Review by Hester Brown
“This book will change your life” is not on the cover of Rutger Bregman’s ‘Humankind: a hopeful history’ but it will if you let it. This is an extraordinary book and Sam Becker, SELHuG committee member, did us all a favour by reading and excellently summarising it for us for our June meeting.
People are basically good and kind – that is the radical idea underpinning the book. Our society is full of voices telling us to be cynical about human nature. The papers are full of crime, war and people behaving badly. Novels and films often explore the seamy and dark side of our behaviour.
What would you say if asked, “Will boys marooned on a desert island turn on each other?” (Lord of the Flies scenario.) Or, “Is war inevitable because of human nature?” For war substitute inequality/poverty/patriarchy/slavery and any number of social evils. Or, “Would we torture other people if told to by the authorities?”
One by one, Bregman takes the myths and looks at the evidence. And finds that most of the time, people behave well. One truly sobering finding is that to a certain extent we see what we want to see. Those cynical ideas shape what we expect, and what we expect shapes what we experience. We can’t believe people behave well and we don’t see it when they do – the ideas are too strong.
Just think of the sense of wellbeing and hope we could all feel if we saw how good people are – including ourselves.
Ah but, you say, how come there is so much terrible stuff going on in the world all the time? Well – it isn’t just that we can’t see the good stuff. And it’s not just that it is easier to assume the poor are always with us etc because it lets us off the hook of having to do something about it. Humans do have a big flaw. And then some.
Which is why you have to read the book – and Sam’s excellent notes attached – to find out what those are and what we can do about it. Because we can.
