Humankind: A Hopeful History

By Rutger Bregman, Dutch historian

This is the best book that I (Jim Spohrer) have read so far in 2021.   If you want to be challenged to re-think people, this is THE book.  It is a New York Times bestseller. If you have read Harari’s “Sapiens”, then Bregman’s “Humankind” is a next logical read. They both make you rethink what you think that you know about our species, about ourselves as people. Bregman’s “Humankind: A Hopeful History” forced me re-think what I thought I already knew about people in each of its eighteen chapters – multiple times!  Ray Fisk recommended this book, and now I fully agree it is a “must read” for everyone in the service science and service research communities.

What if our understanding of people was largely mistaken?  Bregman argues that is the case:  Far too many universities are teaching yesterday’s news – and it is hurting us and holding us back.  Our mental model of ourselves, others, and the world allows us to act in the world.  In general, better models have benefits.   Science is the pursuit of better models that describe, explain and predict more.   Many of the models (or logics) that people use day to day are not based upon as strong scientific a foundation as we have been led to believe.  Most of the models (our mental models of the world) that people use are idiosyncratic, tacit, implicit and poorly understood.  People are complex, and use many models in a wide range of situational contexts.

Bregman, who is a Dutch historian, argues that if we care about the world of people around us, and have concerns or too often struggle understanding what others are thinking, saying and doing, it is time to reexamine our understanding of humanity.  I wish there was a version of the content in this book that was more accessible to those without a university degree.  Unfortunately, my summary of the book below is primarily for those with scholarly inclinations.  Thus, it is not very inclusive writing – for which I apologize.  A responsibility of scientists is to make sure that the widest number of people possible can understand the findings, and ideally reproduce some aspects of the phenomena for themselves, locally, and inexpensively.  This is a big challenge in the era of big science and in the era of AI, which requires massive computing power and huge datasets to reproduce results.

Chapter 1. A New Realism

My view on this first chapter is simply a warning:  To be careful what you put in your body, both food and news.  We are what we believe.  We see the world, not as it is, but as we are.

“This is a book about a radical idea… That most people, deep down, are pretty decent.” (p. 1)

“Other things have the potential to be true if we believe in them.  Our belief becomes what sociologists dub a self-fulfilling prophecy… Or take the placebo effect.  If your doctor gives you a fake pill and says it will cure what ails you, chances are you will feel better…  Take a fake pill thinking it will make you sick, and chances are it will… For obvious reasons, the nocebo effect, as it called, hasn’t been widely tested, given the touchy ethics of convincing healthy people they’re ill… If there is one lesson to be drawn from the nocebo effect, it’s that ideas are never merely ideas. We are what we believe. We find what we are looking for.” (p. 8-9)

“Imagine for a moment that a new drug comes on the market.  It’s super-addictive, and in no time everyone’s hooked.  Scientists investigate and soon conclude that the drug causes, I quote, ‘a misperception of risk, anxiety, lower mood levels, learned helplessness, contempt and hostility towards others, [and] desensitization’.  Would we use this drug?  Would our kids be allowed to try it? To all of the above: yes.  Because what I’m talking about is already one of the biggest addictions of our times.  A drug we use daily, that’s heavily subsidized and is distributed to our children on a massive scale.  That drug is the news.” (p.12-13)

“In the digital age, the news we’re being fed is only getting more extreme.” (p. 15)

“A company with intrinsically motivated employees has no need of managers; a democracy with engaged citizens has no need of career politicians.” (p. 19)

Chapter 2. The Real Lord of the Flies

The fictional story of boys stranded on an island for over a year, and turning into savage beasts, is compared against a true story of boys stranded on an island, and largely collaborating and surviving well until rescued.

“Golding’s book Lord of the Flies would ultimately sell tens of millions of copies, be translated into more than thirty languages, and be hailed as one of the classics of the twentieth century.  In hindsight, the secret of the book’s success is clear.  Golding has a masterful ability to portray the darkest depths of mankind. ” (p. 23)

“In the 6 October 1966 edition of Australian newspaper The Age a headline jumped out… The boys had been rescued by an Australian sea captain after being marooned on an island of ‘Ata for more than a year.  According to the article, the captain had even got a television station to film a re-enactment of the boys’ adventure.” (p. 26-27)

“This is the real-life Lord of the Flies.  Turns out, it’s a heart-warming story… It’s also a story that nobody knows.  While the boys of ‘Ata have been consigned to obscurity, William Golding’s book is still widely read.” (p. 36)

Part I: The State of Nature

Every child has said something like, “Just leave me alone!” Retreating to be alone, away from others, who have intentionally or unintentionally caused us harm or distress.  And yet clearly together, we can do much greater things than one of us could ever do alone, even working for ages.  Nevertheless, this makes me wonder about adults in a society, and our concept of justice.  Specifically, this makes me wonder if there can ever truly be justice in the world if it is not possible for an individual to be allowed to withdraw from society if they so choose.   Historically, if you wanted a different world, you could strike out with a like minded group of people, and then build your own world (e.g., the Pilgrims). Bregman introduces us to the philosophers Hobbes and Rousseau, and then he frames an even larger debate.

