I am in awe of the book Humankind: A Hopeful History.

Rutger Bregman has written a literary jewel, a prism of optimistic perspectives refracting light on human nature through the optics of history, psychology, sociology, and philosophy. I am incredibly grateful to live at a time when this historian collates stories that intersect our past with our present as an ambitious framework to propel our future forward with decency, cooperation, and compassion.

Although his Epilogue promotes Ten Rules to Live By, these revelations and perspectives reaffirm my belief in the fundamental goodness and kindness of humanity in addition to the importance of maintaining mental flexibility while asking questions from a place of curiosity:

• An unknown parable to frame both sides of human nature: “An old man says to his grandson: ‘There’s a fight going on inside me. It’s a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil – angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant, and cowardly. The other is good – peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest, and trustworthy. These two wolves are also fighting within you, and inside every other person too.’ After a moment, the boys asks, ‘Which wolf will win?’ The old man smiles. The one you feed.’”
• One of the biggest addictions of our times is “…a drug we use daily, that’s heavily subsidized and is distributed to our children on a massive scale. That drug is the news…as a Swiss novelist once quipped, that ‘News is to the mind what sugar is to the body.’”
• “A company with intrinsically motivated employees has no need of managers; a democracy with engaged citizens has no need of career politicians.”
• Blushing is a human trait, and man is essentially a cooperative being.
• “Our distant ancestors knew the importance of the collective and rarely idolized individuals…Our spirits yearn for connection just as our bodies hunger for food.”
• “The mechanism that makes us the kindest species also make us the cruelest species on the planet. People are social animals, but we have a fatal flaw: we feel more affinity for those who are most like us.”
• “How much proof is there that war is in our nature? The answer is almost none.”
• Service men and women have more deep ties to fight together in friendship than for the cause they are fighting for. Loyalty means fighting for each other, including among terrorists.
• Empathy and xenophobia are “…two sides of the same coin”.
• Most of human behavior is in common with egalitarian bonobo apes.
• Democracy is actually an ‘elective aristocracy’, because we decide who can have power over us.
• Humans have “one phenomenal talent apart from other living creatures” – reason.
• ‘Pluralistic ignorance’ – when you see or listen to something happening that does not make sense, yet you follow along as if you understand when it appears everyone around you does (but they, too, do not) – is real!
• “Over the past decades, the intrinsic motivation of children has been systemically stifled.” Children MUST enjoy a culture of unstructured play and be spontaneous!
• According to the World Health Organization, “depression is now the number one global disease.”
• Norwegian prison guards are taught “that it’s better to make friends with inmates than to patronize and humiliate them. “This mindset is called ‘dynamic security’ – preventing bad intentions, not bad behavior. Detainees are prepared for a normal life. ‘It’s really very simple,’ explains Bastoy’s warden, Tom Eberhardt. ‘Treat people like dirt, and they’ll be dirt. Treat them like human beings, and they’ll act like human beings.’ “Norway boasts the lowest recidivism [ed., repeat offenses] rate in the world. By contrast, the American prison system has among the highest.”
• “In non-violent campaigns, one ingredient is essential: self-control.”
• Nelson Mandela’s superpower was “his choice to see good in people who ninety-nine people out of a hundred would have judged to have been beyond redemption.”
• Real stories and studies to read more about: the six Tongon castaways (‘Ata) and Peter Warner; Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s contrasting theories of human behavior; Easter Island’s discovery and resourceful people; Colonel Samuel Marshall’s observations of non-violence during World War II; Auschwitz; the Stanford Prison and Robbers Cave Experiments; Stanley Milgram and his shock machine; Catherine Susan Genovese’s death; Professor Dacher Keltner’s Machiavellianism and power; Muzafer Sherif and Philip Zombardo’s children’s camp experiment; Bertrand Russell; the Pygmalion and Golem Effects; Jos de Blok and Bururtzorg in the Netherlands; Carl Theodor Sorensen and Sjef Drummen (Agora School – similar to hunter and gatherer societies); Julio Diaz’s compassionate act of kindness; Constand and Abraham Vilijoen and Nelson Mandela for peace; World War I Christmas 1914; and the FARC and MullenLowe Christmas Operation 2010.