Happy new year! Those of you who have been here from the very beginning may recall that I've already done a video on the subject, back in 2020. That video is now unlisted (but still accessible through one of my playlists). With over two years of experience making videos now, I realised I had a bit more to say and I wanted to say some of the things I already said differently. Hope you all enjoy it!

Barely 12 seconds into the first video of the first 11 days of new year and Drew already hitting us with a full on identity crisis. Lets get into it.

Empathy for others especially in the group is such a basic human emotion that is even primary to mammals and other animals in general and quite possibly all of life.

"The world will descend into chaos without the state!" "... did the state tell you that?"

While there's no shortage of philosophers of Anarchism, quite few can put into words this incredibly complex theme and make it sound easy to understand and listen. Love you.

Love how I get two notifications for Andrew; one for being mentioned in the description and one for post notifications. It's like two alarms 😅

The gentleness of the vocal delivery in combination with the beautiful art truly makes this channel stand out. Amazing work! The belief in a rigid human nature is one of those bedrocks of hierarchical thinking that falls apart on closer inspection yet is so easily promoted. When we hear news about a catastrophe the focus lies heavily on the institutional response as well as opportunistic crime. The reasons for the crime and the many acts of kindness and cooperation are little more than footnotes, if that. Hmm… Strangely enough that narrative does sometimes change when a disaster happens in a developed country. I wonder why.

The musical chairs bit was brilliant

"I am because we are" is a beautiful phrase.

This is a solid analysis. I am reminded of the quote from the introduction of Davids Wengrow and Graeber's The Dawn of Everything; "It follows that arguing about whether humans are fundamentally good or evil makes about as much sense as arguing about whether humans are fundamentally fat or thin." EDIT: Wow! I did not notice The Dawn of Everything was a source for the video when I wrote the comment, but now I can see how some of the themes came up in the video. Again, I really dig the excellent analysis.

‘We are not hateful creatures, We are good. Our goodness screams for peace. Everything that’s happened can be felt. Each mouth deserves to speak Whichever words come to it in the throws of truthful feeling. But instead We plunge to numbness. It’s much safer, safety’s so appealing’ Radical Empathy, Kae Tempest. I struggle fully accepting that humans have an engrained nature towards empathy, I struggle with the logic of that, but I adore the sentiment. So much of what we think is natural is only necessary because we are forced into action and belief. Beneath the confines of the systems of our upbringing, there is an empathy and a desire for peace that is constantly crushed and rejected because it is so difficult to enact in our societies. Thank you for this video, so far it’s been great, I’m sure it’ll be enlightening by the end :)

Great video! I learned about the Akan philosophy of personhood in college and it's really great to hear about the parallels found in other distinct cultures! The Kropotkin quote was sick too!

Our greatest evolutionary strength is our ability to cooperate. Does that make it part of human nature? I would say yes.

Beautiful; thank you.

Just a quick note that while the notion of "ubuntu philosophy" is first developed in the 50s. Ubuntu is an age old cosmology, carried within oral history traditions. Its earliest refrences in text appear in the early 19th century. Xx from 🇿🇦 always love your work

We are born of one breath, one word We are all one spark, eyes full of wonder

As an aspiring author I relate to this discussion so much. I have so much anger for what we do to our world but we also create art, literature, we make huge selfless sacrifices for those we love, we are curious and want to explore and it feels wrong to perpetuate the "we are cancer/virus" narrative or saying that we are forever doomed to be soulless consumers. There's so much more to humanity, we all just need to learn and help each other learn how to nurture those better sides of ourselves.

thank you for summing up Animism so well, i hadnt realized that that was the right word for how i feel

I’m currently living abroad, but your videos make me SO excited to move back home and start my own community based projects! I know it won’t be easy, but even just the idea that we could get more in touch with the environment we live in and the peoples that live beside us gives me the encouragement to try! All power to all the people 💕

holy shit the musical chairs bit is insane

Damn, that section at 9:25 is waaaaaayyyy too real, especially the Chairs for Africa. Modern life has truly turned into an absurd, brutal caricature of itself

We seek safety but at the same time we are the reason none of us are safe.