“Are we humans… more inclined to be good or evil? It’s a questions philosophers have grappled with for hundreds of years.  Consider the Englishman Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)… Or take the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78)… The two never met… Nevertheless, they continue to be pitted against each other in the philosophical boxing ring.  In one corner, Hobbes: the pessimist who would have us believe in the wickedness of human nature.  The man who asserted that civil society alone could save us from our baser nature. In the other corner, Rousseau: the man who declared that in our heart of hearts we’re all good. Far from being our salvation, Rousseau believed ‘civilization’ is what ruins us.” (p. 43)

Chapter 3. The Rise of Homo puppy

Bregman does a good job of helping us understand humans are a relatively recent species in comparison to the age of the planet and many other species that have been around a lot longer than we have.  He also does an excellent job of comparing human intelligence to that of other animals, including the great apes.  The most interesting finding in this chapter to me was the correlation between friendliness and social learning.  This was one of my favorite chapters in the book – so if you get a chance to only read one chapter, this is the one that I recommend most in the book. This chapter also reminded me of how much I enjoyed reading Harari’s “Sapiens.”

“Two years after Richard Dawkins published his bestseller about egoistic genes, concluding that people are ‘born selfish,’ here was an unknown Russian geneticist claiming the opposite.  Dmitri Belyaev’s theory was that people are domesticated apes.  That for tens of thousands of years, the nicest humans had the most kids.  That the evolution of our species, in short, was predicated on ‘survival of the friendliest’…  What dogs are to wolves, we are to Neanderthals.  And just as mature dogs look like wolf puppies, humans evolved to look like baby monkeys.  Meet Homo puppy.” (p. 64-65)

“Human beings, it turns out, are ultrasocial learning machines. We’re born to learn, to bond, and to play.  Maybe it’s not so strange, then, that blushing is the only human expression that’s uniquely human.  Blushing, after all, is quintessentially social – it’s people showing they care what others think, which fosters trust and enables cooperation.” (p. 69)

“The best way to conceptualise this is to imagine a planet inhabited by two tribes: the Geniuses and the Copycats… let’s assume that teaching someone to fish is tricky and succeeds only half the time.  The question is: which group profits from the invention most? The answer, calculates anthropologist Joseph Henrich, is that only one in five Geniuses will ever learn to fish… By contrast… the Copycats… 99.9 per cent will end up able to fish…” (p. 70)

“Is it any wonder, then, that loneliness can quite literally make us sick? That lack of human contact is comparable to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day?   That having a pet lowers our risk of depression? Human beings crave togetherness and interaction.”  (p. 72)

Chapter 4.  Colonel Marshall and the Soldiers Who Wouldn’t Shoot

This was an interesting chapter for me, since it highlighted how many people in the military never fire a weapon at another person that they can actually see.  Often military personnel will go out of their way to fire over and around their adversaries in a conflict. 

“People are social animals, but we have a fatal flaw: we feel more affinity for those who are most like us.” (p. 74)

“Raymond Dart became one of the first scientists to characterize human beings as innately bloodthirsty cannibals, and his ‘killer ape theory’ made headlines around the world.” (p. 76)

“…as Colonel Samuel Marshall continued to interview groups of servicemen, in the Pacific and later in the European theatre, he found that only 15 to 25 per cent of them had actually fired their weapons. … And many of the men who didn’t fire had been crack shots in training.” (p. 80)

“In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker calculates the average homicide among eight primitive societies, arriving at an alarming 14 per cent. … The anthropologist Douglas Fry was sceptical, however.  Reviewing the original sources, he discovered that all forty-six cases of what Pinker categorized as Ache ‘war mortality’ actually concerned a tribe member listed as ‘shot by Paraguayan’… It was the same with the Hiwi. All the men, women, and children enumerated by Pinker as war deaths were murdered in 1968 by local cattle ranchers.  There go the iron-clad homicide rates.  Far from habitually slaughtering one another, these nomadic foragers were the victims of ‘civilised’ farmers wielding advanced weaponry.” (p. 88-89)

Chapter 5. The Curse of Civilization

Being in one place with an accumulation of property (e.g., civilization, cities), solved some problems and created others.  This is the pattern of technological and regulatory ‘progress’ – mitigating one set of problems and exacerbating a new set of problems.  Humanity is still learning. 

