> As a rhetorical device, Bregman takes Jean-Jacques Rousseau's more hopeful account of humanity in a state of nature. For Rousseau the problem is not what is hidden by the veneer—human nature is fine—it is civilisation itself.
Hmmm, without the veneer of civilisation, we would be basically apes with oversized brains. Apes cooperate just fine within their own group, they are social animals after all, but between different groups it can get very nasty very fast. Which is of course what we can see all around the world at a larger or smaller scale (wars, social networks, election campaigns, racial tensions etc.) but I doubt getting rid of civilisation is a solution for these problems...
I haven't read the book, but I suspect you're disagreeing with Rousseau and not Bregman here. I don't think Bregman recommends removing the civilization, but rather augmenting it based on the moral principles that we already accept as humans.
Last time I checked, it was agreed that there are no universally accepted moral principles. In fact, counting purely by headcount (India and China do exist!), quite a number of things you consider to be universally or widely accepted may actually be accepted by the minority of the people. Is it "eye for an eye" or "turn another cheek"? More than half of the world would take the first options as morally correct.
Maybe I am reading too much into this argument, but I think this is moving the goalposts. So Bregman comes and proves, presumably mostly based on history of Western civilization, that humans are (at least in some ways and on average) better than they think they are. Your response to that is, well, those darn Indians and Chinese, they are not part of Western civilization, therefore, Bregman's proof does not hold.
Not to mention that it has a little bit of a scent of white man's burden.
And BTW, I do believe in universality of human rights, I don't care what the consensus is. While I agree with Bregman, I think it is kind of a moot point (as any argument from nature), because the values we have (or rather decisions we make) are much more a function of the environment we live in.
> "universality of human rights"
That's a somewhat overcompressed term. Does it mean "the human rights, as they're generally perceived in the beginning of the XXI century in <your country>, are applicable to all humans in the past, the present, and the future, at any place on (or in, or outside of) the Earth"? Or does it allow for some human rights that will be discovered one day in the future to also cover everyone, including you and me today?
And I certainly did not intend "the white man's burden", on the contrary, "the white man's nosiness". The Western people, objectively judged by their own standards, turn out to be better than they generally tend to judge themselves by those standards? Good for them! Now could they please allow other people to judge themselves by their own, maybe different, standards?
Hmmm, without the veneer of civilisation, we would be basically apes with oversized brains. Apes cooperate just fine within their own group, they are social animals after all, but between different groups it can get very nasty very fast. Which is of course what we can see all around the world at a larger or smaller scale (wars, social networks, election campaigns, racial tensions etc.) but I doubt getting rid of civilisation is a solution for these problems...