Humankind
Der Historiker Rutger Bregman setzt sich in seinem Buch mit dem Wesen des Menschen auseinander. Anders als in der westlichen Denktradition angenommen ist der Mensch nicht böse, sondern, so Bregman, im Gegenteil: von Grund auf gut. Und geht man von dieser Prämisse aus, ist es möglich, die Welt und den Menschen in ihr komplett neu und grundoptimistisch zu denken. In seinem mitreißend geschriebenen, überzeugenden Buch präsentiert Bregman Ideen für die Verbesserung der Welt. Sie sind innovativ und mutig und stimmen vor allem hoffnungsfroh.
Stats for nerds
24recommend
44mentions
33people
2020–2026years
75% recommend23% neutral2% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- This is well-documented in Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman. It's worth a read, as it also dispels other experiments in human behaviour that have subsequently been difficult to replicate (for a variety of reasons).
- Rutger Bregman’s book, 'Humankind', covers this and is worth a read.
- For a remedy to this flavour of pessimism I'd suggest you read Bregman's Humankind[1]. tldr; the current level of exploiting each other doesn't come naturally for people.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humankind:_A_Hopeful_History
- Coincidentally, I actually re-read The Burnout Society a few months ago while I was listening to The Dawn of Everything.
I strongly recommend The Burnout Society, though I think it tackles these issues from a different perspective: "how we compromise ourselves in service of the (false) personal and societal narratives we've constructed".
A more direct line to The Dawn of Everything in the sense of "how did we construct these narratives in the first place?" would probably be Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman. Coincidentally for this thread, it also includes a chapter on the results of real wolf domestication studies (and how it affects animal behaviour) in past decades.
- Honestly, upon reading these two fragments:
This incongruity gives rise to the perennial question: Are humans naturally good or evil?
In the introduction of the book, Wrangham provides his answer: both.
and
Ever since the Enlightenment, as religion gradually fell by the wayside, people have been trying to ground their moral compasses in another prestigious entity—science. Sadly, this hasn’t really worked.
I immediately loose some respect for the author. Just assuming there is an objective definition of good and evil is so... religious? It's all about context, assumptions, models held in minds, zeitgeist, etc. I find Rutger Bregman (Humankind) much more enlightened on this issue.
Imho grounding our moral compasses in science is working, as Rutger Bregman indicates.
Richard Wrangham seems to think there is a one dimensional scale of evil -> good, Nazis -> 'People helping Jews hide from Nazis'. If only it were that simple, if only it were impossible to split twins and have one end up a Nazi and one helping Jews. If only the good and evil never changed over time.
- Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History is also a good read for dispelling the common misconceptions regarding human behaviour.