“And, as we saw in Chapter 3, having more friends ultimately makes you smarter.” (p. 97)

“There’s no reason to be fatalistic about civil society.  We can choose to organize our cities and states in new ways that benefit everyone.  The curse of civilization can be lifted.  Will we manage to do so? Can we survive and thrive in the long term?  Nobody knows.  There’s no denying the progress of the last decades, but at the same time we’re faced with an ecological crisis on an existential scale…. How sustainable is our civilised lifestyle? …civilization.  Is it a good idea?  Too soon to say.” (p. 112)

Chapter 6.  The Mystery of Easter Island

This chapter, like most of the chapters in this book, has multiple ‘plot twists’ and is a cautionary tale of not believing everything you read – even from ‘experts’.   Reminded me of Mark Twain’s statement: “Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.” Scientific understanding is not a straight line.  As new evidence and new perspectives on old evidence appears, there is a back and forth about what really went on in history.  Is it a story of human cruelty or a story of human kindness or some mixture of both?  Bregman is a master of making us confront both sides of the coin.  He is also unashamedly positive, since he believes that being positive in the long-term creates the world we want to live in, where human kindness is the dominant narrative, not human cruelty.  Looking at the evidence on both sides is important, in trying to overcome our biases.  We see the world as we are, not as it is. Even if you think Bregman is naive, he is probably right. Many have told me that Doug Engelbart was naive, but see Professor Boersema final words below… these words reminded me of what Engelbart constantly said – it was Engelbart’s lifetime pursuit to get us to wake up to the possibility that solutions can grow exponentially, not just problems.

“Admittedly, our knowledge about prehistory will never be watertight. We’ll never solve all the riddles surrounding our ancestor’s lives. … That’s why I want to take one final look at what people do when left to their own devices… What does society look like when it develops in isolation?” (p. 114)

“On Easter Sunday 1722, one of Roggeveen’s vessels raised the flag… Paasch Eyland, as the Dutch crew christened it (‘Easter Island’), spanned just over a hundred square miles – a speck in the vast Pacific… there were people on this island… Even more perplexing were the towering stone figures dotting the island – moai, the islanders called them – consisting of gigantic heads atop even bigger torsos, some thirty feet high.” (p. 115-116)

“Ultimately, it was world-famous geographer Jared Diamond who immortalized the tragic history of Easter Island.  In his 2005 bestseller Collapse, Diamond summed up the salient facts: Easter Island was populated by Polynesians early on, around the year 900.  Analysis of the number of excavated dwellings indicates that the population once reached 15,000.  The moai steadily increased in size, thus also increasing the demand  for manpower, food, and timber. The statues were transported horizontally on tree trunks, calling for a large laborforce, lots of trees, and powerful leader to oversee operations.  Eventually there were no more trees left, causing the soil to erode, agriculture to stagnate and famine among the inhabitants.  Around 1680 a civil war broke out.  When Roggeveen arrived in 1722, only a few thousand inhabitants remained.  Innumerable moai had been knocked down and the islanders were eating one another.”  (p. 120-121)

“For a long time I believed the mystery of Easter Island had been solved by William Mulloy, Jared Diamond and their many cohorts.  Because if so many leading experts draw identical, dismal conclusions, what’s left to dispute? Then I came across the work of Jan Boersema.” (p. 121-122).

“So what’s left of the original story? Of that tale of self-centered islanders who ran their civilization into the ground? Not much.  There was no war, no famine, no eating of other people. Deforestation didn’t make the land inhospitable, but more productive.  There was no mass slaughter in or around 1680; the real decline didn’t begin until centuries later, around 1860.  And foreign visitors to the island didn’t discover a dying civilization – they [slave traders from Paraguay] pushed it off the cliff… …My fear is that their cynicism can become a self-fulfilling prophecy… ‘There’s a failure to recognize that not only problems but solutions can grow exponentially,’ Professor Boersema told me. ‘There’s no guarantee they will.  But they can.’” (p. 133-134)

Part 2: After Auschwitz

This was the hardest part of the book to read for me.  However, I am glad that I read and then even re-read parts of it to ensure that I was looking at the evidence for and against different narrative versions.  Also, it was important to look carefully at the motives of the experts in telling their versions of the narratives. Moving from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty is the hard work of education, as Mark Twain commented.

“What fascinated me is that all of these studies took place during a relatively short span of time.  These were the wild west years of social psychology, when young hotshot researchers could soar to scientific stardom on the wings of shocking experiments.” (p. 138)

Chapter 7.  In the Basement of Stanford University

I recall that when I first read about this – I thought it was faked.  It was.