Always wonderful to get another of your videos! Thanks, Andrew!

Your channel is what turned me towards anarchism. Your videos paint what I’d consider to be the best possible future outcome for the world, not utopic but tangible, positive organization of human society. Between solar punk and commons and library economies and liberation from oppressive powers, it’s just too good of a potential to settle for alternatives that shrug at injustices or hierarchies as necessary

Video after video, you exceed expectations. I think it's really great to cover topics multiple times over because you synthesize your ideas and find new ways of discussing said topics. Much love :)

I am crying actual happy tears at the optimism inherent in these these truths. Thank you for reminding me, in my old age, of the possibilities for human greatness. We'll never know unless we try!

I'm gonna be paraphrasing here but something that Dr. Gabor Maté said that I find absolutely true: human nature cannot be defined by our behaviour, since there is a huge spectrum of behavours possible for humankind and great variation between individuals. Human nature is defined by our needs. And our behaviour is influenced by the extent to which our needs have been met or not met. A healthy and happy human being who has all of their needs met has no reason to do bad and will naturally want to do good.

Science is showing more and more that human nature is cooperative. When we cultivate safety and trust, honesty and generously, the possibilities are endless. Roxy Manning is an amazing resource on reframing this narrative in deep connecting ways.

At this point I just assume that anyone who claims that humans are "naturally" selfish, greedy, violent, evil etc. is simply projecting. Consider yourself judged, misanthropes.

Inspirational my dude 🙏 you make the complex common sense in the best way

Your videos are like poetry. ❤

9:25 mr beast reference!!

That’s a great first image to use and another great video as always

"Reciprocity, not extraction." Excellent video essay! The Musical Chairs Death Battle was smack on target, and the Chairs for Africa as the sponsor!

Your videos always cheer me up.

"It won't happen overnight," I know. But I do yearn to find folks who are truly understanding and want to have hope. Maybe I've been too long grinding through the gears of a patriarchal, end-stage Capitalist world, displaced countless times c/o generational trauma that keeps coming around... Thank you for your truly beautiful insights into the world. It makes the pain a little less. Feeling disconnected, maybe that's my problem, as I'm trying to balance fear and trust. I'll give it another listen. I think I need it. Peace

Human nature is heterogeneous on the small scail while being remarkably homogenous on the large scail. There is tremendous variability between people, but every kind of person is found in every group (that does not select for sertan traits). Polotical disposition within a culture is largely reducible to psychological disposition. Arnald Shroder talks alot about these topics in his podcast "Fight Like An Animal", specifically try "the nature nerture death spiral" series.

Love this video! It addresses one of the more exhausting assumptions that tends to underlie all far-right ideology: the belief that humans are "naturally" selfish, greedy, pointlessly hierarchical, and cruel. I tend to approach this as a biologist, pointing out that cooperation, altruism, and community generally form the basis of social animals, from primates to ants. Evolutionary biology doesn't favor individuals of social species who are selfish, greedy, pointlessly hierarchical, and/or cruel. While members of the far-right like to pretend they're all facts, no feelings, in their analyses of the world, even empirical evidence of modern and historical human societies doesn't support their views.

First video I've seen. Really curious what your ideas are about this topic. I always found this interesting. I think man has a preferred state. The human brain wants certain things socially that lead to concepts like rights. Being a group species. We need each other. Human nature to me, is really just a simplistic reduction of what the brain does or prefers. It's the brain. Most prefer peace. Most prefer stable families. Most prefer freedom. A lot of what we think is bad is really just the few taking advantage of the many. Taking advantage of our nature.

thanks for your videos for giving more perspectives and words (animist for example) for the things i stand for. i don't think i would describe myself as an anarcist, but that is maybe because of miscommunication and the we have different understandings of the word. but that is most conflict

How many came here from the Second Thought video? 🙋🏾‍♂️

The philosophy. the possibilities. the music. Music? Musical chairs.

