Book Review: two hopeful books in this time of crisis

In this time of worldwide pandemic, it seems easy to be quite negative about human nature. Especially when watching just about anything on the news at the moment. But the reason these stories are news is that most people aren’t like that. So today I’m reviewing two very hopeful books about human nature, and how well people everywhere can rise to amazing levels of cooperation and helpfulness.

A Paradise built in Hell, the Extraordinary communities that arise in disasters, by Rebecca Solnit.

Rebecca Solnit is most famous for her essay Men Explain things to me, which was the origin of the word mansplaining (also worth a read, as it is very entertaining). This book is quite different. It is an analysis of the way in which people around the world, from very different origins, will organically form communities to help each other and everyone around them, when a disaster breaks down the normal way in which people stick to their own community, profession, and role in life.

Solnit has a chapter each on a number of famous disasters, talking through all the very available information in each case of how much of the initial relief effort was completely spontaneous and community based. And in many cases, when the “authorities” came to help, they tended to disbelieve the community could do anything useful and get in the way. The first example, which inspired the book, was the San Francisco Earthquake in 1906. Then she also looks at the Halifax explosion, Hurricane Katrina, the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, September 11 in New York City, and a number of other historic disasters.

Solnit tells story after story of people stepping out of their every day lives, when they didn’t know their neighbours and kept to themselves, and creating and contributing to a new community. Many look back on this time of community as one of the most fulfilling times of their lives.

The widespread sharing of danger, loss and deprivation produces an intimate, primarily group solidarity among the survivors, which overcomes social isolation, provides a channel for intimate communication and expression, and provides a major source of physical and emotional support and reassurance… People are thus able to perceive, with a clarity never before possible, a set of underlying basic values to which all people subscribe. They realize that collective action is necessary for these values to be maintained and that individual and group goals are inextricably merged. This merging of individual and societal needs provides a feeling of belonging and a sense of unity rarely achieved under normal circumstances.

But this isn’t what you will read about disasters, most of the time. The stories that are reported are of looting, of selfish behaviour (or currently, of small groups protesting about rules for the majority). So it is a story that is rarely told. That can, of itself, create worse outcomes by pushing official responses in the wrong direction – when officials expect poor behaviour, they prioritise action against it, rather than against building with and helping the spontaneous sharing and helpful behaviour that almost always arises.

Opportunistic theft and burglary are, historically, rare in American disasters… Some such opportunism happened in Katrina. The first thing worth saying about such theft is who cares if electronics are moving around without benefit of purchase when children’s corpses are floating in filthy water and stranded grandmothers are dying of heat and dehydration? .. the answer is, apparently, quite a lot of people, including those who first determined the priorities and public face of the disaster,

A better understanding of how people really act in disasters would probably mean better responses from authorities – working with the spontaneous helpers, rather than assuming the worst. So the call to action is to look for those examples, both as a reader and a reporter. Reading each story in the book gives great hope for humanity, and has helped me to look for those positive stories, even if they are harder to find, often than the negative stories that are told more often.

Humankind, A Hopeful History, by Rutger Bregman

You’ve probably seen Rutger Bregman before. He was the Dutch historian who provocatively asked the billionaires at Davos why they didn’t just pay their taxes instead of talking about complex philanthropic initiatives:

“Just stop talking about philanthropy and start talking about taxes. … We can invite Bono once more, but we’ve got to be talking about taxes. That’s it. Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit in my opinion.”

Well he’s now written a very positive book which I enjoyed reading, and found quite hopeful in the current circumstances. It is enjoyable and engaging, although I do find myself arguing with the conclusions in my head quite a lot now I have finished it.

The premise is basically that human beings are generally much more positive, helpful and friendly than we generally give ourselves credit for. He argues convincingly that we have evolved for friendliness, and helpfulness, even more than intelligence.

Just as in Rebecca Solnit’s book, he gives examples of many different situations, where we assume that if order breaks down (eg an earthquake, a tsunami, enemy bombing, a shipwreck) that we will revert to being selfish and mean and grab everything for ourselves. In most situations that isn’t what happens. Instead, everyone around cooperates to make things work. If you look out for it, you will see this all over the world at the moment. The horrible explosion in Beirut is just the latest example – citizens flocking to help clean up, well before aid agencies or governments get themselves organised.

Because we are conditioned to believe the worst about the rest of humanity (not ourselves) the stories we tell, both in the news, and in wider society, tend to confirm that belief. And then when we see something contradictory, we see it as an exception, rather than as most people are. And most people will live up to, and down to, expectations. If we expect people to be helpful, and selfless, they generally will be. But if we expect selfishness, by the way we structure things, then it will often happen.

But, and there is a very big but, there are some wide-ranging situations in which humankind will turn to the negative:

• civilisation – when people settle down in particular places, notions of personal property and xenophobia lead to people treating foreigners badly as “other”

In this new world of farmers and fighters, cities and states, we straddled an uncomfortably thin line between friendliness and xenophobia. Yearning for a sense of belonging, we were quickly inclined to repel outsiders.

• most people, if they see everyone else doing something, will succumb to peer pressure – so seeding a group with xenophobes will lead to a lot more xenophobes than really exist –

If there is any one characteristic that terrorists share, say experts, it’s that they’re so easily swayed. Swayed by the opinions of other people. Swayed by authority. They yearn to be seen and want to do right by their families and friends. Researchers have compiled reams of data demonstrating that this kind of negative spiral can also factor into deeper societal evils like racism, gang rape, honour killings, support for terrorists and dictatorial regimes, even genocide.

• Power creates sociopaths – studies of people who are given power show that the acquisition of power reduces their empathy.

Power appears to work like an anaesthetic that makes you insensate to other people. In a 2014 study, three American neurologists … discovered that a sense of power disrupts what is known as mirroring, a mental process which plays a key role in empathy. Someone else laughs, you laugh too; someone yawns, so do you. But powerful individuals mirror much less. It is almost as if they no longer feel connected to their fellow human beings. As if they’ve come unplugged.

Since reading this book, I have been looking out for positive examples. It is much easier to see the negatives – examples of humankind at its worst. I thought of listing some, but I’m sure you can think of your own that make it hard to believe in humanity’s basic goodness. So how do we help ourselves and our fellow humans bring out the best rather than the worst? Bregman does have some quite nuanced thinking about this.

Humanity’s biggest weakness comes in our need for social validation. And if the validation comes from a group seeded with sociopaths, then we will follow them. But in the right circumstances, which are very broad, humans will revert to our fundamentally helpful, friendly and supportive natures.

So what is the call to action? It is to trust more, and accentuate the positive. We are a species that ultimately is friendly, and looks to the positive. We rise to expectations, and lower to them, in many fields, including friendliness, and trustworthiness. If we assume that people are untrustworthy, they will live down to our expectations surprisingly often.

So the more we accentuate the positive and trust each other, the more of us will rise to those expectations, creating a better society for all of us.