage. Rainforests are being cut down, resulting in a huge loss of biodiversity. All this culminated in something straight out of a dystopian horror movie, the COVID-19 pandemic which is keeping us locked down in our houses for a third year straight.

We have arrived in 2022 now. What will this year hold for us? While my heart hopes for the best, my mind isn’t so optimistic. My emotional part wants things to improve, but my rational part sees the trends, most of which are bad. Let’s a have a look at some of these worrying trends.

Trend 1: The COVID-19 pandemic is still here

It’s the third year of the pandemic and a new variant named Omicron is causing havoc. Cases are going up exponentially, and it seems like there is no end in sight.

The good thing is that large sections of the population are vaccinated around the world, and this variant seems to be milder. Could this mean that the virus is becoming less strong, as what happened with the Spanish Flu back 100 years ago?

It’s still too early to tell, and there are still many people who are not vaccinated, meaning that they are potential sources of mutations. Especially Africa with its low rates of vaccination is one danger zone.

However, I think this will be the last year of the pandemic. There will be a push towards making vaccination mandatory in some countries, but not much else. Governments are increasingly hesitant of imposing lockdowns and other tough restrictions. The population is tired.

The first phase of learning to live with the virus will begin, and things will slowly start going back to normal. Of course that is, unless some strange, new, and deadly mutation will arise somewhere. Then all bets are off.

Trend 2: Climate change and the loss of biodiversity are accelerating

This pandemic made it clear how dangerous the loss of biodiversity really is. Forests are being cut down, and people are increasingly coming closer to contacts with wild animals. This means exposure to risks of passing their viruses is higher.

The world is also heating up, and many areas of the globe are seeing ever-recurrent fires destroying wildlife areas, but also human-inhabited ones. Australia saw huge fires destroy parts of the country. California saw its first megafires. Even places like Colorado aren’t spared.

The summer of 2021 around the Mediterranean was full of fires. Parts of Siberia were razed to the ground. The Amazon, and other rainforests around the world are constantly burning, either through natural or man-made causes. In fact, the rate of destruction of the Amazon rainforest was the highest in the past two years than it has been for decades. This trend will only continue, and potentially get worse in 2022.

Trend 3: The Republican Party is sliding towards authoritarianism and cult of personality

The Republican Party is the party of Trump now. It has been overcome with a cult of personality. In 2021, supporters of the former president stormed the US Capitol, marking a shameful low point in history. All this at the instigation of a failed president trying to cling to power at all costs.

Yet, none of this seems to have served as a wakeup call for the GOP. Fringe elements are increasingly taking over the party, sidelining the moderates. They are actively working towards undermining democracy and sowing distrust in the institutions of power.

While there are still sane voices left within the Party, they are increasingly being marginalized by the radicals. The Republican Party is sliding towards authoritarianism, which doesn’t bode well for the future of democracy in America.

Trend 4: Wokeism is getting out of control

Together with the radicalization on the right, we are seeing worrying radicalization on the left. The two go hand in hand, feeding off each other. Woke ideology seems to be gaining more and more power. Self-censorship is becoming the norm, and previously apolitical or moderate institutions are increasingly bowing down to the woke orthodoxy.

While there is no leftist Trump, wokeism has entered the mainstream. Whereas far right crazy is confined to its own sphere (like Fox News and other channels further to the right even of that), wokeness has taken over previously more moderate media like CNN or the New York Times.

Wokeism is even taking over apolitical magazines dealing with science like Scientific American, which does not bode well for science research. In 2022, self-censorship will keep on increasing, and certain normal topics will be deemed beyond the pale. There will be a pushback against this from more moderate forces, but the power of wokeism is increasingly becoming more entrenched.

Trend 5: Authoritarian leaders are getting bolder on the world stage

Vladimir Putin, the autocratic leader of Russia, has moved a hundred thousand troops to the border with Ukraine. There is a fear that he will invade his neighbor. Like a true mafia boss, he is now trying to blackmail the world.
On the other side, Xi Jinping is turning China in a more belligerent direction. The crackdown in Hong Kong has almost wiped out the democracy movement there. Increasingly, he is turning his eye towards Taiwan. This island, which China considers a renegade province, is threatened constantly. More threats will likely occur in 2022.

