Towards the end of
2021 I needed to read something encouraging. I
googled a UK bookstore for the
best books over there and stumbled across the
paperback of Humankind: A
Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman,
Bloomsbury 2021. The hard cover had come
out in 2020. It was translated from the Dutch
writing. Bregman sets out
to cross examine some stories and research
that reinforce assumptions about malicious
and evil humans and about humans acting
selfishly for personal gains. Taking
some care in his stories, he manages to show
that there is more of a positive
side to homo sapiens than is usually assumed.
He reminds readers of recent well
received books about human violence and about
a “selfish gene” but he gives
counter evidence so the reader is forced to
accept another side to homo
sapiens. The organization
of this book into “parts” with numbered
sections in them is reasonable, but the
book is easy going telling stories well
without a strong logical flow. The
Prologue is followed by Part I which explores
the homo sapiens State of
Nature. Part II, After Auschwitz,
examines more recent evidence about
supposed horrific examples of human
mis-treatment of fellow humans. Part III
gives examples of Why Good People Turn Bad.
Part 4, A New Realism looks
at stories about motivation, about education
and play and about democracy that empower
people to be better. Part 5, Turn the
Other Cheek, looks at behaviour
changing
outcomes in policing, incarceration, South
African apartheid and reaching out across
opposing war-time trenches. The Epilogue
gives ten rules to live by. All
sections in all Parts offer interesting
stories. The overall result undermines
a fully cynical view of today’s humans,
homo-sapiens. Off the top, in
the Prologue, Bregman questions whether in a
crisis human morale falls and panic
and violence erupt. In WWII, the bombing of
the UK and then the bombing of
Germany strengthened morale and brought the
people together. The same happened with
the massive US bombing of North Vietnam.
Bregman develops this further. In an aircraft
emergency landing people generally help each
other out. In 9/11, as the Twin
Towers burned, thousands descended the stairs
calmly, moving aside for
firefighters and politely letting others pass
ahead. Adversity strikes and there’s
a wave of cooperation. Yes, there are
negative aspects to humans. Indeed, polls show
many of us are suspicious of
others. But Bregman’s thesis is that if our
view of fellow humans can be better
than those fears, we’re likely to approach
each other with more trust. And the book
manages to show that our fellow humans are
indeed better than we usually assume.
Meanwhile, our news, our books, our
philosophers all tend to be drawn towards
looking
at the exception - and at the bad exception. Supporting human goodness
attracts never-ending cynicism. When Bregman
challenges one myth, people pull
out another. Human goodness challenges power
structures that want to be needed –
they want to reign in, restrain and regulate
humans who can get along quite well
without supervision. Standing up for human
goodness attracts ridicule too. It’s
much easier to be a cynic! At the beginning
of Part I, The State of Nature, the
natural state of homo sapiens, Bregman
considers the fictional story Lord of the
flies. It is about a bunch of boys
alone on an island who can’t work together,
who fight and mistreat each other. It’s
a high school “must read” in English classes.
Bregman presents an alternative true
story of a group of teenagers from Tonga in
the S. Pacific who stole a sailboat,
got blown out to sea and ended up shipwrecked
on a small inhospitable uninhabited
island. They organized themselves and
cooperated to find food and share chores.
They helped the one who broke a leg with
splints and shared his chores until he
recovered. They learned to make fire and to
maintain a fire that in the end helped
attract outside help. Help came after they
kept each other alive for 4 years. This
behaviour runs counter to the fictional story
Lord of the Flies. This Part of the book
introduces the polar opposite philosophies of
Hobbs and of Rousseau. Hobbs
asserted that civil society alone could
protect us humans from our lower nature.
In our state of nature, we were solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish and short lived.
To tame this anarchy, we can put ourselves in
the hands of a strong person – a solitary
sovereign, king or dictator. Rousseau, on the
other hand, saw civil society as
a curse that made people wicked by allowing
such things as private property. Prior
to civil society, humans enjoyed freedom, were
compassionate, healthy and
strong. Now they are indolent and feeble.
Bregman sets off to find out which
approach fits the natural state of humans
better. Historically, there
were many humans. Our species, homo sapiens,
was the last human to arrive. How
is it that we became dominant? It was not by
our strength or brain size. The Neanderthal
human was stronger and had a bigger brain.
Bregman then tells about some science
that demonstrates that when foxes and dogs are
bred for friendliness, there is
a bi-product of enhanced cleverness. He
suggests that this is the clue to how
homo-sapiens
was able to invent better tools and methods –
he calls us “homo-puppy”. It was
not that homo sapiens’ individual brains were
more intelligent, it was that
collectively, in their larger groups, they
could all learn from each other. Some suppose that
homo-sapiens wiped out the other humans, but
there is no hard evidence for that.
And although Dawkins’ original theory of
struggle and competition in his popular
book, The Selfish Gene, may have
played a role in the evolution of life,
our distant ancestors also knew the value of
the collective and rarely idolized
individuals. Bregman examines the
work of scholars who concluded that early homo
sapiens were war-inclined and scrappy
fighters – as the Hobbs philosophy supposes.
