This is a synopsis of another
game changing book entitled
Humankind: A hopeful history by Rutger Bregman – a Dutch historian-journalist – that comprehensively addresses this issue. In very readable prose the classic 17-18th Century debate between the pessimistic Hobbes who believed in the wicked human nature requiring many civil rules to keep us from breaking bad vs. the optimist Rousseau who declared that we are all good
and it is civilization ruins us. Fast forwarding, he comes down heavily in the Rousseau camp, with quite a salvo of epoch-ranging social psychology stretching from prehistoric man to the present.
Bregman begins by turning the fictional William Golding Lord of the Flies – in which marooned British schoolboys fend only for themselves with disastrous results – on its head by recounting the little known real-life story of five stranded Tongan school boys who survived for 15 months on an uncharted piece of rock working in teams of two for chores, keeping the fire tended for more than a year, establishing a food garden, forging rainwater storage, building a gym and a time out mechanism for squabbles … and were exceedingly healthy both physically and mentally when rescued.
He suggests that humans are the equivalent of the ‘puppy’ humanoids including Neanderthals. That is, we have surprisingly prevailed despite being less smart, considerably weaker and more vulnerable than our forebrethren with larger brains and muscles. Why? Because of enhanced friendliness i.e. social skills that are a segue to broad collective learning. What? This finding of enhanced learning was reproduced in friendly-bred foxes and other primates. As a species we have been bred for this relational quality because it provides a selective advantage in group learning, and therefore for ‘survival of the friendliest’ (B coined).
Our nomadic hunting-gathering ancestors could neither possess land or acquire property. Later, civilization built on agrarian base begot distinctions in the form of achievement-based inequality. Based upon close examination of skulls for evidence of trauma, violent conflict only began with the advent of land ownership, private property and hereditary leaders about 10,000 years ago. Villagers/farmers now had owned land (to be fought over) and settled life led to a natural xenophobia. In fact, the accoutrements of civilization including the invention of money (for taxation), of writing (for recording debts) and of legal institutions (punishment of escaped slaves) all began as instruments of enslavement!
Then along comes Enlightenment with Age of Reason with Adam Smith’s ‘every person for themselves, greed is good’ – sounds very contemporary like the last four years. Historians point out that Enlightenment gave us ‘equality’ but also invented racism, which became encoded into law. If in fact we act as David Hume the Scottish philosopher suggest – as if people are selfish, then perhaps the negative nocebo (Golem Effect) response becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Contemporary studies in educational settings strongly link positive expectations with higher performance (the Pygmalion effect).
So why has been there such an abundance of violence – 15% of deaths – extending from Brazilian tribes to World Wars? The good news is that the overall conflict-related mortality appears to be declining: 14-15% amongst land-based tribes (not the still foraging !Kung), 3% in the two 20th C World Wars, and down to 1% today. Counter to what you might think, during the WWII in both Pacific and European theaters, soldiers actually fired only 15-25% of time even in the heat of battle. In the Civil war, after examining 27,000+ muskets, only 10% were actually fired. The famed military historian Sam Marshall concluded that ‘the average health individual ... has such an inner … unrealized resistance toward killing a fellow man he will not of his own volition take life”.
Bregman debunks many historical events and research findings used to bolster the Hobbesian view of human nature. The decimation of Easter Island population was not from torture and cannibalism but likely due to the exported European epidemics and deportation by Peruvian slavers. He addresses Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot indirectly by overturning two famous experimental findings: Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment in which students, divided into prisoners and guards, perpetrated serious maltreatment, and, Stanley Milgram’s Yale ‘shocking’ experiment where volunteers apparently shocked unseen subjects to the point of silence (unconsciousness). These studies purported that anyone could do damage, and in the extreme, even genocide. But after delving into the actual transcripts, current academics found that the volunteers were clearly goaded into extreme behavior while concomitantly expressing extreme discomfort, some refusing to continue, but that story was lost. The philosopher Hannah Arendt suggested that it is not simply ‘the banality of evil’ (i.e. unthinking) it is that humans are tempted by evil masquerading as good … which was taken to the death degree by fanatic Adolf Eichmann.
So what motivates those who carry out evil deeds? Morris Janowitz’s review of 150,000 pages of overheard conversations (not through interrogation) from German POWs revealed that they were not principally motivated by ideology (Hitler) or patriotism. Their motivation came from the same as could be said for our Allied soldiers – courage, loyalty, and solidarity – fighting for their band of brothers. Unfortunately, this applies to terrorists as well.
So why do leaders turn bad? He discusses Dacher Keltner’s work on how power corrupts (power paradox) or acquired sociopathy. When mere mortals acquire power, they stop mirroring (social responsiveness) and “feel less connected to their fellow human beings”. As they become “unplugged” from fellow citizens, they need to have a complex infrastructure to maintain power through myth, religion, companies, state, nation … police, armies. While egalitarian hunter-gatherers valued traits such as generosity, wisdom, charisma, fairness, tactful, strong and humility’ those have fallen to the wayside as the powerful became entrenched, impossible to unseat, enfolded into structural economic inequity. Even our current American democracy has dynastic tendencies (Kennedy’s, Bushes), that is an elected aristocracy.
Now for some surprises. That love hormone oxytocin that skyrockets during breastfeeding is a curious paradox where it enhances affection for loved ones and friends but simultaneously enhances aversion to strangers. So that that is what Trump put in the water supply! In addition, empathy is a doubled-edged sword as well. Infants tested at 6 & 10 months of age can differentiate bad from good behavior (by puppets) and almost universally prefer the latter. BUT in a variation, the infant prefers the puppet who likes same food, even if they’re mean. Thus, we are born xenophobes who have a severe aversion to the unfamiliar, with too much oxytocin (not testosterone). Furthermore, empathy can change the calculus by spotlighting a poignant child awaiting transplant which makes one want to allow them to jump the queue. Unfortunately, the digital micronews cycle and advent of social media also spotlights/highlights the negative and overrides the common but unnewsworthy mundane good.
Is there hope for change, any approach that can restore the eroded trust in politics? There are several draconian examples in Columbia and Brazil where participatory budgeting involved input from 15,000 people at 500 fora. This has moved the political needle from cynicism to citizen engagement, from polarization to trust over time, from exclusion to inclusion, and from complacency to citizenship – leading to a spending emphasis on education and infrastructure (clean water) – with concomitant eradication of corruption! He laments the loss of the commons (e.g. shared pasture) yet there is an American example – the Alaska Permanent Fund that distributes oil revenues to each citizen – where most ended up in educational expenses and substantially reduced poverty. Andrew Yang proposes the Alaskan way!
The remedy for hate is contact and dialog in schools, workplaces and elsewhere and in being able to, as Mandela did,“choose to see the good in people who 99 people out of a 100 would have judged to have been beyond redemption”.
What is Bregman’s prescription:
1) When in doubt, assume the best – perhaps the hardest to do
2) Think in win-win scenarios – not zero sum winner take most
3) Ask more questions – i.e. “Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.’
4) Temper your empathy, train your compassion (e.g. your child is afraid of dark, you aren’t going to whimper alongside (empathy), rather you try to calm and comfort (compassion)
5) Try to understand others – even if you don’t get where they’re coming from (Nelson Mandela’s bite your tongue statesmanship)
6) Love your own as others love their own – compassion takes you beyond your enclave
7) Avoid the news (social media) – too skewed, too negative!
8) Don’t punch the Nazis or supremacists – try an outstretched hand (hmmmm)
9) Come out of the closet: don’t be ashamed to do good - doing good is contagious
10) Be realistic (his most important) i.e. realism is not cynicism
There is much, much more food for though!
