Humankind: A Hopeful History

Bregmans book is immensely populair at this moment in Holland. The central thesis is clear from the title, freely translated: Most people are OK. Bregmans, is a journalist and historic from Holland who gained fame by explicitering the need for tax reforms at Davos. In this book he argues that most people are OK in two different ways.

1. By summarizing study results that proof our good nature, that is, an preference for social cooperative behaviour and aversion to violence
2. Secondly by trashing exemplary research into the dark human nature and present examples that show the good nature of humans

For me his thesis is ridiculous. In our daily life we approach most people like they are OK. We don’t distrust our colleagues when they asked show more for help and there are always people standing up in public transport to free a seat for those who need it. These are the kind examples he gives of good behaviour.

Still, maybe this is not the kind of behaviour Bregmans wants to talk about. In the beginning of the book he states (from an personal email of a university teacher) that 97% of people belief that we are inclined to act fully in self-interest in panic situations.

However for this argument the research he presents is less convincing. This is because the ‘proof’ of our good nature falls mostly in the category ‘a la café’ and because he is not able to explicate these results in an synthesized framework.

Secondly because by trashing the research methods of i.e. Zimbardo’s prison experiment (where splitting up a group into prisoners and guards results into violence) he claims to prove that people are not inclined to show bad behavior. This however, is false reasoning, since the results of the Zimbardo experiment where always a presentation of how the context can make people bad. This is still standing, even if the researches (career driven lying pricks) where pushing for escalation. They where just a power structure within the context.

As Rutger Bregman states he hopes to follow Bentrand Russel’s maxim to never get distracted by what he believes. It is a pity that he doesn’t live up to this. As he states in the preface, his goal in this book is not to prove that people are angels, more that we have an preference for te good (p.31). He fails to do this because:

- He fails to make proper conclusions but merely summarizes a lot of research (which is interesting for sure!). But not explicitly derive the conclusion that this means ‘we’ are inclined to do the good in panic situations
- This leaves him with the meaningless proposition that most people are (most of the time) OK. What do you mean OK? When are we not OK? What does this mean for our OKness in general? (This defect of the book was, for me, compensated by the last couple of chapters where the question is no longer the prove of the central thesis, but how vitreous behavior can be stimulated)
- The question of evil is never a question of quantity but of quality. One person starting a fight in a bar can ruin the night for 30 OK-people. Magnifying the good intentions of the rest is not the point here. He does not address this but talks as if bad an good are leveled in equal measure. For example, the good behavior of (a lot) of people during WO II does not lessen the fact of the Holocaust.

It is noteworthy that this book is so popular. Why so? De meeste mensen deugen is written in a way that makes you feel like a marathon runner. You just kill the thing in a few hours, and this made me feel good indeed.

But this cannot be the only reason. What got my attention is the dualism created in the book between we (the 99%) and the leaders, scientist and politicians (the 1%). The most people are OK, but leaders… oef, the chances are high that they are psychopaths. In this way this book is a warm blanket that works as a sedative. We don’t have to feel guilty, because we are inclined to the good.[1]

So, should you read this book? I think so. Rutger Berman is a great collector of research and is able to summarize the information so you can read it with ease. On the other hand, be aware that this book is an ideological pamphlet and the results of most research can be interpreted in multiple ways. So, practice benevolence, but not everything is OK and not only the powerful are evil.

_________
[1] This is ideology and false with our direct experience. Though we think most people are OK we all now some examples where somebody is (as we say in Holland) ‘licking up, and kicking down’. Or for me growing up with brothers. I showed virtuous behavior, as well as evil sadistic behaviour to my younger brothers (not something i am proud about). show less

Bregman's premise is that we as a species are actually kinder and more altruistic than most of us honestly believe in their hearts when regarding humanity as a whole, and he provides compelling evidence of this assertion. A deep dive into university archives reveals that the Stanford prison experiment, often held up as a prime example of how humans can evolve into monsters in a surprisingly short span of time, was a hoax. Likewise, Milgram's shock experiment was not reported accurately and therefore doesn't hold up either when its results are scrutinized. Surprise, surprise — experiments and the academics behind them gain more notoriety if the findings are sensational. (This book actually made me feel much more suspicious than I had show more been previously about psychology.) These are just two of many examples cited by Bregman that suggest that in naturally occurring situations we are more likely than not to demonstrate altruistic behaviors. I recommend this book if you, like me, often feel as though there is little hope for humanity. While it may provide evidence that my fellow humans as a whole are really better people than I have perceived them to be, it is still difficult to let go of my cynicism. Maybe the awful folks are just the loudest. show less

Rutger Bregman set himself a really high-barrier task in his book Humankind. He wants to prove that Man is actually not violent, or bellicose, but peaceful, helpful and kind. To do it, he went back to all those famous, landmark social science studies we’ve all grown up believing. They show unequivocally that Man is selfish, self-centered, violent and wallowing in it. Bregman shows them to be faulty, false, staged or just plain bogus. It makes for an eye-opening journey readers will not soon forget. And he does it with style.

