Humankind: A Hopeful History () is a 2019 non-fiction book by Dutch historian Rutger Bregman. It was published by Bloomsbury in May 2021. It argues that people are decent at heart and proposes a new worldview based on the corollaries of this optimistic view of human beings. It argues against ideas of humankind's essential egotism and malevolence. The book engages in a multi-disciplinary study of historical events, an examination of scientific studies, and philosophical argumentation in order to advance Bregman's opinion that, this outlook is more realistic compared to its negative counterpart. It has been translated into over 30 languages. In the United States, the paperback release was a New York Times Best Seller.
Summary
Humankind argues that humans are fundamentally decent and that more recognition of this view would likely benefit everyone, as cynical expectations of others lead them to become cynical actors themselves. If society were less adamant about the belief that humans are naturally lazy, there would be less reason to oppose the widespread introduction of poverty mitigation measures like basic income. The book takes a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing from history, economics, psychology, biology, anthropology, and archaeology findings. It also uses the state of nature debate between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes as a framing device, siding with Rousseau's position on the matter.
Prologue: Civilian Resilience After Bombing
During World War II, before the London Blitz and the Allied counter-bombings over critical German cities, it was thought aerial bombardments would sow panic and chaos among the population, breaking their will. World leaders such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill read Psychologie des foule by French psychologist Gustave Le Bon, which argued extreme hardship would make people return to their uncivilized and selfish nature. Contrary to these expectations, the British high command found no sign of mass panic after the German bombings of London. Despite this, the British military maintained that "the will of a people could be broken by bombings", defending this belief in the face of the evidence by insisting that British citizens possessed a unique character required to handle the stress of bombardment. The German people, by contrast, were said to lack the fortitude necessary to withstand.
After the war, British psychiatrists visited bombed German cities and found none of the expected traumatic cases. Instead, an increase in the quality of mental health had been found. Moreover, there was a drop in alcohol consumption and suicide attempts. Rather than revert to barbarism as many had expected, civilians of both nations became more altruistic in those dire times. The failure of military command, including Winston Churchill, who "until the final few months of the war... remained convinced that it was best to bomb civilians", to recognize the reality revealed to them by new evidence resulted in the vast majority of Allied bombing runs wasting their ammunition, time, and lives on targets who would never break instead of on factories that would.
A New Realism
Bregman here explicitly advances his core thesis that "most people are decent". This idea "seems to have been denied at every turn in the annals of history", including now. That this belief is unpopular has been shown by the research of Tom Postmes, professor of social psychology at the University of Groningen. His studies present people with the hypothetical situation of a plane crash and asks participants to choose which way they believe their fellow victims may behave in the immediate aftermath. If we live on "Planet A," we should expect to see people banding together and helping one another through the crisis. If we live on "Planet B," we should expect to see people panic and turn on one another as they desperately try to secure their own safety. Most participants believe that we live on Planet B, while the evidence overwhelmingly suggests we live on Planet A. That people continue to maintain their belief that the world we live in is a Planet B type in the face of such evidence strongly suggests that "the idea that people are naturally egotistical, panicky, and aggressive is a pernicious myth". It also presents the problem of determining why this myth is still believed. Bregman's answer is that cynicism, the belief that we live on Planet B, conditions people to expect others to have cynical motives regardless of their actions. We see the evil we expect to see: a nocebo. This nocebo effect is exacerbated by class and power distinctions, with the "elites" projecting their own selfishness onto the masses.