#318 – Humankind by Rutger Bregman

Things aren’t looking great right now, are they?

The kind of chaos that used to be something we heard about on the news maybe once a week is now a daily event, and for a not-insignificant portion of the population, it seems empathy has become a dirty word.

It’s easy to feel powerless. It’s easy to believe there isn’t hope. It’s all too easy to believe that humanity is full of selfish animals who, if they are not kept in check, will destroy itself.

We’ve been raised with all kinds of evidence to support this. You’ve almost certainly heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971, where students were made into prisoners and guards and we saw how quickly we devolved into our worst selves.

We also know how complicit people can be in allowing evil acts to happen, or even participate in them. Perhaps you’re familiar with the Shock Machine experiment by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s? People thought they were administering more and more dangerous shocks to their subjects, and continued to do so even after the subject begged them to stop, all because a guy in a lab coat told them to.

Or just look at any war and you’ll see just how ready we are to follow orders and shoot at our fellow human beings.

And what about the Bystander Effect? The most famous example in the US might be the death of Susan Genovese in New York in 1964, where nearly 40 people witnessed her being stabbed multiple times… and did nothing. It has been brought up over and over by politicians trying to make a point about crime, even in the last decade.

Even our stories are full of these dire warnings. Take Lord of the Flies. Didn’t that story just smack true to you? Bunch of kids on a deserted island, and in short order they become savages. It might be fiction, but it felt very believable, didn’t it?

You’re probably familiar with some, if not all of these examples. And if you’re nodding your head right now, remembering how they resonated with you and revealed the harsh truth of what humanity is like… I’ve got some bad news for you.

Well, actually, it’s good news. Because you’re dead wrong on all counts. Hooray!

Humankind: A Hopeful History is not your typical history book. Written by Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, it explores what the actual nature of humanity is in a variety of ways. It looks at philosophy, psychology, genetics, and, of course, history. 

More importantly, it looks at the defining points of the histories and studies that many of us learned in school and re-examines at them with surprising detail, often revealing how the studies were heavily skewed to get the expected results, rather than would actually happen, or skewed by the media because the media lives on sensationalism. Or both.

Bregman’s writing is very accessible. It’s not a slog or a long-winded lecture, but reads more like an engaging conversation with a good friend, and is full of fun and humour. I’ve believed for a long time that a touch of humour and a light tone is by far the best way to help get your point across.

But just because it’s fun to read doesn’t mean it’s not well researched. Out of a 450 page book, the last 50 pages are notes where he cites his sources. Feel free to fact check him.

Bregman doesn’t just take you on a tour of history’s greatest hits and tell you “everything you know is wrong,” however. He builds his thesis from the ground up. He looks at the conflicting philosophies of Jean-Jaques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbs and whether humanity is only kept in check by a thin veneer of civilization.

He then looks at modern science and the real reasons why humans are more intelligent than our ape cousins (which will surprise you). He even looks at the study of domestication of foxes in Russia and what the findings there have to say about the link between intelligence and friendliness.

Only then does he start getting into the famous case studies that have shaped what we currently believe about humanity. Was it really just the air of authority and a lab coat that got people to administer stronger and stronger shocks to people in the Milgram experiment, or something else? Did the Stanford students pretending to be prison guards really get drunk on power? Did over 30 people see a woman get stabbed and just go “not my problem?”

You quickly learn that what you grew up believing wasn’t at all a depiction of reality. Bregman doesn’t just debunk these studies and news stories, he shows the lasting damage they have had on us, because they reinforce a story that we are constantly told to believe: that people are just no damn good.

Early on, he discusses the dark side of the placebo effect, the nocebo. Just like a placebo can make us feel better if we’re ill, a nocebo has been proven to make us feel ill even when we’re fine. And the effects of both placebo and nocebo extend far beyond sugar pills. It affects how we learn, how we interact, how we see the world—all based on what we’re told to expect.

That’s what we end up seeing happen, time and again. Nocebos become self-fulfilling prophecies. We’ve used these flawed studies and news stories to justify policies that have only made things worse. And despite having been disproven, they are still constantly brought up to justify bad policy.

Bregman doesn’t shy away from the atrocities we’ve inflicted upon our fellow human beings. Far from it. But he digs deeper as to the motivations behind them at the personal level. And that’s more important than you might realize.

It’s all too easy to dismiss people as monsters when they do monstrous things. The problem is that will get you no closer to understanding why they do it. And we’re not talking about the sociopaths here (that’s a whole other matter), just regular people who allow themselves to do terrible things.

Why does that matter? Well, no amount of yelling is going to make them stop. No amount of telling them they’re wrong, or calling them monsters will work. It just won’t. And using violence will only have them respond in kind. All you do is reinforce their view that you are the enemy, and validate their beliefs. You become the nocebo. It’s the wrong approach.

What is the right approach? Well, that’s why I want you to read this book. There is no single answer, there is only a greater understanding. But understanding provides more tools at your disposal to deal with these problems.

If you feel powerless right now, if you think the wild train we’re on can’t be stopped, this book will change your mind. Because understanding is the key to making change, even small ones. And the way to make big changes is to start small in all the right places.