Humankind: A Hopeful History
by Rutger Bregman
February 18, 2021 — February 27, 2021
Los Angeles, CA
A gift from Henry Elkus, Founder and CEO of Helena
I’m mind-blown by this amazing book. It will have you hooked as you rediscover the truth about the history of our humanity and behavior; through historical records, the truth behind the scenes of notorious research examples, philosophical debates, literature revisions, and beautiful stories. I literally had to set a timer to keep myself from continuously reading it as I forgot about meals and errands. What I liked a lot about this book is that the concepts, examples, and lessons found in other books are found here and further explained, I consider it to be a compilation of goodness which is concluded by his 10 rules to live by. I’m glad I delayed this book in my reading queue because there couldn’t have been a better time to read this than now; with all the tension rising and the recent hardships I’ve been experiencing with our main project in Egypt (getting hustled, hijacked, and hacked). When you’ve been fighting despicable personalities (scumbags) on a daily basis and need to cooperate with the military forces, adopting their protective mindset, to resolve bullshit and nothing seems to work; you’ll understand how I felt… the Hobbesian perspective that most people are inherently evil and cannot be trusted. This is also how the modern world encourages us to think and hold a grim view of society through its media, whether it’s the news or arts. In reality, the author promotes this radical idea: That most people, deep down, are pretty decent.
This book is a must-read that I highly recommend, this post only covers ⅕ of the topics discussed. It goes further into the idea of true democracy, better prison systems, why corruption rises and remains, revealing the other side of the bystander effect, and much more that had me writing notes everywhere on this book. Before I begin, I will list the 10 rules to live by: When in doubt, assume the best ― Think in win-win scenarios ― Ask more questions ― Temper your empathy, train your compassion ― Try to understand the other, even if you don’t get where they’re coming from ― Love your own as others love their own ― Avoid the news ― Don’t punch Nazis ― Come out of the closet: don’t be ashamed to do good ― Be realistic.
We begin with a crisis, it brings the best out of people as we begin truly caring for one another, the more we get hit, the thicker our skins grow and we become resistant (a concept I touched upon in the book Tribe by Sebastian Junger about Egyptians in the GCC). An incredible part of this book presents how the media has painted a completely false and opposite image of the reality of humanity, that we are all about self-interest and anarchy rather than courage and charity. As discussed in the book Give and Take, you see the people and humanity in our own image, your thoughts of others reflect your thoughts about yourself. We assume good if we think we are good and vice versa. Usually, the self-fulfilling prophecy of believing in oneself is talked about in books about business success and psychology (like Think and Grow Rich), however, what was interesting is that this book took it from a different perspective and talked about humanity. Whatever we believe influences how we think and act on that belief, therefore it will lead to that belief becoming the reality. We view the world as a whole different place than we view our nuclear community, assuming that selfishness runs in everything others do. We learn that this cynical view of the world is false.
The news is a drug and a mental health hazard that makes things are getting worse because we aren’t presented with the good things as much. The world is actually improving and great things happen every day, but the media plays on our negativity and availability biases. It isn’t just the news, it’s also the movies and books that paint false images of people; such as Lord of the Flies, being presented a barbaric example instead of what would happen in reality of people uniting and cooperating. Human evolution is a result of developing over time due to fixing our struggles to alleviate the suffering, it’s not our strength or cleverness that led to our survival as homo sapiens but our friendliness! Through social learning that allowed us to cooperate and work together, we didn’t kill the Neanderthals to survive longer, we were just more social than them. That being said, we do have an affinity for those who look more like us and we are hardwired for solidarity (which makes violence difficult for us in general). In history, it was easy to get along, however, when humans became settlers instead of nomadic hunters we began taking possession of things and establishing the concept of ownership and privatization. This was the beginning of our division.
As for the gangs, the evil forces, and the terrorists (the groups of “bad people”), we need to realize that people do things not with bad intentions, but with the belief that they’re on the right side of history or simply “Wir haben es nicht gewußt” (they had no idea). People don’t join groups because of the ideology, but because they want to have a sense of community and friendship; and they’re easily swayed by their surroundings and willing to die and kill for each other and want to do this for the sake of friendship. This isn’t an excuse for their crimes, it’s an explanation.
I’ll end it here, but I highly recommend that you read this book. You’ll be mindblown and fascinated, more appreciative of humanity by being a step closer to the truth, and further educated about history and sociology.