“It’s 15 August 1971. Shortly before ten in the morning on the West Coast, Palo Alto police arrive in force to pull nine young men out of their beds…. What the bystanders don’t realise is that this is part of an experiment… That same afternoon, the alleged criminals – in reality, innocent college students – descend the steps of Building 420 to the basement of the university’s psychology department.  A sign welcomes them to THE STANFORD COUNTY JAIL.  At the bottom of the stairs waits another group of nine students, all dressed in uniforms, their eyes masked by mirrored sunglasses.  Like the students in handcuffs, they’re here to earn some extra cash.  But these students won’t be playing prisoners.  They been the assigned the role of guard.” (p. 140)

“The study’s lead investigator, psychologist Philip Zimbardo, also got swept up in the drama.  He played a prison superintendent determined to run a tight ship at any cost. Not until six days into the experiment did he finally call an end to the nightmare, after a horrified postgrad – his girlfriend – asked him what the hell he was doing.  By then, five of the prisoners were exhibiting signs of ‘extreme emotional depression, crying, rage and acute anxiety’.” (p. 142)

“’It took quite a while before I accepted the idea that if could all be fake,’ Le Texier told me in the autumn of 2018, a year before his scathing analysis appeared in the world’s leading academic psychology journal, American Psychologist.  ‘At first, I didn’t way to believe it. I thought: no, this is a reputable professor at Stanford University. I must be wrong.’ But the evidence spoke for itself.” (p. 150)

Chapter 8. Stanley Milgram and the Shock Machine

As always, the author makes no apologies for the mission he is on.  Both Rutger Bregman and Gina Perry specialize in re-examining psychology experiments that do not tell the whole story.  Recently, the foundations of behavioral psychology have been rocked, by much digging, and seeming lack of reproducibility in the social sciences.  People are complex – that is clearly the first lesson to be learned.  Scientists have agendas – a second lesson.  Reproducibility in the age of AI is also a big issue.  Science experiments that can be reproduced by average people inexpensively and locally – that is what may be needed to restore trust. Another reason I got a lot out of reading this book – it is not easy to understand and then painfully come to terms with these issues.  That said, the bias of the author of this book is not concealed.  Therefore, one is left with more contradicting perspectives at the end of the day.  People are complex, not so simple. Miserable uncertainty replaces cocky ignorance.

“I’m going to be honest.  Originally, I wanted to bring Milgram’s experiment crashing down.  When you’re writing a book that champions the good in people, there are several big challengers on your list.  William Golding and his dark imagination.  Richard Dawkins and his selfish genes. Jared Diamond and his demoralizing tale of Easter Island. And, of course, Philip Zimbardo, the world’s best known living psychologist.  But topping my list was Stanley Milgram. I know of no other study as cynical, as depressing and at the same time as famous as his experiments at the shock machine.  By the time I’d completed a few months’ research, I reckoned I’d gathered enough ammunition to settle with his legacy.  For starters, there was his personal archives, recently opened to the public. It turns out that they contain quite a bit of dirty laundry.” (p. 163-164).

“’The slavish obedience to authority,’ writes Gina Perry, ‘comes to sound much more like bullying and coercion when you listen to the recordings.’ The key question is whether the experimental subjects believed they were administering real shocks at all… Were people seriously expected to believe that someone was being tortured and killed under the watchful eye of scientists from a prestigious institution like Yale?” (p. 165-166)

“Publicly, Milgram described his discoveries as revealing ‘profound and disturbing truths of human nature.’ Privately, he had his doubts. ‘Whether all of this ballyhoo points to significant science or merely effective theater is an open question,’ he wrote in his personal journal in June 1962. ‘I am inclined to accept the latter interpretation.’”

“In other words, the Holocaust wasn’t the work of humans suddenly turned robots, just as Milgram’s volunteers didn’t press switches without stopping to think.  The perpetrators believed they were on the right side of history.  Auschwitz was the culmination of a long and complex historical process in which the voltage was upped step by step and evil was more convincingly passed off as good.  The Nazi propaganda mill – with its writers and poets, it philosophers and politicians – had had years to do its work, blunting and poisoning the minds of the German people. Homo puppy was deceived and indoctrinated, brainwashed and manipulated.  Only then could the inconceivable happen.” (p. 172)

Chapter 9.  The Death of Catherine Susan Genovese

This was a hard chapter to read. I almost put down the book and walked away. Horrific stories are painful to read.   I remember hearing the news from this chapter.  I was an eight-year-old, growing up on a farm in rural Maine, when I heard this news story.  Honestly, it made me very scared of cities. It took me a long time to get over that fear of cities.  However, now, reading the chapter as a sixty-five-year-old, and I am exceptionally glad that I did read and r-read it.  Lots of important lessons about people and how complex our institutions are (authorities, news, police, journalists, scientists, researchers, etc.) in this chapter.