Readers will recognize the studies, like the Stanley Milgram electric shock study and the Stanford Prison study. He even goes after the Kitty Genovese murder case and Lord of the Flies. Bregman goes back to show more research not just the study or the book, but the author and the author’s own notes.

He uses an absolutely delightful structure. He describes the study, book or story, giving it all the credit it has always claimed, seemingly case closed, no argument possible. Then he starts researching, going back to original documents, and where possible, original participants. The story starts to crumble, and he ends up shaming the originators of the bogus findings. It makes a for a lively read of a very serious problem with Man: not violence, but fraud.

Man bites dog doesn’t sell as well as dog bites man. So newspapers focus on the sensational negatives, and don’t bother correcting stories when they prove false. Hollywood is all over sensationalism, mostly in the form of violence and gore. Everyone is always at war, always in a personal fight. Doesn’t matter if it’s Genghis Khan, Vikings or pilgrims. So viewers come to believe that they are accurate, that it is reality. That’s the way it always has been. That’s the way Man is.

For example, Bregman cites the Easter Island story. For centuries, it has been “known” that Easter Islanders raped the island and went to war with each other, finally eating each other as cannibals when the island could no longer support them all. It’s a classic that is in constant use to demonstrate Man’s selfish inhumanity to Man and total disregard for nature, not to mention the tragedy of the commons (which Bregman dismantles separately).

Only it never happened. Going back to the original ship captain’s logs, he shows that Easter Islanders were not just peaceful, they were thriving: joyously open and healthy. Not only did they not fight, they didn’t even know what weapons were. (The Dutch sailors showed them, mowing them down, then later enslaved them and left them with Plague.)

In the famous Stanley Milgram experiment, volunteers electrocuted people, almost to death. It was supposedly the answer to why Nazis could exterminate people so readily. But Milgram hid the fact that more than half the subjects believed his shock machine was fake, so it didn’t matter how high a shock they administered. And it only came out much later that Milgram’s assistant continually harassed the subjects into shocking the victim. The results were therefore not definitive in any way. Or even valid. But the study lives on as a foundational document and seminal moment in social science.

Similarly, the Stanford Prison Study proved that jailers plus prisoners will always lead to violence, causing the entire justice system to apply stricter rules that caused (and continue to cause) totally unnecessary violence in prisons. The truth is the researcher forced the violence by making it a we/them setup (with him leading the we as the warden), forcing the guards to be aggressively obnoxious, and imposing odious arbitrary and humiliating rules on the prisoners to get them to rebel. Literally millions of Americans have suffered as a result of this landmark study.

Meanwhile, in modern prisons in Norway, prisoners and guards live, work and play together, help each other in tasks, and prisoners leave ready to rejoin society at a higher level. It costs the state less, and recidivism is a fraction of the American rate. The author of the Stanford study lived off it his entire life, rising to the highest levels in psychology, never admitting what his notes showed was bogus science.

In the infamous Kitty Genovese murder, a New York woman screamed for help as she was being stabbed to death, while 38 witnesses did nothing. She died in the hallway of her apartment building in Queens, alone. This story went global, and demonstrated how inhuman humans had become in big cities, reverting to savage animals who couldn’t bother even to lift a phone to help.

Bregman went back and found that two people had called the police immediately, before the second attack took place, but the police never sent anyone. They decided Genovese must be drunk (it was 3:30 am). And she didn’t die alone. A woman in her building immediately rushed to her and cradled her in her arms until she died. Lastly, two men stopped a robber carrying a tv out of a house in broad daylight shortly thereafter, disabling his truck so he couldn’t get away. These two good neighbors turned out to have caught the Genovese murderer, but that was never reported either. No, it was preferable to leave the sensational story of uncaring New Yorkers and an unsolved murder fill the media forever after. Cities breed uncaring, leering animals remains the takeaway, despite the facts.

