Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman
BOOK REVIEWS BY BINOD
BINOD’S RATING: 8/10One belief that has united most people is the assumption that humans are bad.
It's a notion that drives newspaper headlines and guides the laws that shape our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Pinker, the roots of this belief have sunk deep. Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish.
But what if it isn't true?
Rutger Bregman provides new perspective on the past 200,000 years of human history, setting out to prove that we are hardwired for kindness, geared toward cooperation rather than competition, and more inclined to trust rather than distrust one another. He states that this instinct has a firm evolutionary basis going back to the beginning of Homo sapiens.
Key points
Though one of the most contested concepts in political philosophy, human nature is something on which most people seem to agree. By and large, according to Rutger Bregman in his new book Humankind, we have a rather pessimistic view – not of ourselves exactly, but of everyone else.
We see other people as selfish, untrustworthy, and dangerous and therefore we behave towards them with defensiveness and suspicion. This was how the 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes conceived our natural state to be, believing that all that stood between us and violent anarchy was a strong state and firm leadership ( which is how dictators and tyrants have effectively marketed themselves!).
But Bregman believes in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the 18th-century French thinker, who famously declared that man was born free and it was civilisation – with its coercive powers, social classes and restrictive laws – that put him in chains. Incidentally, it’s also something I have always strongly believed in- that everywhere you look man is sadly imprisoned by the stifling combination of Religion, Marriage, Work, Society and Government that prevents him from being himself.
“Civilisation has become synonymous with peace and progress, and wilderness with war and decline. In reality, for most of human existence, it was the other way around.”
Bregman takes Rousseau’s idea and paints a picture in which , for the better part of 300,000 years, Homo sapiens lived as hunter gatherers, fulfilling life in harmony with nature and the community, bound only by the principles of humility and solidarity. Then we discovered agriculture, settled down, formed increasingly larger communities and for the next 10,000 years it was all property, war, greed, and injustice. It was abandoning our nomadic lifestyle and then domesticating animals, says Bregman, that brought about infectious diseases such as measles, smallpox, tuberculosis, syphilis, malaria, cholera and plague which spread quickly thanks to numerous people living in close proximity in ever expanding villages, towns and cities.
Whether or not this picture of pre-agrarian life is an accurate one – and certainly the anthropology and archaeology on which Bregman draws are open to interpretation – the Dutchman puts together a compelling and shocking argument that society has been built on a false premise. Rutger also points out that Steven Pinker was on flimsy ground about prehistoric homicide rates.
The fear of civilizational collapse, Bregman believes, is unfounded. It’s the result of what the Dutch biologist Frans de Waal calls “veneer theory” – the idea that just below the surface, our bestial nature is waiting to break out. In reality, argues Bregman, when cities are subject to bombing campaigns ( like the Blitz in London) or when a group of boys is shipwrecked on a remote island ( like the real life Lord of the Flies), what’s notable is the degree of cooperation and communal spirit.
From the real-life Lord of the Flies to the solidarity post Blitz to a host of discredited psychological studies, including Stanley Milgram’s Yale shock machine and Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment to the true story of twin Afrikaaner brothers on opposite sides who helped Mandela end apartheid, Bregman shows us that believing in human generosity and collaboration isn't merely optimistic—it's realistic. Moreover, it has huge implications for how society functions. When we think the worst of people, it brings out the worst in our politics and economics. But if we believe in the reality of humanity's kindness and altruism, it will form the foundation for achieving true change in society.
Bregman, whose previous book was the equally optimistic Utopia for Realists, has a Gladwellian gift for sifting through academic reports and finding anecdotal jewels. And, like the Canadian popularizer, he’s not afraid to take his audience on a digressive journey of discovery.
“I noticed something familiar. Most books are also about the exceptional. The biggest history bestsellers are invariably about catastrophes and adversity, tyranny and oppression. About war, war, and, to spice things up a little, war. And if, for once, there is no war, then we’re in what historians call the interbellum: between wars”
What I liked
Some books challenge our ideas. But Humankind challenges the very premises on which those ideas are based. Very bold.
Humankind is masterful in its grasp of history, both ancient and modern.
I love books that try to demolish conventional wisdom and there’s bountiful debunking at play, from the (in)famous Stanford Prison and Shock Machine experiments, to the Lord of the Flies, to Easter Island. He boldly calls out famous authors (Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins). Even war can’t escape Bregman’s critique, as he argues that humans simply aren’t wired to kill and would prefer to deliberately fire over their opponents’ heads.
There’s a great deal of reassuring human decency to be taken from this book. This is an uplifting and hopeful book which has arrived at just the right time to lift spirits and to increase solidarity. Readers looking for comfort in these uncertain times will find it here.
It's a well-written, entertaining book with very few dull paragraphs or sentences. Despite its size, it was a relatively quick read.
What I disliked
The most jaw dropping revelation was that the great tragedy of human history was the invention of agriculture and cities around 10,000 years ago. But unless Bregman owns a time machine, this is simply making things up at worst and just another logically argued theory at best.
It seems misleading to offer the false choice of Rousseau and Hobbes when, clearly, humanity encompasses both. There will always be a battle between our altruistic and selfish instincts, our openness, and our protectiveness.
Most authors of books of this genre have the dreary practice of trotting out a list of remedies towards the end and Bregman is not immune. The book closes with the author’s own 10 commands (like the Ten Commandments?) for living. At this point, the book degrades into an opinion column – and although some of what he says is good, it’s simply tiresome.
Bregman presents his findings in style that evokes Malcolm Gladwell. But, as in Gladwell’s work, there is a cherry-picked quality to the information he presents. There is also a fair amount of generalization and oversimplification.
Some of the claims are dodgy. Bregman says that ideology played 'a remarkably small role' in jihadists joining Islamic State and I have a big problem in believing that unsubstantiated claim.
Lots of fascinating stories. But however heart-warming, this scattergun anecdotalism is hardly a serious challenge to the massively researched and hugely popular books from highly respected heavyweights like Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins.
It also makes you think. If the famously well researched theories (and conclusions) of highly respected people like Dawkins, Diamond, Pinker, Milgram et al can be so easily ripped apart, how valid is Bregman’s counter thesis?
Conclusion
I am not naïve enough to believe that the world is sunshine and roses. I write this review in a COVID-19 era of lockdowns, rising infections in many large countries, economic collapse, unprecedented unemployment, the rise of toxic nationalism in many countries, an unusually expansionist China, war between Azerbaijan and Armenia etc.
This book doesn’t make all these horrible things vanish. It simply presents a different perspective, a perspective that I would have not believed in before I read this book. It’s food for thought rather than the final word.
It’s quite timely for two reasons; the coronavirus crisis has largely shown people at their best and its impact has made many yearn for a more optimistic vision of the future. In a year in which societies have been tested like never before, that thin veneer could easily fall away. The fact it hasn’t means, perhaps, humans are far better than we give ourselves credit for.