“It is 13 March 1964, a quarter past three in the morning, Catherine Susan Genovese… pulls up outside the Austin Street subway station… Kitty, as everyone knows her, is a whirlwind of energy. Twenty-eight years old… Kitty loves New York City… ‘Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!’ It’s 3:19 a.m. The screams pierce the night, loud enough to wake the neighborhood.  In several apartments, lights flick on.  Windows are raised and voices murmur in the night. One calls out, ‘Let that girl alone.’ But Kitty’s attacker returns.  For the second time, he stabs her with his knife. Stumbling around the corner, she cries out, ‘I’m dying. I’m dying.’ Nobody comes outside… The six words – ‘I didn’t want to get involved’ – reverberated around the globe… …Kitty’s death was one of 636 murders committed in New York City that year.” (p. 180-181)

“For years I assumed the bystander effect was just an inevitable part of life in a metropolis.  But then something happened in the very city where I work – something that forced me to reassess my assumptions…. I arranged to meet Danish psychologist Marie Lindegaard… She pushes her laptop towards me…. I read the working title: ‘Almost Everything You Think You Known About the Bystander Effect is Wrong…  …’in 90 per cent of cases, people help each other out.’” (p. 185-189)

“It’s shocking how little of the original story holds up.  On that fateful night, it wasn’t ordinary New Yorkers, but the authorities who failed.  Kitty didn’t die all alone, but in the arms of a friend… There was one final bizarre twist… That’s right, Kitty’s murderer was apprehended thanks to the intervention of two bystanders.  Not a single paper reported it.  That is the real story of Kitty Genovese.  It’s a story that ought to be required reading not only for first-year psychology students, but also for aspiring journalists.  That’s because it teaches us three things. One, how out of whack our view of human nature often is.  Two, how deftly journalists push the buttons to sell sensational stories.  And, last but not least, how it’s precisely in emergencies that we can count on one another.” (p. 193-194)

Part 3: Why Good People Turn Bad

In this part of the book, Bregman offers suggestions on how we should think about people doing bad things. Again, painful thoughts. Yes, there are big horrific things. However, as individuals, we probably all have painful memories of not being our best selves in a situation that is pretty mundane.

“This brings us back to the fundamental question: why do people do evil things? How come Homo puppy, that friendly biped, is the only species that’s built jails and gas chambers? … why has evil grown so skilled at fooling us over the course of history? How did it manage to get us to the point that we would declare war on one another?” (p. 198)

“In the next three chapters, this is my quest.  I’ll introduce you to a young American who was determined to understand why the Germans fought so tirelessly right up to the very end of the Second World War (Chapter 10).  We’ll dive into psychological research on the cynicism that comes with power (Chapter 11).  And then we’ll take on the ultimate question: what kind of society can you get when people acknowledge the mismatch and choose to adopt a new, realistic view of humanity?” (p. 199)

Chapter 10. How Empathy Blinds

This chapter had a lot of new information and insights about the Nazi mind leading up to the Second World War.  It also presents several studies on infants and children related to in-group and out-group conditioning and behaviors.  Empathy and xenophobia are two sides of the same coin. 

“Morris Janowitz was twenty-two at the outbreak of the Second World War.  A year later, a draft notice from the US Army arrived on his doormat.  Finally.  Morris was on fire to enlist… The young man had long been fascinated by the social sciences. And now, having just graduated from college at the top of his class, he could put his expertise to work for a cause.  Morris wasn’t being sent into combat with a helmet and a rifle, but wielding pen and paper. He was stationed at the Psychological Warfare Division in London.  At the agency’s headquarters near Covent Garden, Morris joined dozens of top scientists, many of who would later go on to illustrious careers in sociology and psychology.   … Morris and his colleagues were grappling with the toughest task of all.  They had to unravel the mystery of the Nazi mind.” (p. 202)

“For weeks Morris interviewed one German captive after another.  He kept hearing the same response.  No, it wasn’t the draw of Nazi ideology.  No, they didn’t have any illusions they they could still somehow win. No, they hadn’t been brainwashed.  The real reason why the German army was capable of putting forth an almost superhuman fight was much simpler. Kameradschaft. Friendship.  All those hundreds of bakers and butchers, teachers and tailors; all those German men who resisted the Allied advance tooth and nail had taken up arms for one another.  When it came down to it, they weren’t fighting for a Thousand-Year Reich or for Blut und Boden – ‘blood and soil’ – but because they didn’t want to let down their mates.” (p. 204)

“It seems we’re born with a button for tribalism in our brains.  All that’s needed is for something to switch it on.” (p. 214)

“Paul Bloom… empathy isn’t a beneficent sun illuminating the world.  It’s a spotlight.” (p. 215)

“The sad truth is that empathy and xenophobia go hand in hand. They’re two sides of the same coin.” (p. 217)

“The American military also managed to boost its ‘firing ratio’, increasing the number of soldiers who shoot to 55 per cent in the Korean War and 95 per cent in Vietnam.  But this comes at a price. If you brainwash… soldiers in training, it should come as no surprise when they return with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)… …. Finally, there’s one group which can easily keep the enemy at a distance: the leaders…. “ (p. 220)

Chapter 11. How Power Corrupts

This chapter speaks to the old truth that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Term limits is all I could think about.