Even Lord of the Flies, which has long proven how beastly human children will be when left on their own, turns out to be bogus. This novel, read by every schoolchild in the country for 60 years, was written by William Golding, a man who professed Nazi sympathies, and had a worldview of violence and hatred. He made no pretense of it being scientific, but it has become key to the canon of innate violence in Man regardless. It fits our worldview, so it has become truth.

Bregman found a real case of Lord of the Flies, in which half a dozen kids on Tonga stole a boat and ended up shipwrecked on an island called ‘Ata in the 1960s. It took hard digging, but he tracked down the captain (now 90) of the boat that rescued them and got the whole story. After year, the boys were in excellent shape, finely toned, well organized, and now lifelong friends. Any time there was a disagreement on the island, the antagonists had to go to different ends to cool off, and had to shake hands and apologize when they came back. Wouldn’t make nearly as good a film as Lord of the Flies. And no one has ever heard of it outside Australia, where it has been forgotten. Meanwhile, Lord of the Flies is mandatory reading.

It’s not the common man, it’s his leaders that embody this evil nature. “Dictators and despots, governors and generals—they all too often resort to brute force to prevent scenarios that exist only in their own heads, on the assumption that the average joe is ruled by self-interest, just like them.” Bregman finds the farther one is from the front line, the easier it is to espouse violence.

There are lovely stories of how men find ways not to fight. Ninety percent of the muskets collected after the Battle of Gettysburg were loaded, often with two or more balls, as men used any excuse not to fire their weapons, pretending to be reloading rather than rushing into battle. At Christmas in 1914, Germans and Brits celebrated together, singing carols to each other from their trenches and then meeting to exchange gifts, play football, and carouse. To the point where the generals had to reinforce orders not to fraternize with the enemy. What enemy? “From Troy to Waterloo and from Korea to Vietnam, few armies have fought without the aid of intoxicants, and scholars now even think Paris might not have fallen in 1940 had the German army not been stoked on thirty-five million methamphetamine pills (a.k.a. crystal meth, a drug that can cause extreme aggression),” Bregman says.

As for guerilla organizations. he cites Erica Chenoweth who found that more than 50 percent of nonviolent campaigns were successful, as opposed to 26 percent of the militant ones. The primary reason, Chenoweth established, is that more people join nonviolent campaigns. On average over eleven times more. Turns out violence is way less appealing to ordinary people, even under duress.

Man is a domesticated animal, the finding of Richard Wrangham, from his excellent, groundbreaking book called the Goodness Paradox which I reviewed here: https://medium.com/the-straight-dope/homo-sapiens-domesticated-animal-6b233b91fd... As with other such beasts, from dogs to cattle, Man is smaller than his wild version the Neanderthal, and has much gentler features. Mostly, he is more peaceable and friendly than the wild species, just like with all domesticated animals. For us to have built this false collection of violent attributes, Bregman says, must simply be wrong.

Before modern times, tribes raised children together, partied with other tribes, shared food, and owned nothing. It was the rise of agriculture, the ownership of land and tools that started the route to wealth, inequality, protection of assets, selfishness and constant warring, Bregman says.

He extends the argument to capitalism, which he says was imposed from above. He says the Adam Smith version is wrong: “Now it turns out that this view is completely upside down. Our natural inclination is for solidarity, whereas the market is imposed from on high. Take the billions of dollars pumped in recent decades into frenzied efforts to turn healthcare into an artificial marketplace. Why? Because we have to be taught to be selfish.”

Bregman’s quest here was recognized three thousand years ago by Aesop. One of his fables was about the sun and the wind. They spotted a man in a cloak, walking along. The wind bet the sun he could get the cloak off the man. He blew and blew as hard as he could, and with every gust, the man clutched his cloak to him even tighter. Then the sun took his turn. With the wind dying down, the sun came out, the birds went back to singing, and the air became welcoming and pleasant. The man took his cloak off himself.

Not much has changed in 3000 years. Co-operation works better than force, no matter what binge-tv series present. And that’s how people actually operate.

We owe Rutger Bregman a debt of thanks for unearthing the truth behind these long-held frauds, and for starting to clear the air about human nature. It’s a lovely, lively, uplifting and scientifically important book.

David Wineberg show less

What’s your answer to this simple question?

Humans are innately ______.
A. selfish
B. good

Many of us will end up choosing option A as our answer. Rutger Bregman seeks to convince us that we have been brainwashed and it is, in fact, option B that is right.