However, much of this saber rattling comes from a position of weakness. Putin has nothing to offer his people, so he is trying to divert the attention outwards. China was the source of the entire pandemic we are living through now. The Chinese economy has also seen some of its largest companies crash and burn last year. So Xi Jinping needs to shore up his position, and the best way to do that is to create problems abroad.

We can see that many of these strongmen have no solutions to offer from the case of Erdogan in Turkey where the economy is seeing a meltdown. Unfortunately, times of crisis for their regime is when these type of men are the most dangerous. Exactly because they are in trouble, they might try to concoct problems on the world stage.

Trend 6: Sophisticated cybercrime is on the rise

The pandemic has just accelerated a trend which had been decades in the making. More work, fun, and normal life is conducted online. Not just that, many of our normal everyday appliances are being connected, exchanging data, and using sophisticated technologies in an internet-of-things.

While this is an opportunity, it is also a threat. Nefarious hackers, identity thieves, and other types of cybercriminals have seen the potential bonanza this could bring into their coffers. Online crime has exploded in recent years, especially during pandemic times.

Be careful. As more and more of your life moves online, the more vulnerable you will be to cybercrime.

Trend 7: High inflation is rearing its ugly head

I went to a get a haircut recently and had to pay 5 bucks more than I used to pay before the pandemic. That’s a huge increase, and one that signals another trend in the economy: skyrocketing inflation.

The economy took a huge hit during the pandemic. Many businesses had to shutdown, only to reopen much later. Many went down under. Millions of people lost their jobs. The economy stagnated, which exasperated supply chain problems.

There is a huge lack of some basic materials (such as needed for the manufacture of chips), which brings the prices up. Demand is high, while supply is low. The governments are also pumping more money into the economy, with deficit spending, which is further driving up the inflation. Energy prices are also spiking, due to various reasons.

What I have heard the birds chirping around the block is that higher prices will continue for the foreseeable future. So strap in, your pocketbooks might empty out faster in 2022 than in previous years.

What will this mean in the long-term beyond 2022?

The fact that I am writing many of these types of articles lately shows how worried I am about what is happening. Democracy is dying around the world. The climate is being destroyed. The world seems to be heading in the wrong direction.

In these types of situations I like to use historical analogies. While not perfect, they can illustrate the trends and show where these can potentially lead. The keyword here is potentially. Since the future still hasn’t been written, there is a chance of us turning things around.

A good analogy to show where the current malaise could lead is the fall of the Roman Republic. While this happened thousand of years ago, in a societal structure much unlike our own, the institutions underpinning that ancient republic served as the basis of our modern ones. Many of the processes that brought down that state seem to be at play today.

A growing polarization in society, distrust in the institutions, the rise of narcissistic strongmen, all ate away at the republic. It didn’t happen overnight. Rather, the decline was slow over a hundred years. At the end, the republic was no more, replaced by autocratic one-man rule of empire.

Could a similar slide be happening today? This question is especially pertinent for the US heading into the 2024 presidential election. With polarization so high, any result could potentially unleash chaos on a now yet unimaginable level, probably leading to political violence, even civil war in a worst case scenario.

Yes, while my rational mind says things will continue heading in a negative direction, my emotional mind hopes things will turn out all right. Haven’t humans (and the planet) suffered enough? Can’t we learn from the past?

An earlier version of this article was originally published on “Medium” here.
Credit: 1;

There is a darkness in the human soul. All throughout history, a similar pattern frequently reemerges. People are living next to each other seemingly in peace, only for madness to strike. Tolerance turns to resentment, then maliciousness and venom. Formerly decent folk are calling for the extermination of the enemy, hatred growing in the hearts of all. In a flashing instant, neighbor is slaughtering neighbor, and all hell is breaking loose.

Unimaginable evil can take over suddenly, consuming everything in its path. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Russian writer and persistent explorer of the darkness of the human soul, noted that no animal can ever be as cruel as a man. We talk of the savageness of a tiger, but no tiger is even capable of doing the things people have done.