“The big advantage of Niccolo Machiavelli’s philosophy is that it’s doable.  If you want power, he wrote, you have to grab it. You must be shameless, unfettered by principles or morals. The ends justify the means…  Professor Dacher Keltner is the leading expert on applied Machiavellianism… One: almost everyone believed Machiavelli was right.  Two: almost nobody had done the science that could back it up… Much as in the prehistoric times, these mini-societies don’t put up with arrogance… The individuals who rise to positions of power, Keltner found, are the friendliest and most empathetic.  Its survival of the friendliest.   You may be thinking: this professor guy should swing by the office and meet my boss – that’ll cure him of his little theory about nice leaders.  But hold on, there’s more to the story.  Keltner also studied the effects of power once people have it.  This time he arrived at an altogether different conclusion… The medical term is ‘acquired sociopathy.’ … They discovered that a sense of power disrupts what is known as mirroring, a mental process which plays a key role in empathy… Here we see a nocebo in action: treat people as if they are stupid and they’ll start to feel stupid, leading rulers to reason that the masses are too dim to think for themselves and hence they – with their vision and insights – should take charge.” (p. 224-228)

“Time and again we hope for better leaders, but all too often those hopes are dashed.  The reason, says Professor Keltner, is that power causes people to lose the kindness and modesty that got them elected, or they never possessed those sterling qualities in the first place.  In a hierarchically organized society, the Machiavellis are one step ahead.  They have the ultimate secret weapon to defeat their competition. They are shameless… Shame is more effective than rules and regulations or censure and coercion, because people who feel shame regulate themselves.” (p. 238)

Chapter 12.  What the Enlightenment Got Wrong

People are complex.  The Enlightenment suggested that we humans have a unique talent for reason and could therefore use reason as a tool to harness our selfishness to serve all.  The author clearly sees this a “nocebo” – something negative we believe about ourselves and our society, that makes it true – a self-fulfilling prophecy, encouraged by Enlightenment thinkers.  ‘Can we do better?’ the author helps us all ponder this question.

“The thinkers of the Enlightenment laid the foundation for the modern world, from the rule of law to democracy and from education to science… …according to these thinkers, there was a way we could productively harness our self-interest… Reason.  Not empathy, or emotion, or faith.  Reason…. They became convinced that humans could design intelligent institutions which factored in our innate selfishness.” (p 245)

“What if schools and businesses, cities and nations expect the best of people instead of presuming the worst? These questions are focus of the rest of the book.” (p. 250)

Part 4: A New Realism

The preamble of this part of the book mentioned Bertram Russel (“The Will to Doubt”) and Williams James (“The Will to Believe”).  And how learning about the Pygmalion Effect and Golem Effect caused the author to doubt doubt itself.

“The truth, he [Russell] said, doesn’t deal in wishful thinking.  For many years that was my motto, too – until I began to doubt doubt itself… …. Bob Rosenthal decides to try a little experiment at his Harvard University Lab… But then something peculiar happens.  The rats that the students believe to be brighter and faster really do perform better… Rosenthal came to realise that his students handled the ‘bright’ rats – the ones of which they had higher expectations – more warmly and gently.  This treatment changed the rats’ behavior and enhanced their performance…  The Pygmalion Effect resembles the placebo effect…, except, instead of benefiting oneself, these are expectations that benefit others.”  (p. 255-257)

“The Pygmalion and Golem Effects are woven into the fabric of our world.  Every day, we make each other smarter or stupider, stronger or weaker, faster or slower.  We can’t help leaking expectations, through our gazes, our body language, and our voices.” (p. 258)

“The flip side of the Pygmalion Effect is what’s known as the Golem Effect… When we have negative expectations about someone, we don’t look at them as often.  We distance ourselves from them…  The Golem Effect is a kind of nocebo: a nocebo that causes poor pupils to fall further behind, the homeless to lose hope and isolated teenagers to radicalize.” (p. 258)

Chapter 13. The Power of Intrinsic Motivation

This chapter examines Jos de Blok and his award-winning home healthcare organization Buurtzorg. 