Andrew as another Trini, hearing you on an FD Signifier video was fucking badass. Really makes me consider doing this myself. Thanks for existing.

I appreciated the point about how it's impossible to make observations about general human behavior when we live in an overtly capıtalist system. I have noticed that context is often removed from discussions- like ' x happened and that is bad ' why did X happen? Why was that bad? Who defines what is bad and good and what even is X? I feel like there are so many questions people never ask. A question I have for you, if you have time, is how do we pass on information about societal reorganization in a thoughtful way? One of your videos talks about how we should avoid sharing information that is a liabilıty to others, and obviously there have been bad actors in the past who prevented large scale systematıc change by passing information on to authorı tıes. What are your thoughts on navigating the need for unity and openness & the need to protect ourselves, eachother and the mọvement? Thank you for this video! I am so excited to see what videos you have planned this year. Your videos are always masterpieces imo.

2 wolves and one wolf tells me to like and subscribe! thanks Andrewism!

I'm currently reading "The dawn of everything, a new history of humanity" which covers the same theme and i was so excited to be able to watch your video on the topic!!

You are good at accents! It took me a few sentences to realise you were doing the fake accents in the musical chairs (except for the Haiti character and the commentator I think - done by an African American), I can detect some of your natural vowels slipping through there. I would still love to know where your accent comes from, like I have said in another comment (I do not expect you to have read it) it sounds like a mixture of a Caribbean accent and Welsh.

Great video as always comrade!

Thank you, mr.! A delightful work as usual!

I've always believed it is our altruism that has allowed us to survive the worst that those in power throw at us.

The African head sculptures are amazing

Thiiiiis is what I needed with my lunch. Thanks!

The entirety of the Human Experience cannot and must not be merely I fight you and you fight me.

İt's 3.30 AM, I'm hitting a blunt cause I can't sleep and this is just what I needed. The more I listen to amdrewism 's videos, the more I think this is my favourite channel on yt

I really needed this dose of hope. Thank you.

This was gorgeous! Thank you so much...

Ppl talking about human nature definitely number one gripe for me and you couldn't have done a better job unraveling the many fallacies out there

I really love the art used in your videos and love that you credit them at the end.

This is some really deep shit. These perspectives are needed especially today. Really enlightening stuff. Thanks.

Fascinating essay, your understanding of HUMAN NATURE is very intellectual, yet you used simple words to articulate your ideas and thoughts in a straightforward manner. Keep it up!

Just discovered your channel and my god, I can already tell I'm going to be obsessed. Hope it keeps growing!

12:15 After hearing the name I absolutely lost it while riding the tram, good job! 17:15 The word "mythology" is very apt here, since "mythology" (or "myth") can be thought of as this kind of pre-science, pre-philosophy package of stories, which explain everything. Morality, ontology, cosmology, social stability, politics, education, religion (in the modern sense), the meaning of life - all of that comes undifferentiated in myths. And the most important is that you are in this story as well - so, living mythically, you look at the sun, and remember the origin of the world, the cycle of human life, what is good, and, most important, what you should do next. Similarly, when you look at a self-help video, or an ad, or an election speech, you know who humans are, how your country came to be, how the market created this world around you, and your place in all this - that next you should work harder, spend more, and go vote for the reasonable candidate. Then, when your cycyle of life progresses, you'll give your children education for a good job, and you yourself will retire, and reap the benefits of your earlier labor. For that is living in harmony wiith human nature. Alternately, unlike the chump from the previous paragraph, you could be one of the winners, the go-getters, with a natural human bloodlust, competitiveness, and the desire for more, which drives progress and innovation. For that is living in harmony with human nature too. Dang... With all this moral progress, it still seems like the old-timey myths were somehow better than the new ones, when it came to human nature🤔

some amazing artwork in this one!

closed captions 🔥

9:25 suddenly mr. beast. this weirdly seems like something slightly more absurd than what he already does

16:03 mmm, yes, splendid and indeed scrumptious use of captions, please do carry on

All power to all the people ! Thank you again for another great video!