“People talk sometimes of a bestial cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel.” — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

How does this cruelty, this evil, this darkness in the human soul arise? Sometimes people are born with traits that predispose them for certain things. Psychopaths are those individuals who feel very little remorse or empathy, their ego driving them towards a dark path.

Yet, what is striking is that often evil is committed or supported by people who do not have these traits. Former accountants, or athletes, people from all walks of life can perform these acts. Journalist and philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the term “the banality of evil” to describe how something like the Holocaust can arise out of seemingly ordinary circumstances.

When covering the trial of Adolph Eichmann, the man who organized the transport of millions of people to Nazi concentration camps, Arendt became struck by how ordinary he seemed.

“I was struck by the manifest shallowness in the doer which made it impossible to trace the uncontestable evil of his deeds to any deeper level of roots or motives. The deeds were monstrous, but the doer — at least the very effective one now on trial — was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous.” — Hannah Arendt

What is even more mind-blowing is that sometimes these people even believe they are doing a good deed. The road to hell is often paved with good intentions. There is a debate on the inner workings of human nature, and the role darkness plays in it. How come previously decent people can commit such terrible acts?

Perhaps it is as Dostoyevsky believed and the devil doesn’t exist, but people have created him in their own image.

“I think the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.” — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Or maybe the answer is much more mundane. However, it is important to study these questions and to shed light on the process of how this happens. For our own sake, for humanity’s sake.

5 experiments that show the dark side of human nature

While in the past, philosophers only pondered upon the inner workings of human nature, in recent years some psychologists have set up experiments to test it. Paralleling processes in history, researchers have examined the dark side of people. Some of the results have been quite disturbing.

Zimbardo prison experiment

In 1971, Stanford professor Philip Zimbardo randomly divided a group of student volunteers into two parts. One of them would play the role of guards, and the other would be their prisoners. The results were shocking.

Apparently, just after a short amount of time, many of the guards embraced their roles. Treating the prisoners poorly, they dished out punishments left and right. On the side of the prisoners a sort of dejection and acceptance of the abuse set in.

As Zimbardo put it, he wanted to demonstrate “the ease with which ordinary people could be led to engage in anti-social acts by putting them in situations where they felt anonymous, or they could perceive of others in ways that made them less than human, as enemies or objects.” The experiment went so off the rails that it had to be abandoned just 6 days in.

For the researcher leading the experiment, the behavior of the volunteers showed they internalized their roles. His conclusion was that the prison conditions caused the participants to act the way they did. According to Zimbardo, it was a demonstration of “how systemic and situational forces can operate to influence individual behavior in negative or positive directions, often without our personal awareness.”

Milgram public authority experiment

Ten years before Zimbardo’s experiment, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram held one of his own. This now legendary test had a simple set-up. The participants would be seated in a chair and administer electric shocks to people they could only hear. They were led to believe that giving out these shots was a way to help them learn better.

Of course in reality the voices were just tapes, but the volunteers pushing the buttons didn’t know that. Whenever the alleged learner answered a question wrong, the researcher would prod the participant to administer a shock, which would get stronger and stronger each time.

In reality, if the highest level of electricity had zapped the learner, they would be dead. Surprisingly, around 65% of the participants actually administered the final 450-volt bolts. Not to say that 100% of them went up to at least 300 volts!

In an article, Milgram noted that “the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding an explanation. Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process.”

Trying to show how such an evil thing as the Holocaust can happen, Milgram’s experiment has incredible explanatory power. Even if ordinary citizens are not hateful, just the simple fact of compliance and following authority can create the conditions necessary for great atrocities to take place.

Robbers cave experiment

In 1954, even before the two previous experiments took place, psychologist Muzafer Sherif created his own study. Meant to test how conflicts arise, he set up two groups composed of boys who had never met each other before. Believing they were there for a summer camp, each group started out by doing normal activities.

However, over time they discovered that another group of boys was sharing the same park with them. First off, the two groups were put into normal competitions against each other. Quickly, in-group versus out-group dynamics developed. Violent clashes between the two groups were the result.