Humans are essentially good. (Or so Bregman says!) And throughout this book, he provides an ample amount of evidence to support his claim. Whether it is from evolutionary history or research-based findings, hypothetical situations to actual incidents, historical to contemporary thinkers, he doesn’t leave any stone unturned in inducing you to change your viewpoint. Some of the researches he debunks are widely popular while others, you may not have heard of at all. But even single show more example he uses hits hard and shocks you at the extent of cultish brain-feeding resulting via the media and high-flying politicos.

Bregman reiterates one straightforward advice throughout the book: stay away from the news if you wish to stay mentally healthy. To quote him, “News is to the mind what sugar is to the body.” Another point he drills time and again is overcoming what he calls the “nocebo” effect. (Just as a placebo does nothing but makes you believe the situation is getting better, a ‘nocebo’ does nothing but makes you believe that the situation is getting worse.) Breaking News! The prime culprit for this “nocebo” is, once again, the “breaking news” media.

While the entire book is a delight to the mind (and the heart), I especially loved how he backed his claims with concrete examples and data. No half-baked assumptions (Hear that, Prof. Harari?), no biased declarations, no attacks on anyone or any ideology. Bregman’s voice is as intelligent and reassuring as the ideas he espouses are mind-blowing. At the end of the book, he provides ten tips on how to view humanity with hope than dread. Each of those points is practical and implementable, the icing on the cake. The way he writes is another bonus. He laces his content with plenty of comprehensible facts, provides a concrete rebuttal of urban factoids, and slips in enough of humour to keep the proceedings interesting even for those not much into nonfiction.

A few points in the content reminded me of another fabulous book, [b:Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think|34890015|Factfulness Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think|Hans Rosling|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1544963815l/34890015._SY75_.jpg|56144100] by [a:Hans Rosling|2790706|Hans Rosling|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1486521286p2/2790706.jpg]. This is natural as the essence of both the books is the same: the world has improved but we don’t know/realise it. At the same time, both the books have similarities in their subject matter but are different in their approach, Factfulness is more data /stat-oriented while Humankind is more anecdotal and research-based. As far as I’m concerned, both are excellently written, and must-reads. (Click HERE for my review on Factfulness.)

Has this Rutger Bregman offering changed my world view? Am I now an optimist about humanity? Not really. It will take more than one book to clear out decades of indoctrination (and an inherent tendency towards pessimism.) There were so many places where I wasn’t sure if the book was becoming too idealistic in its espousals or I was being too sceptical in imbibing the same. At the same time, it showed me so many varied, positive perspectives of human behaviour that I can’t help wanting to believe it entirely. And that hope, that optimism, that awareness that this cynical mire we seem to be stuck in might just be an illusion… that’s the biggest takeaway from this book for me. To borrow Bregman’s coined word, I needn’t be an optimist or an idealist, but I can certainly aim to be a “possibilist”.

If you are fed up of all the negativity around you, if the only positive news you see is about covid & you want a break from that, if you want a book that shows you that things are not as bad as everyone proclaims,… basically if you want a feel-good nonfiction that gives you some solace about being human, go for this book without any hesitation.

This book is choc-a-bloc with insightful lines. Here’s one of my favourites:
“Belief in humankind's sinful nature also provides a tidy explanation for the existence of evil. When confronted with hatred or selfishness, you can tell yourself, 'Oh, well, that's just human nature.' But if you believe that people are essentially good, you have to question why evil exists at all. It implies that engagement and resistance are worthwhile, and it imposes an obligation to act.”

***********************
Join me on the Facebook group, Readers Forever!, for more reviews, book-related discussions and fun.
Follow me on Instagram: RoshReviews show less

We're all familiar with the notion of a placebo. We all know how powerful placebos can be, but it's perhaps rarer to recognise the power of noceboes. In 'Humankind', Rutger Bregman is determined to disabuse us of one particularly devastating nocebo, 'veneer theory'. This is the widely accepted idea that our civil natures are only skin deep, papering over our "true" selfish, manipulative, deeper selves.

What if, Bregman argues, we are mistaken about our fundamental nature? What if Machiavelli was wrong, and in believing other people are selfish, we create the unkind world we perceive? Of course, if this is true - and Bregman is convinced of it - then the answer is simple: we need to adjust our perception of humankind to credit humans show more with, well, kindness.

-- What's it about? --

See above. Are we fundamentally selfish or cooperative as a species? How does our perception of humanity's nature affect our daily reality, including the laws governments use to control us?

