Humankind: A hopeful history by Rutger Bregman

Author: Rutger Bregman. Review by Reg Naulty

This book presents scientific evidence showing that it is reasonable to hold a more realistic and positive view of human nature than is common. Many environmentalists see humans as a destructive plague on the earth. And the news gives a dispiriting picture of human beings. But Rutger Bregman points out that every day for the last twenty-five years the news could instead have truthfully reported that extreme poverty had come down by 137,000 since yesterday.

Some literary works have contributed to a low estimate of human nature – Lord Of The Flies, for example. That book presents a version of the theory that civilisation is a thin veneer which is easily destroyed by circumstance. Bregman is much concerned to refute that theory. Accordingly, he tells the true story of six boys who in 1965 became wrecked on a tropical island for fourteen months. They worked out a peaceful form of conflict resolution, and organised their slim resources so well that when they were finally rescued, they were all hale and hearty and on good terms with one another. 

Bregman has anthropological evidence to show that over the past 200,000 years, our faces and bodies have grown softer, more youthful and more feminine, and that people have become weaker, more vulnerable and infantile for longer. How then, did we prevail on the earth? Bregman answers that people are ultra-social learning machines. We crave togetherness and interaction. When it comes to choosing a mate, we select for kindness.

Given this optimistic picture, what does Bregman say about world war two and the Holocaust? To the excuse ‘I was just obeying orders’, used by Adolph Eichmann and others, Bregman replies that orders passed down by the Nazi bureaucracy tended to be vague, and that Eichmann and his like responded by doing the sort of thing they thought would please their superiors. No excuse there – Germany had a long ideological preparation. There is a difference between the leaders of Nazism and the rank and file in the army. Their motivation was comradeship, to look after their mates. The same goes for the footsoldiers of Islam. Three quarters of them were recruited by acquaintances, and they have scant knowledge of Islam.

Bregman has some astonishing statistics about soldiers on battlefields. In world war two more than half of US veterans never killed anyone. A huge database of statistics going back to 1900 shows that more than 50 per cent of nonviolent campaigns were successful, as opposed to 26 per cent of violent ones. More people, men women and children, join nonviolent campaigns – on average, eleven times more.

Our Covid-cursed and globally-warming times need a book like this. It puts faith in humanity on a firm foundation. It is a joy to read.

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Comments

This book is a tonic for the soul!

By nyinmodelek@btinternet.com on 14th August 2020 - 15:23

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