This is excellent. So many critical ideas here, elegantly articulated yet they hit like a freight train.

Whenever people bring up "human nature" and selfishness, destruction, etc I mention the millions of years of cooperation and harmony we lived in with eachother and nature. I don't usually get a response, and when I do it's usually a division

I haven't yet watched your video, but I'm sure it's going to be a good one. I want to let you and your friends know about a person I believe is crucial to understanding what we call human nature. His name is Wilhelm Reich, (1897 - 1957). He's a very misunderstood thinker/scientist. He started as a follower of Sigmund Freud while in medical school, quickly becoming Freud's choice to carry on the legacy of psychoanalytic theory. In the 1920's, Freud changed his original idea of energy coming from eros, to the view we now all know where the mind is governed by a balance between eros, the life instinct, and thanatos, the death instinct. Reich believed thanatos was rubbish. Reich believed bad behavior, thoughts, feelings, etc, was the result of repression of eros. In 1933, Reich wrote his most important book, The Mass Psychology of Fascism. It's long and requires a lot of slow reading, but it's a life changer. The rest of Reich's work is built upon his early psychological and sociological findings. In the 1920's, he became a member of the Communist Party of Austria, and as a result, Freud stopped his professional relationship with Reich, and replaced him with the capitalist friendly Carl Jung. Freud's daughter, Ana, forced Reich out of the International Psychoanalytic Association. The Soviet Union welcomed Reich's ideas before Stalin solidified his control over the country. The early years after the revolution were filled with expansive hope and imagination, where Reich's ideas were a natural compliment to the early Soviet feminist thinker Alexandra Kollontai. As we all know, Stalin's idea of Marxist socialism was anything but open to new definitions of what a person is. Conventional definitions reigned under Stalin and Reich was out. Hitler put Reich on his hit list, and at once Reich was a man without a country, without a profession, and without a political group courageous enough to accept him. Long story short, the essence of Reich's work is that the body leads, and the mind follows. I realize this is very counter intuitive, but it makes a lot of sense once you understand. There is a lot of nonsense about Reich on the internet. Many anti-socialist/anti-communist cranks consider him one of their own. There are a lot of people who over emphasize the role of sex in Reich's ideas. And there are also a lot of people who are new age spiritualists who focus on Reich's later work with energy. All of these people distort Reich's ideas and twist them so that they fashion Reich in their own image. It's a shame. The simple, difficult truth is that if one is to understand his work, one has to start at the beginning, and read his books, especially his early books that deal with social science. His later work on biological energy is the logical progression that comes out of his sociology. It's not possible to understand his later work without first understanding his early work. Here's the best link that I can find on the internet. It really does justice to Reich. Please check it out. Thanks, and just to let you know, I am going to copy and paste this and put it on the KZfaq channel, What's Politics. That guy is amazing and like yourself, needs to know this is out there. orgonomicscience.org/wilhelm-reich/

you listing names is so impressive. i love your video and am happy to learn some more on your channel

In one former video you quoted an ecologist who said that what makes something into a parasite is essentially a disruption in it’s natural environment, so what then transformed humans into a virus etc etc. To take that a little further, basically all substantial evidence we have points to humans being a social species with an inherent desire to care for and help others. Secondly no one I think would disagree that a society with values like community and love and connection is a bad thing yet we can all agree that a human nature of selfishness and greed is bad. So I would ask what disruption occurred to make human nature selfish and greedy

Yet another banger. Thank you for posting

this is a great video. loved it all, and as always i love what you do

The Last Good Andrew

One could argue that it is human nature to steal from others. And I would answer that yes it is human nature to hunt and to gather. The problem is our current system that allows others to own excessive unused assets and then calls it a crime when someone other than the owner chooses to use them.

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name!

I love the artwork you use in your videos. Also, the speech Empire gives is kinda epic, it sounds like something from the Iliad. It suppose it's such a scary threat because he got what he wanted (for now, at least).