Interestingly, in times of group conflict altruism comes into play, but in a weird way. According to Sherif, “the zeal with which members of one group pursue intergroup hostility is proportional to the degree of solidarity and cooperativeness within the in-group, and these tend to increase.” While the hostility towards the out-group increases, the solidarity within the in-group tends to increase too.

Sherif’s work is the basis of realistic conflict theory. Strife between groups can arise when people perceive that resources are limited and the need to fight over them. This zero-sum view of the world where the other side must lose if your side is to win, is the source of much bad blood.

Third Wave experiment

How could so many German people have so willingly participated in the Nazi movement? This is a question that boggles the mind of many. In 1967, struggling to explain this to his students, high school history teacher Ron Jones decided to demonstrate it instead.

Over a span of 5 days, Jones indoctrinated his students into a fictitious movement he set up, “The Third Wave”. Starting off with simple drills on discipline and a few slogans, he instilled in the students a sense of community based on groupthink.

Throughout the course of the experiment, the movement proved quite popular with the students. Hundreds of teens who were not even in the class joined in. Setting strict rules, Jones had a way to check whether these were being followed. He selected a few of the kids to report on the others.

To his surprise, many more snitched out of their own free will. Those deemed insufficiently loyal to the cause were put on trial and punished. The entire thing got so out of hand, that the teacher had to end it early. Proving how easy it is to fall for causes through group dynamics, The Third Wave experiment shows how dangerously carried away people can get.

Tajfel social groups experiment

Henri Tajfel, himself a Holocaust survivor, conducted experiments trying to show how ordinary thinking processes can lead to prejudice. He posited that it was categorization that was behind this. This results in people minimizing the differences between the individuals in their in-group, while maximizing the differences from their out-group, painting the “other” with a similar negative brush.

In one of his experiments, Tajfel created two groups of boys. Telling them that the choice was made on their preferences for paintings by a particular painter (in reality just random pics), the boys were then asked to allocate resources to each other. Despite not knowing the other boys in their group, most individuals divided up the resources in a way as to maximize the profits for their own group. This was despite there being a strategy that would maximize profits for everyone.

This showed how favoritism, prejudice, and discrimination can come into being. Even though the groups were created randomly, a sense of in-group versus out-group developed. Once this dynamic is set in motion, it can be hard to stop. According to Tajfel, “once the process is set in motion they reinforce each other in a relentless spiral in which the weight of predominant causes tends to shift continuously.”

Honorable mention:

While experiments with humans are the most pertinent for uncovering human nature, ones done with animals can be quite telling too.

Rat paradise experiment

In the 1960s, behavioral researcher John B. Calhoun set up a series of experiments with mice and rats. In his experiments, he created what he termed “rat utopias”. These were interconnected habitats that provided everything needed for a rat to live a successful life, food, shelter, and mates.

In the beginning, a small number of rats of both sexes were released into the habitats. Due to the favorable conditions, the population grew rapidly. It kept doubling quite fast, but then at one moment, the rate started to slow down. Then something weird happened. The rats stopped reproducing completely.

Despite the fact that the conditions in the habitats were favorable for a lot more rats, society broke down. A small number of individual male rats monopolized all the females, while the rest of the males started to congregate in specific areas. Incessant fighting erupted, as did an increase in homosexual behavior.

Things went downhill from there. The constant warfare caused many of the males to withdraw completely, instead now spending the time between sleeping and grooming themselves. The rat utopia collapsed and the society went extinct thereafter.

Calhoun saw this as a warning for human society. Growing overcrowding and a breakdown in social relations could lead to what he termed a “behavioral sink”. In rats, this led to total collapse and eventual extinction.

The power of the dark side

Throughout history, we have seen what types of evil things people are capable of. Often, these monsters arise from seemingly innocent beginnings. Adolf Hitler was a failed artist who started his political career preaching in beer halls. Pol Pot and his gang were students and activists sitting around in the cafes of Paris. The rise of these demagogues, however, was also facilitated by ordinary people jumping in on their bandwagon.

