Book Review: Humankind - A Hopeful History
Do you remember that historian who went viral at Davos for brazenly calling out the attendees for not paying enough tax? Yeah, that guy. His name is Rutger Bregman, and he's written an uplifting book call Humankind: A Hopeful History.
Now, in August 2020, as we are in depths of Covid-19, inequality, divisive politics, fires in California, etc., I needed this: Bregman has a message about humanity that I was happy to hear: 'Most people, deep down, are pretty decent.'
The book begins with a take-down of many famous academic studies that anyone who has graduated with a social science degree knows well. This is the scholarship fundamental to the assumption underlying many economic models: that humans are self-interested, aggressive, and quick to panic.
Bergman takes these one-by-one and looks into the practical details underlying the research of these highly touted studies:
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins - It's from the 1970s, when the academic wave of human selfishness was at its peak and has not been properly challenged;
The Stanford Prison Experiment and Stanley Milgram's Shock Machine - 'the story of a driven psychologist chasing prestige and acclaim. A man who misled and manipulated to get the results he wanted. A man who deliberately inflicted serious distress on trusting people who only wanted to help.'
The Bystander effect: Remember that story about the woman in New York City who was being attacked and was screaming for help and none of her 37 neighbors came to her aid? Research into the detail of the circumstance tells a different story. It turns out that very few of those 37 people ever heard her screams and the woman, named Kitty Genovese, died in the arms of her friend Sophia. A journalist at the New York Times wanted to tell a sensational story. When asked why he hadn't put the information from Sophia and other friends that helped in the piece, he said, 'it would have ruined the story.'
Berman cites evidence for the positive view of humanity. I was unfamiliar with much of this:
What do bystanders do in emergencies according to a meta-analysis? 90% of the cases, people help each other out.
Why do humans blush? Why do they have shame? We are the only species known to blush. Blushing is social. It's people showing they care what others think, which fosters trust and enables cooperation.
We have whites in our eyes, which allows us to follow the direction of other peoples' gazes. Every other primate, across more than 200 specifics, produce melanin that tints their eyes.
In several war-time studies, researchers find most soldiers never fired their guns. In the US Air Force in WWII, less than 1% of fighter pilots were responsible for almost 40% of the planes brought down. Of the 27,574 muskets recovered from Gettysburg, 90% of them were still loaded. Most of modern warfare has distanced the act of killing through technology to make it easier for humans to 'pull the trigger.'
He posits that the evolution of our specifics was predicated on the 'survival of the friendliest' citing the research of Russian geneticist.
So, yeah, there is a catch. People are social animals, but we have a fatal flaw: we feel more affinity for those who are most like us.
How do you get humans to do violent acts? You tell them that they are doing good. Evil has to be disguised as doing good. Shock experiments are not about obedience. They are about conformity. The researchers also told participants that what they were doing was for the 'good of society'. They appealed to the moral purpose.
What do you have to watch out for, according to Bregman?
First, power corrupts. It makes leaders believe that they deserve to be treated differently. And those that seek that power have a greater tendency toward sociopathy, not understanding the feelings of others. Sociopaths lack shame, and shamelessness can be used as an advantage. Sociopaths don't blush.
Second, empathy blinds. Empathy makes us less forgiving because we identify with victims and generalize about our enemies. Instead of empathy, choose compassion.
Humankind forces you to consider a different view
Despite my natural skepticism, I found the book compelling. I was moved to think not 'what are all the ways this could be wrong' but rather 'what if it's all true?' And if it's even sort of true, it could be a much better way to live.
The book is also timely as our structures of government and economy are challenged. The rebels are beginning to rise up against concentrated market power (see Epic take on Apple, now the most valuable company in history with a $2T market cap this week). Lyft and Uber are under threat in California with their operating model. Bregman's line: 'all too often, the sharing economy turns out to be more like the shearing economy -- we all get fleeced.'
As an alternative to pure capitalism, he cites the Alaskan Permanent Fund as an example of a state-operated fund that uses the proceeds from oil revenue to pay out an annual stipend to every Alaskan. Bregman didn't make the leap but it made me connect more with the argument for Universal Basic Income (UBI). It also supports the need for more decentralization of power and decision-making. I guess I shouldn't be surprised upon further research that UBI is indeed a topic of Bregman's Ted Talk.