In the essay "Humankind: A Hopeful History" (2020), Rutger Bregman advances a counter-current thesis to the dominant view of human nature, challenging the cultural and scientific paradigms that have supported a narrative based on the assumption of selfishness, competition, and violence as original traits of human beings. The assumption that humans are "naturally evil" has traversed centuries of philosophical, political, and psychological thought, from Machiavelli to Hobbes, from Freud to contemporary social sciences, permeating both the collective imagination and institutional architectures. The construction of norms, public policies, and educational systems has often been based on a restrictive idea of human nature, to be disciplined, contained, and guided through vertical structures and control devices.

In this context, Bregman proposes a historical and anthropological reinterpretation of humanity over the last 200,000 years, based on an approach he himself defines as "hopeful realism". Drawing on data from various fields – from evolutionary biology to social psychology, from archaeology to cultural anthropology – the author reconstructs an alternative picture, in which cooperation, solidarity, and kindness emerge as central evolutionary strategies in the history of Homo sapiens. In stark contrast to the Hobbesian narrative of "war of all against all", Bregman shows how numerous human societies, even in crisis conditions, have expressed widespread capacities for collective resilience, mutual care, and egalitarian organisation.

A significant part of Bregman's work consists of a critical deconstruction of some of the most well-known psychological experiments of the 20th century, such as Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment (1971) and Stanley Milgram's famous study on obedience (1961). In both cases, the author highlights how dominant interpretations have accentuated aspects of conformism and aggression at the expense of the complexity of individual and collective reactions. Zimbardo's direct intervention in the role of "prison supervisor" and the lack of methodological rigour raise doubts about the scientific validity of the experiment and its conclusions. Similarly, analysis of the data from Milgram's experiment reveals that numerous participants showed discomfort, opposition, or active refusal, aspects often omitted in subsequent narratives. Bregman emphasises how such reductionist readings have contributed to constructing and legitimising a distorted and pessimistic view of human nature, which has had profound implications in the field of social, educational, and justice policies.

Alongside this critical revision, Bregman recovers emblematic historical episodes of spontaneous altruism, such as the Christmas truce of 1914 between soldiers at the front, solidarity in London neighbourhoods during the Second World War bombings, or the little-known story of a group of teenage castaways in the Pacific who, contrary to the dystopia narrated in Lord of the Flies, managed to build a micro-society based on cooperation. These episodes, far from being exceptions, represent for Bregman an empirical basis from which to rethink the categories of trust, responsibility, and power.

These reflections find powerful confirmation in David Graeber and David Wengrow's work "The Dawn of Everything" (2021). The authors, through a monumental synthesis of anthropological and historical studies, dismantle the "myth of primitive warfare" and challenge the linear evolutionist narrative that associates the development of social complexity with state coercion and hierarchy. On the contrary, they show how many societies have developed sophisticated forms of non-authoritarian governance, managed conflicts with ritual and non-violent tools, and often consciously alternated periods of vertical structuring with phases of horizontality and rejection of permanent authority. Central is the valorisation of women's role as mediation agents, as well as attention to cultural practices that promoted peace as a political choice and not as a mere absence of conflict.

The theoretical framework offered by Bregman, Graeber, and Wengrow invites a radical rethinking of the relationship between human nature, social construction, and justice. To the extent that institutions are based on an anthropology of distrust, they tend to reproduce exclusionary, authoritarian, and punitive mechanisms. Conversely, a conception of the person as a cooperative agent endowed with ethical competencies innervated in the evolutionary and cultural history of humanity can constitute the foundation for educational, social, and cultural policies truly oriented towards inclusion and social justice. This implies an epistemological reversal: it is not violence that must be assumed as a starting point, but the concrete possibility of building relationships based on trust, reciprocity, and care.

In a time marked by polarisations, global crises, and systemic distrust, the contribution of this research represents not only a necessary counter-narrative but also an urgent invitation to redefine the ethical and political coordinates on which to build inclusive, supportive institutions capable of facing the challenges of the present with a cooperative spirit and transformative vision.