Bregman examines commonly held exemplars and "proofs" of veneer theory and exposes the flawed beliefs and inaccurate information that such conclusions rest upon. Instead, he concludes that 'Kindness is catching. And it's so contagious that it even infects people who merely see it from afar.'

-- What's it like? --

Utterly fascinating. Deeply appealing. Potentially revolutionary. If Bregman is right - and I believe he is - then we hold the power to affect radical change in our communities, simply by changing the filter through which we see the world and acting accordingly at all levels, from the individual through to local and national government.

Whether he's debunking the theory behind Britain's blitz in 1940 or exploring what really happened when a young group of boys was marooned on a desert island, I was perpetually fascinated by the gap between public perception and reality. It turns out, being a realist is not the same as being a pessimist, and even terrorists benefit from your willingness to understand that under a weight of differences, you are both human.

-- Final thoughts --

Having studied psychology a little at school, I was particularly intrigued by Bregman's critical evaluations of certain famous psychological studies: Kitty Genovese and the bystander effect, Stanley Milgram's shock experiments and Zimbardo's prison experiment. Short version: the narrative surrounding them was fatally flawed and they don't prove what everyone believes they proved. The full details surrounding the manipulation of each scenario are shocking, but perhaps not as surprising as what happens if you drink tea with terrorists...

I feel like this should probably be required reading for everyone. It's a genuinely hopeful book that explores human history to arrive at a conclusion that surely connects with our deepest conviction - that we, ourselves, are good people. If we are fundamentally good natured, why do we persist in doubting that everyone else is? Maybe it's time to reject veneer theory once and for all. show less

Thomas Hobbes was wrong. The life of man without government was not nasty, brutish and short. Steven Pinker was wrong in ‘The Better Angels of our Nature’ (as I saw when I read it: he imagined deaths by fighting were immense the further you went back, but he left out hunter-gatherer peoples). It was when people settled down in villages that they had to begin worrying about property. Human nature is that most people are good most of the time.

Schoolchildren now study 'The Lord of the Flies'. It's propaganda. In 1966 six Tongan boys were marooned on a desert island. They got on fine till they were found 15 months later.

In the Second World War, most soldiers never actually shot anybody. And the Germans who refused to stop fighting when show more they could see they'd lost were not Nazis, they were fighting so as not to let down their mates.

The Easter Islanders did not destroy their island. They were fine till Europeans got there.

Those American experiments where “guards” ended up torturing “prisoners”, where people were giving each other electric shocks, where boys at a summer camp fought each other… By and large faked.
That woman in New York who was murdered while 38 people failed to call the police: there weren’t 38, there were two, and one was gay and afraid of being exposed (the other was nicknamed Adolf by local children).

In other words, an excellent book. show less

The thesis of Rutger Bregman's book is that the vast majority of human beings the vast majority of the time have good intentions. Not only that, but scientific research backs up this optimistic perception of human goodness. Furthermore, trusting in the goodness of others is key to the health and success of individuals and societies. It is the belief that humankind is inherently corrupt that is often manipulated to have people carry out evil. Accepting the "veneer theory" that human society is only a thin layer over the cruel and selfish human psyche is akin to the placebo effect, or in this case what Bregman calls the "nocebo" for its negative psychological effects.

Bregman breaks down what we "know" about human behavior by debunking a show more number of famed studies such as Stanley Milgram's obedience tests and the Stanford Prison Experiment, as well as histories of the collapse of indigenous society on Easter Island and the popular story of neighbors indifference to the murder of Kitty Genovese. After reading the truth behind these stories and how they were manipulated to make the worst possible reading, you might find yourself thinking humans are good but psychologists and journalists are evil.Bregman also contrasts the fictional Lord of the Flies with the real-life experience of Tongan boys who survived being stranded on a desert island for a year through cooperation.

After showing that many cases of humans descending to "savagery" actually had many instances of people wanting to help out, Bregman also explores experimental camps, schools and workplaces where children and adults are trusted to do the right thing with positive results. Bregman builds on existing philosophy, often contrasting the views of humanity of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes. He also draws on evolutionary biology that shows that cooperation was necessary for human survival and the desire to help is hardwired into humanity.

This is just the kind of book I needed to read right now and it's something I think everyone ought to read.

Favorite Passages:

Tine De Moor calls for"institutional diversity" - "while markets work best in some cases and state control is better in others, underpinning it all there has to be a strong communal foundation of citizens who decide to work together."

show less