In June 1965, six boys from the Nukuʻalofa boarding school, St. Andrew's College, in Tonga, stole a boat, filled it with snacks, and set out to sea in search of adventure.
None of them even thought of carrying a compass.
The eldest was barely fifteen.
They planned to reach Fiji, but they fell asleep on the voyage and were woken up by a storm.
They drifted for eight days until they sighted a rocky island with no idea where they were.
Perhaps the word island is excessive, it seemed more like a stone thrown by God, which was salvation anyway.
And as in William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954), the boys decide to hold a perpetual fire until they are rescued.
But we already know what happens in the novel, the English boys abandon their civilized ways and attack each other, three of them die.
Instead, the boys at St. Andrew's College make a pact to take care of each other and abide by it for one year and three months.
Time not exempt from anguish, illness and accidents, as can be expected in such an inhospitable place.
They were rescued, miraculously, by the Australian captain, Peter Warner, on September 11, 1966.
The truth is, Golding's novel, written about the idea of the "bad man" nature that only keeps "darkness" at bay by a thin layer of civilizational "varnish," is belied by this real adventure of the boys. from the Nukuʻalofa Christian boarding school.
For the historian Rutger Bregman, in Dignos de ser humanos (Anagrama, 2021), this idea of the bad man is not natural but learned, a kind of "nocebo" (contrary to the placebo) that makes us believe that we are sick with evil.
For Bregman, kindness is natural in the human being and abounds in historical moments that demonstrate it.
I now think of the heroes of Fukushima, in 2011, knowing that they were going to certain death, they entered that hell to mitigate the damage it could cause to others.
Chernobyl also brings together similar moments: engineers Alexei Ananenko, Valeri Bezpalov and Boris Baranov, dubbed the "suicide squad", who offered to drain the reactor to prevent a major disaster without stopping to prioritize their health.
Bregman is sure that "most people are good" and, if we are able to understand it, there would be a chance to change the way we see the world.
However, according to Freud, we inherit the pleasure of killing and Machiavelli paints us as hypocritical and ungrateful.
Christianity, for its part, explains this nature because of original sin.
The strange case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), by Stevenson, confronts us with this dichotomy and, together with Golding's novel, they make up two great paradigms of the bad, insensitive man, like Mr. Meursault de Camus.
Universal literature as "nocebo".
To the point that, I try to think of a novel, or character, that goes in the opposite direction and I don't see it;
perhaps Job, although he bears the mark of original sin.
But whoever reduces the idea of the "bad man" to pious questions, ignores its scope for social coexistence where trust is basic.
And if trust is transferring my uncertainties to the other, how can I do it if I think that other is bad?
Mistrust then gives way to the control society out of strict necessity.
Byung-Chul Han says that the society of transparency is the society of distrust, where the only option is, precisely, control.
Thus we put a stop to our low instincts and give up our freedom.
Venezuelan political scientist