Humankind: A Hopeful History

Overview

If one basic principle has served as the bedrock of bestselling author Rutger Bregman’s thinking, it is that every progressive idea—whether it was the abolition of slavery, the advent of democracy, women’s suffrage, or the ratification of marriage equality—was once considered radical and dangerous by the mainstream opinion of its time. With Humankind, he brings that mentality to bear against one of our most entrenched ideas: namely, that human beings are by nature selfish and self-interested.

By providing a new historical perspective of the last 200,000 years of human history, Bregman sets out to prove that we are in fact evolutionarily wired for cooperation rather than competition, and that our instinct to trust each other has a firm evolutionary basis going back to the beginning of Homo sapiens. Bregman systematically debunks our understanding of the Milgram electrical-shock experiment, the Zimbardo prison experiment, and the Kitty Genovese “bystander effect.”

Key Themes

• Progressive ideas were once deemed radical and dangerous
• Human nature is fundamentally cooperative, not selfish
• Trust as an evolutionary advantage dating back to early Homo sapiens

Methodology

• Presents a sweeping 200,000-year history of human behavior
• Reexamines and challenges classic psychological experiments:
  • Milgram electrical-shock experiment
  • Zimbardo prison experiment
  • Kitty Genovese “bystander effect”

Format

• Hard Cover