麻豆传媒

Humankind: A hopeful history

Rutger Bregman

Bloomsbury (Buy from *)

IN 1651, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes startled the world with Leviathan, an account of the good and evil lurking in human nature. Hobbes argued that people, when left to their own devices, were naturally vicious. Fortunately, they were also gregarious, and it was through their groups, societies and civilisations that people expressed their best selves.

For those with anxious minds, the trouble with Hobbes鈥檚 view is that civilisation is just a thin veneer over underlying darkness. Rutger Bregman鈥檚 Humankind: A hopeful history builds a case for believing otherwise.

Bregman is a historian who went viral in 2019 after lambasting the global elite at the World Economic Forum for not paying their fair share of taxes. Since then, he has made a name for himself as a sort of utopia advocate.

This book is very much in the same vein. Bregman believes that assuming humans are innately bad leads to bad politics and economics. He says that we need to believe in human goodness to get a better world, and to build his argument, he tries to upend examples of human badness.

Once the inhabitants of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) had chopped down many of the trees on the island, their civilisation didn鈥檛 fall apart in an all-against-all resource war, says Bregman. It instead thrived through teamwork and agricultural innovation 鈥� until Europeans arrived, bringing diseases and the slave trade. When Catherine Susan Genovese was murdered in New York City in 1964 鈥� the notorious incident that added the 鈥渂ystander effect鈥� to the psychological lexicon 鈥� her neighbours didn鈥檛 just watch from their windows and do nothing. They called the police, and her neighbour rushed out to hold her as she was dying.

鈥淚n 1965, a group of boys became trapped on a Tongan atoll. Rather than turning on each other, they survived鈥�

Another story from the book, which seems to have gone viral after The Guardian published an extract, is a real-life counterpoint to William Golding鈥檚 Lord of the Flies. In 1965, a group of boys became trapped on a rocky Tongan atoll without fresh water for more than a year. Rather than turning on each other, they survived, stayed fit and healthy, successfully set a lad鈥檚 broken leg and formed friendships that have lasted a lifetime.

Bregman then turns his attention to classic psychological experiments. The BBC tried to recreate Philip Zimbardo鈥檚 Stanford prison experiment many years after it was first run. Instead of the participants cast as prison guards torturing those playing prisoners, they sat around drinking tea.

Stanley Milgram鈥檚 experiment, where volunteers were persuaded to electrocute a person until they appeared to be near death (an actor was, in fact, in on the plan), has been interpreted completely wrong, argues Bregman. People weren鈥檛 unthinkingly obeying orders: Milgram鈥檚 transcripts show that people were desperate to do the right thing, and their anxiety made them frighteningly easy to manipulate, he says.

Bregman argues that this implies we are all desperate to be good people, so we must learn to give people a chance. And if we do so, this produces good results.

For instance, Halden prison, a maximum-security facility in Norway, gives people convicted of the most serious offences a canteen with stainless steel knives and porcelain plates, and cells with flatscreen TVs. Judged by the rate at which its inhabitants reoffend, it is among the most effective prisons in the world.

Since 2004, the entire municipal investment budget of Torres in Venezuela has been decided by a public vote. Ten years after the policy was enacted, a University of California study showed that the town had achieved several decades鈥� worth of progress, as measured in new schools, new roads and reduced corruption.

Humankind鈥榮 positivity is refreshing. Of course, every example has been cherry-picked to fit Bregman鈥檚 central belief, but that doesn鈥檛 detract from it being a gripping read. It just means you shouldn鈥檛 pick it up hoping for a rigorous scientific treatise on the human condition. Instead, it is a compelling philosophical argument for the benefits of focusing on the positive over the negative 鈥� and that seems particularly important right now.