Episode 66: School in a Time of Hope and Cynicism

Available November 5, 2024

How good are people? How much can you trust your neighbors? How much do you agree with others on fundamental values and ideals that are important to you? Sometimes it can feel like the answers to these questions skew towards the negative. But author and researcher Jamil Zaki says we’d be surprised by the reality. He sits down with Morva McDonald to talk about his book, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, and what his findings mean for everyone, especially school leaders, right now.

Guest: Jamil Zaki

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “One, during the hardest time in many people's lives, during one of the greatest disasters of the century, people didn't respond to this adversity by falling apart and focusing on themselves. They came together and found ways to help one another, which is so remarkably beautiful. But then second, most people ignored this global avalanche of human kindness, which is the sadder surprise, that our minds are tuned away from goodness even when it's all around us.” (3:17)
• “Having an assumption about people, even if it's a gloomy assumption, is very comfortable. You get to maybe not have faith in people, but have faith in your assumptions. Letting go of that faith and saying, I don't know what the world is like necessarily. I don't know what the future holds. I don't know what this person is like, is uncomfortable. But it's that courage to be humble about what we know and what we don't know that is the beginning of learning.” (13:54)
• “One, we as a country are far less divided than we think we are. I am in no way here minimizing real extremism, real political violence and real risk to human rights in this country. I think we're in a very scary time. But if you look at what people actually want, even their views on different issues, we're much closer together than I think the media and even politicians want us to realize that we are. We are being told the story of extreme division when reality is that we are divided, but not that much, and that there are many things that we have in common in terms of our values and what we want.” (31:19)

Related Episodes: 64, 62, 54, 44, 37, 32, 17, 15

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