“I’d been eager to meet Jos de Blok for some time.  Having read about the success of his home healthcare organization Buurtzorg, I had a hunch he was one of the exponents of a new realism. Of a new view of human nature… In one sweeping statement he dismissed the whole management profession: ‘Managing is bullshit.  Just let people do their job.’” (p. 264)

“The capitalist relied on carrots (read: money), whereas the communists were mainly about sticks (read: punishment). For all their differences, there was one basic premise on which both sides could agree: People don’t motivate themselves.” (p. 266)

“Edward Deci was a young psychologist working on his Ph.D. at a time when the field was in a thrall to behaviorism.  The theory held – like Frederick Taylor’s – that people are shiftless creatures. The only thing powerful enough to spur us to action is the promise of reward or the fear of punishment.  Yet Deci had a nagging sense that this theory didn’t stack up…. University of Massachusetts… …found ‘overwhelming evidence’ that bonuses blunt the intrinsic motivation and moral compass of employees… Sadly, the lesson of Edward Deci haven’t made it into daily practice nearly enough. Too often people are still treated like robots… A major study among 230,000 people across 142 countries revealed that a mere 13 per cent actually feel ‘engaged’ at work. Thirteen per cent. When you wrap your brain around these kinds of figures, you realise how much ambition and energy are going to waste. And how much room there is to do things differently.” (p267-271)

“Which brings us back to Jos de Blok… He dreamed of an oasis in the vast bureaucratic wasteland, a place fuelled not by market forces and growth, but by small teams and trust…  Buurtzog started out… It has no managers, no call centre, and no planners.  There are no targets and bonuses. Overheads are negligible and so is time spend in meetings.  Buurtzog doesn’t have a flashy HQ… With this simple formula, Buurtzog has been proclaimed the country’s ‘Best Employer’ five times, despite having no HR team, and won an award for ‘Best Marketing in the Care Sector’, despite having no marketing department… That’s right,  Buurtzog is better for patients, nicer for employees and cheaper for taxpayers.  Every month, dozens of nurses leave other jobs to sign on with Buurtzog… De Blok sums up his philosophy like this: ‘It’s easy to make things hard, but hard to make things easy… What does need to change, De Blok will tell you, is the care system… ‘Nobody trusts anybody else, so they start building in all these safeguards’…’ ….Companies like Buurtzog and FAVI… Skill and competence become the leading values, not revenue or productivity…  how we shape a society so people motivate themselves.  This question is neither conservative or progressive, neither capitalist of communist.  It speaks to a new movement – a new realism.”  (P. 271-277)

Chapter 14. Homo Ludens

This chapter explores work and play ratio, especially for children over the ages.

“For children, the dawn of civilization brought the yoke of mind-numbing farm labour, as well as the idea that children required raising, much like one might raise tomatoes… Not until the late nineteenth century did children once again have time to play.  Historians call this period the ‘golden age’ of unstructured play, when child labour was banned and parents increasingly left children to themselves…. The golden days were short-lived, as from the 1980’s forward life grew progressively busier, in the workplace and the classroom. Individualism and the culture of achievement gained precedence… Kids who behave badly don’t get a slap, but a pill.” (p. 284-285)

“According to the World Health Organization, depression is now the number one global disease.” (p. 295)

“Agora has the same teaching philosophy as hunter-gatherer societies.  Children learn best when left to their own devices, in a community bringing together all ages and abilities and supported by coaches and play leaders. Drummen calls it ‘Education 0.0’ – a return to Homo ludens.” (p. 295)

Chapter 15. This Is What Democracy Looks Like

This chapter explores for nations (citizens – democracy), what was previously explored for businesses (employees – work) – what if there was less management and more trust for people doing what needs to be done.

“Democracies around the globe are afflicted by at least seven plagues.  Parties eroding.  Citizens who no longer trust one another.  Minorities being excluded.  Voters losing interest.  Politicians who turn out to be corrupt.  The rich getting out of paying taxes.  And the growing realization that our modern democracy is steeped in inequality.”  (p. 298)

“Many citizens of democracy are, at best, permitted to choose their own aristocracy.” (p. 303)

“Elinor Ostrom was an ambitious political economist and researcher at a time when universities didn’t exactly welcome women.  And, unlike Hardin, Ostrom had little interest in theoretical models.  She wanted to see how real people behave in the real world… All told, Ostrom and her team compiled more than five thousand examples of working commons.” (p. 312)

