Im Grunde gut: Eine neue Geschichte der Menschheit

Rutger Bregman - of the equally excellent [b:Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World 40876575 Utopia for Realists How We Can Build the Ideal World Rutger Bregman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1532031994l/40876575.SX50.jpg 49847901] - shows how we're locked in a self-fulfilling prophecy if we believe that humanity is inherently egoistic. An inverse to placebo, “nocebo” brings about negative effect through simple believes. History and literature wants to make us believe that war and egoism are part of our culture. Same as William Golding's Lord of the Flies was celebrated as a realistic depiction of human nature, we also believed the tale of the warring cannibalistic tribes of the Easter Island. Yet Gregman contrasts these with a real-life Lord of the Flies adventure of 6 boys who survived peacefully as castaways on a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean. And he demonstrates how the Easter Island myths were constructed on one explorer's wild imagination for bloody stories. Like the Siberian experiment in domesticating silver foxes shows, our branch of humans seem to have domesticated itself. We're slimmer, more playful, and cuter than the others. We're the “homo puppy” who survived other more powerful species (like the neanderthals) because of our smarter wits and our social/collaborative skills. Despite there being violence in prehistoric times, there rarely were wars. Humans lived in small to medium sized groups that simply moved on when falling into conflict with other groups. Multiple signs seem to indicate that the end of humanity's nomadic existence, the onset of agriculture and “property”, is what introduce war and violence into man's history. The patriarchy overtook as women became a good that had to join foreign families, as men stayed put to protect their animals. Germs and virus arose from humanity's now close proximity to animals. We all know famous psychological studies that apparently demonstrate humanity's rotten core: The Milgram experiment, the Standford Prison experiment, the Robber's Cave experiment, the Kitty Genovese case, ... They show how we are able to hurt others when conforming to authority, how our prime instinct is to stirr up fights, or how lack the empathy to help people in need. Yet when you dig into all those experiments, you see how they all fall apart because of researchers with an intent, deliberate priming of subjects, the omission of facts that contradict the thesis (or the sensational headline). Believing those studies can have huge cruel consequences, especially when applied in structures of power. That's how the police restructured to become quota-obsessed by misinterpreting the broken-windows study. Some more notes from my huge list of notes:- too much empathy is not good as it strips one of one's power to forgive, or see the other's side- corruption through power turns to loss of empathy and triggers a survival of the shameless (politics)- Solnit talks about how leaders assume their constituents would act selfishly just because they wouldIn today's world the cynic is called a realist. We should reverse that. Bregman ends on the hopeful fact that the simple act of witnessing altruism makes us more altruistic ourselves. Super informative book with a wonderful intention, that hopefully causes some cynics to turn into optimistic altruists.