As the Dark Jedi in the “Star Wars” movies demonstrated, the pull of the dark side is strong. The debate of whether humans are basically good or bad might be missing the point. All people have a light side and a dark side. It’s often circumstances that dictate which one gets awakened.

For some individuals, the tendency towards one side or the other can be stronger. The psychological experiments of Zimbardo or Sherif have their critics. Both the methodology and the set-up have been challenged. However, even within these critiques, we can see kernels of human nature.

One challenge to Zimbardo’s experiment was based on the argument that the participants were self-selected. Seeing an ad in a newspaper calling for participants in a prison simulation likely drew out individuals whose personality traits had higher levels of aggression and authoritarianism.

Yet, even with this argument, you can see how the environment plays a huge role. A favorable environment and circumstances can make it easier for certain types of individuals to rise to the top. Certain conditions are more opportune towards people with darker traits.

History can be a guide to how circumstances shape events. It can show us how darkness wins over light. We are living in a period that is increasingly showing flashing danger signs from the past. Things can move fast, or as in the case of the fall of the Roman Republic, things can move slow. However, we need to be aware. The darkness of humanity is always there, lurking.

PS: And of course there are always issues with the set-up and interpretation of these experiments. Many of them are valid critiques. Some of these researchers did set up their experiments in certain ways which could have swayed the results in certain directions. However, even if you take these into account, the insights into human nature are still staggering.

An earlier version of this article was originally published on “Medium” here.
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However, with so many years writing and putting my stuff on the internet, my thoughts have left a footprint. These ideas of mine have not always been acknowledged, but I keep running across them in random places. Recently, I picked up a French language translation of a book originally in English about leadership lessons you can learn from animals. Much of the information in the section on chimpanzees was similar to what I had written in my article on lessons from chimp alpha leaders, including the division into 3 dominant strategies. I believe the author based this chapter on my article. Unfortunately, I didn’t get an acknowledgement.

Several years ago, my articles on first principles thinking were usually close to the top of the first page of Google search when it comes to that term. So my SEO was really good. It was an original article based on lots of research, and some of the things I put together were new. If you type in those terms into Google now, my articles have disappeared and seem to have fallen out of the ranking altogether. However, at the top you can find an article from Medium, which is based on my ideas. There is even a link to my blog thanking me for my ideas as inspiration (although no link to my original articles). The article has thousands of claps. When I put up my own original article on that topic, it was barely seen. This speaks volumes on popularity on the internet. Much of it is a matter of luck.

Of course, for most of my articles I have also reused information I found in other articles. I have usually tried to acknowledge the source, however that was not always possible. You can see how information circulates, how it is reused, something with acknowledgment and sometimes without. Popularity of a particular article often also seems random.

Writing for so long has its ups and downs. I enjoy the fact when people pop in and tell me they enjoyed my article, or that they learned something new from it. The worst thing for a writer is to publish something, and only have crickets playing in the background. While stuff I publish is not popular, I keep on plugging along. After all, my writing journey is driven by my intense curiosity and will to learn. Writing is a way of learning.

Source:1.

The new year seems to be starting with a bang. Back at the beginning of 2019, I wrote a series of articles on the fall of the Roman Republic, and how it could be used as an analogy for what is happening in current times. Little did I know that things were going to degenerate this fast.

In the past year, we saw the coming of a global pandemic, which honestly I did not foresee. History teaches us that “black swan” events like this often act as accelerators of trends, or turn them in vastly different directions. What we saw in 2020 was a further polarization of society in the US, and descent into mob rule. What we have now are two clearly demarked camps, on the far right and the far left, who see each other as enemies.

The Trump presidency did not start this, however it made it much worse. When those in power start trampling on the norms, then democracy is in danger. With Trump out of power, it is to be seen whether the moderates in the Republican Party can regain control. What we will likely see is a splintering in the party. This is what is happening in the Democratic Party, where the far left elements seem to be driving the discussion. Trump was not the cause of the current problems, he was a symptom of them. However, he did act as an accelerator of the downward spiral.