“’History teaches us that man is essentially a cooperative being, a homo cooperans,’ points out Tine de Moor. ‘We have been building institutions that are focused on long-term cooperation for a long time now, in particular after periods of accelerated market development and privitisation.’ … De Moor therefore advocates for what she calls ‘institutional diversity’, which recognizes that while markets work best in some cases and state control is better in others, underpinning it all there has to be strong communal foundation of citizens who decide to work together… Also with the advent of the platform capitalism, which is enabling the likes of Airbnb and Facebook to skim the fat off the prosperity of the Homo cooperans.  All too often, the sharing economy turns out to be more like a shearing economy – we all get fleeced… … Elinor Ostrom, who was neither an optimist nor a pessimist, but a possibilist.  She believed there was another way.  Not because she subscribed to some abstract theory, but because she’d seen it with her own eyes.” (p. 314-315)

“Starting in 1982, every citizen of Alaska received an annual dividend in their bank account.  In a good year, it could be as much as $3,000.  To this day, the Permanent Fund Dividend – PFD for short – is wholly unconditional.  It’s not a privilege, but a right.” (p. 316)

Part 5: The Other Cheek

The introduction to this part reminded me that better strategies than tit-for-tat (“do unto others, what they last did to you”) in Prisoner Dilemma type games (cooperation-defection), do sometimes evolve – more win-win.  What if we assume the best even of our enemies – the following chapters examine prisons, terrorists, and war through the lens of “assume the best of our enemies.”

“Modern psychologists call it non-complementary behaviour.  Most of the time, as I mentioned earlier, we humans mirror each other… In earlier chapters we saw how powerful these positive and negative feedback loops can become in schools and companies and democracies.” (p. 323)

Chapter 16. Drinking Tea with Terrorists

Norway seems to have good prisons, and the US bad prisons.

“In a forest in Norway, about sixty miles south of Oslo, stands one of the strangest prisons in the world… According to this ‘principle of normality’, life inside the walls should resemble as closely as possible life on the outside…  In the US, 60 per cent of inmates are back in the slammer after two years, compared with 20 per cent in Norway… A stay in a Norwegian prison, according to their calculations costs on average $60,151 per convictions – almost twice as much as in the US.  However, because these ex-convicts go on to commit fewer crimes, they also save Norweigan law enforcement $71,226 a piece. An because more of them find employment, they don’t need government assistance and they pay taxes, saving the system on average another $67,086.  Last but not least, the number of victims goes down, which is priceless…  It’s a system that’s better, more humane and less expensive.” (p. 326-330)

Chapter 17. The Best Remedy for Hate, Injustice, and Prejudice

Interesting story of South Africa ending Apartheid – told through the lens of two very different brothers.  And interesting to learn about “contact researchers.”

“Contact engenders more trust, more solidarity and more mutual kindness.” (p. 358)

“Contact researchers consequently stress that people need time to get used to one another.  Contact works, but not instantly…  Mark Twain figured that out as early as 1867, observing that ‘travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindness’.” (p. 362)

Chapter 18. When the Soldiers Came Out of the Trenches

Many have heard this story – Christmas Eve 1914.  The author provides a more recent example from Colombia as well.

“It’s with this story that I wish to close my book.  That’s because, time and again, we find ourselves back in the trenches.  All too easily we forget that the other guy, a hundred yards away, is just like us.  Time and again, we fire at one another from a distance – through social media or online forums, from the safety of wherever we’re holed up. We let fear, ignorance, suspicion and stereotypes be our guides, making generalisations about people we’ve never met.” (p. 367)

“To believe people are hardwired to be kind isn’t sentimental or naïve.  On the contrary, it’s courageous and realistic to believe in peace and forgiveness.  That’s a truth as old as time.  Because, like all the best things in life, the more you give, the more you have.  That’s true of trust and friendship, and it’s true of peace.” (p. 378)

Epilogue: Ten Rules to Live By

The author suggests that ‘knowing thyself’ has been both helped and hindered by evidence from psychology, biology, archaeology, anthropology, sociology, and history over the ages.  His book does force a re-examination of what we think we know for sure.  It is painful at times, but also worth the effort to look carefully, and ponder placebo and nocebo effects.  This is an example of the map changing the landscape – seeing our world as a self-fulfilling prophesy. What we believe about others becomes the reality in which we live.

“We can completely rethink how we organize our schools and prisons, our businesses and democracies.  And how we live our own lives.” (p. 381)

Here are the summary rules: 

1. When in doubt, assume the best.

2.  Think in win-win scenarios.

3. Ask more questions.

4. Temper your empathy, train your compassion.

5. Try to understand the other (even if you don’t get where they’re coming from).

6. Love your own as others love their own.

7. Avoid the news.

8. Don’t punch Nazis.

9. Come out of the closet (don’t be ashamed to do good)

10.  Be realistic.

“But remember, what’s naïve today may be common sense tomorrow.” (p. 397)