I watched an economics video recently that said economics is a science that seeks to solve the problem of infinite desires vs limited resources. But there is science that shows that humans get very little happiness out of money and things once their needs have been met. How do we find ourselves trying to find a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. I don't know anybody with infinite desires, it is only the sick few who think they can own anything and everything.

Your video essays always manage to hit hard.

YESYESYES Tayo COLORMIND.!!! Great job!!!💙💙💙

love you videos, and how this one put a lot of thoughts into actual words and inspiration. wish you the best

".. the somehow impoverished people of Africa" omfg im dead

*How Human Nature Works* Human nature is the desire to receive, also called “desire to enjoy,” and it functions by receiving what is beneficial to itself and rejecting what is harmful. Everything in our lives is built upon this calculation where we first try to distance ourselves from harm, and then seek how to draw ourselves closer to what is beneficial. Human nature also includes a multilayering of systems that work simultaneously on still, vegetative, animate and human levels. One of those systems is our bodily one, which operates involuntarily. If our bodies are healthy, then they know what is good for them and draw that goodness to themselves. After the bodily system, there is the emotional system, which also functions relatively according to instinct. From the emotional system, we move to the mind, and from the mind to the intellect, and so on. That is, we have systems over systems that concurrently work on receiving what is beneficial and rejecting what is harmful. Such is human nature and the essence of our lives. Our every desire, thought and action operates according to the calculation, “How can we receive what is most beneficial to us and reject what is harmful?”

I stopped at the first three lines of this video and said too deep for 11:30pm😂 let’s watch this tomorrow

Another banger

Maby your best Work jet, thank you for sharing, much Love❤️

banger as usual!!

I love this perspective

I agree with all that and at the same time I feel like human nature doesn't need to be evil for it to be a problem. The issue isn't that human are naturally oppressive, it's that oppression isn't against our nature either. I'm like, anarchist in theory in that I really vibe with anarchist ideas and an anarchist society would be very close to what I see as an ideal society. But I've never seen a strong case as to how to preserve such a society from hierarchical structures and power accumulation. Political ideas seeking hegemony do not need to be common they just need to exist and maybe the first tyrant will be pushed back against, maybe the tenth but since there is no structure in place to stop attempts at becoming a tyrant (be it by individuals or groups I'm talking in a broad sense) it's a never ending battle and it just takes one failure for all the progress done to be ereased and for new structure of powers to emerge and start seeking hegemony. I know wondering how to preserve a peaceful egalitarian world seems like it's thinking a bit too far when we don't even really know how to get there yet, but considering how experimentation systematically get crushed by states and I doubt we'll be able to establish worldwide anarchy instantly so an anarchist society will necessarily have to coexist for a time with other structures of power I feel like knowing how to not be overtaken by these is an essential part of the process. And I just don't really know what we can do about that. I know I'm a bit far off the topic of the video and also probably a bit too pessimistic considering the optimistic vibe of this channel but I dunno, that's where that line of thinking led me and I thought I'd share.

I really loved the in depth analysis!

Well said, this was amazing. Thank you.

Wow… I pressed on this video not expecting much, but was rewarded by a wonderful, detailed, nuanced exploration of human nature and interrogation into our preconceived notions about it! Thank you for this gem of a video! Hope you keep creating such videos for ever!

Bro the enlightenment era got everything wrong about human nature. Holy moly we progressed in spite of liberalism.

Very powerful! Thank you!

Great video!

thanks for your work!❤️🏴🖤

Thanks much. Your channel is amazing.

Great stuff as always

2:14 I will admit that my Misanthropy comes from sense of defeat, humans seemingly just can't change. We're always fighting, murdering, raping, pillaging, conquering, dying, and betraying each other. How do we escape this? How do we correct the human condition to burn away our evils? Is there even such a choice? Are doomed to hurt each other over and over until our inevitable extinction? There's just too much pain our world. I wish to live in a world where brothers need not kill each other for the petty whims of dictatorial despots and where women need not fear men who can not control their own urges, a world where we have moved on from fearing trans people and world where our lives have some meaning instead of our capitalist nightmare.