After the invasion of the Capitol, what we might continue to see is more radicalization from the far right. There are elements who seem not to shirk away from even using violence to make a point. There will be further radicalization from the far left as well. We might see some violent protests there in the coming years since many on the far left also don’t have faith in the system. During 2020, we saw violence and looting linked to the BLM protests take hold in many cities around the US.

However, at the moment it’s the far right that is the more dangerous side in terms of violence. The mainstream media is getting more onboard with the woke narrative, which means that they are the winning side. Whenever a side fears that they are losing, they will go for more extreme measures. As some of the far right people get more desperate, they might start committing acts of terrorism.

What sometimes gets lost in this descent into political chaos is the fact that in terms of the environment we are facing an abyss. While a few celebrities like Greta get play in the media, most people don’t realize the extent of the damage that the rainforests (and other types of forests) have received in the past few years. This is an issue that needs to be put in the spotlight. If humanity doesn’t develop solutions there, and doesn’t stop the loss of biodiversity, it will have serious consequences. The air we breathe will be worse, all kinds of strange diseases will start appearing more frequently, and all kinds of animal species will irk closer to extinction.

I would like to be optimistic, but the trends don’t leave me with too much room to see the bright side. However, as they say: hope dies last!

Read More:
11 lessons from the fall of the Roman Republic and how relevant they are for today.

My what’s up for 2020 article.

My welcome to 2019 article where I compare the trends to the collapse of the Roman Republic.

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We got hit by a global pandemic, which has unfortunately isolated me from the rest of the world in a way. Sitting at home, working from home, and not being in contact with other people can be quite hard. However, it’s something that I need to overcome. Unfortunately, it’s not something I can control.

Another scary thing is how closer we are to the shitstorm that I was afraid was coming. At the beginning of last year, I wrote a series of articles (for example here, and here) on how the current state of society seems to be degenerating into chaos. In a way it mirrors what happened at the end of the Roman Republic.

Similar forces seem to be at play now, as were happening then. While the specificities are different, the general trends are eerily similar. The fall of the Roman Republic can serve as a very good analogy of what can happen if these things degenerate. Unfortunately, things seem to be degenerating faster than I thought they would.

This is especially evident in the US. Cities such as Portland are on fire. Radical extremists from both sides have been driving the discourse, dividing people up, and denying their humanity. If you are not completely with us, then you are against us, has been the motto of the day.

Unscrupulous figures, such as Donald Trump on one side, have been taking advantage of this. As former UK ambassador to the US stated, Trump is uniquely positioned to rise in a world driven by grievances.

“Trump understood grievances, because he was himself a tightly wound ball of deeply held grievances.”–Kim Darroch

Not to forget, that the environment is also taking a beating. Last year, we were inundated with images of fires burning around the world. Large swaths of Australia burned to the ground, creating irreparable damage to the environment, and killing billions of animals in the process. The Amazon was being burned down at a faster rate than before. Places as diverse as Siberia, the Congo basin, or Indonesia were also seeing their forests burning.

This year is more of the same. California has been covered by an apocalyptic orange hue, due to all the forests burning. The Amazon is being cut down, and many other places around the world are in the process of being destroyed. This needs to stop before it’s too late.

I don’t like being a prophet of doom, but the trends have been negative. Being a realistic optimist, I am hoping that humanity sees this and does something before it’s too late. However, at times it seems like the forces of irrationality seem to be on top in recent years.

Humanity needs to take a step back and re-evaluate where it is heading. I don’t think it’s too late, but the state of society isn’t looking good. In the words of professor of philosophy at the University of Mississippi Steven C. Skultety, our current climate is really sick.

“Our current climate is genuinely sick. On the one hand, we are living longer than ever before and living lives with less violence than ever before. Yet, on the other hand, it seems we’re often miserable, filled with disappointment and stress, and angry at the direction of things.“

On a more positive note, in the middle of last year, I finally started making some money from my writing (check out my articles on Medium). While it is still peanuts, it’s nice to have this development. While the push for my writing has always been chiefly intrinsic, as part of my thirst for knowledge and trying to figure out how the world works, sometimes extrinsic pushes are also nice.

 
Read More:
11 lessons from the fall of the Roman Republic and how relevant they are for today.

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