Pinker’s important book The
Better Angels of our Nature reaches the
conclusion that homo-sapiens
started off nasty. It supports the notion that
farming, civilization and the
state tamed us. But there is also early
anthropological work to suggest that early
homo sapiens lived in large overlapping
cooperative hunter-gatherer groups. Pinker’s
data on large-scale killing in early warfare
dates to the time of settlements
and “civilization”. The data can be
interpreted as showing that the organized
society lead to widespread killings of the
hunter gatherers. The early
hunter-gatherers tended not to be war-like.
War had a beginning. I wonder if the
earlier hunter gatherer society relates to the
notion of a Garden of Eden in
early mythology? Bregman draws from
the evidence of Samuel Marshall who did group
interviews of WWII military and
found armed troops had difficulty pulling the
trigger on fellow humans in the
opposing army. Later his data was ridiculed as
“contrary to human nature”. But military
leaders from two WWII fronts made observations
of this phenomenon. Similar
findings arose from evidence of many unfired
muskets after the Battle of Gettysburg
in the US Civil War. There were reports of
this in the French army in the 1860s
and George Orwell, writing on the Spanish
Civil War, made a similar
observation. Sociologist Randell Collins
concludes that Hobbs was wrong. Humans
are hard wired for solidarity. Bregman’s
examination suggests that both todays isolated
hunter-gatherer tribes and also archeological
sites pre-dating farming settlements
fail to show lots of warfare. A section entitled
The Curse of Civilization notes that
Christopher Columbus was astonished
to find how peaceful the Bahamas’ inhabitants
were. More recently, isolated islanders
on the South Pacific atoll Ifalik were shown
Hollywood films by the US Navy as
a goodwill gift at the end of WWII. They were
badly traumatized by the violence
and by seeing one person killing another.
Bregman acknowledges that homo
sapiens has always had envy, rage, hatred.
Without some offensives sapiens
would not have conquered the world.
Nonetheless, he paints a picture of an
“original
society” that was egalitarian. Power
distinctions were only tolerated
temporarily and for a purpose. Members who
became arrogant risked exile. Men
and women were more or less equal. Child
rearing was communal and shared. The
love life was relaxed – “serial monogamist”.
What changed? Bregman says the
last ice age ended and the warmer climate
offered a fertile area of plenty in
the Middle East bounded by the Nile and the
Tigris. Huts and Temples were built
and towns and villages took shape as the
population grew. People’s possessions
grew. When land was enclosed as “mine”
Rousseau thought problems began. Foragers
shared almost everything. Ownership allowed
inequality to grow and inheritance
opened wide a gap between rich and poor. This
is the point where fortifications
and cave paintings of archers shooting people
appear. Homo sapiens went from
cosmopolitan to xenophobe. Clans made
alliances; leaders emerged from war.
Eventually a leader made a leap to permanent
leader who made ways to boost
power – as the Old Testament prophet Samuel
warned the Israelites who wanted a
king. The 1% began oppressing the 99%. Bregman
suggests Rousseau may be right. Once humans
settled in one place things fell apart.
Anthropologists have found that
hunter-gatherers led a fairly easy life.
Farmers had to work the soil. Settled
life was hard on women. Sons worked the
fields. Brides
had to be brought to a farm, were
treated like a commodity and were viewed with
suspicion until they produced a
son. Patriarchy developed. Health was
affected. While foragers got exercise and
a varied diet, farmers got a monotonous diet.
Worse, farmers lived close to
each other, to animals they domesticated and
to their own waste. Diseases
developed and spread. And so began ongoing
battles with famines, floods and epidemics.
With big settlements came religion and clergy
to explain the situation. Bregman thinks
this happened because sapiens fell into a
trap. Nature tempted sapiens into
farming, but then humans multiplied. Nearby
wild animals declined so more farmland
was needed and less fertile land had to be
used which needed more work. By then,
too many mouths had to be fed, the ability to
forage had been lost and the
farmers were hemmed in by other settlements
and other farmers. Nonetheless
farmers and settlements could raise more food
and raise bigger armies so nomads
had to fend off expanding groups of farmers
and their diseases. Villages were
conquered by towns, towns by cities, cities by
provinces – and finally, the state
arrived to be lamented by Rousseau. Hobbs suggests
warfare would cause people to rush for the
security of the strong rulers. Yet many
of the “gifts” of civilization seem more like
instruments of oppression. Writing
and money were to enable the leader to collect
taxes. Two thirds of the
population of Athens were slaves. The Code of
Hammurabi, the first historic code
of law, is full of punishments for helping a
slave to escape. And the Great Wall
of China can be viewed as a wall to keep
people in. A secret of early
colonization of America was that life among
the “savages” was more egalitarian
and relaxed than life with the colonists. This
was especially true for women! Globally,
until 1800, 75% of the human population lived
in bondage to a wealthy lord, 90%
worked in agriculture and over 80% lived in
poverty. For most people, “civilization”
was a disaster. Only in the last 200 years
have things changed – slavery ended,
disease diminished and free time returned. We
have entered the most peaceful
age ever. However, I note that the risk of
nuclear war remains. And Bregman
asks whether this current lifestyle is
sustainable. Sapiens got it by using
fossil fuels and creating a serious
environmental backlash. This leads Bregman
to look into the “Mystery of Easter Island”.
This is the story of an early
Polynesian community isolated on a small
island in the Pacific Ocean stumbled upon
on Easter 1722 by the Dutchman Jacob
Roggeveen. He reported huge statues called
moai. But by 1914, the island was
deserted and the moai had been pushed
over. The story developed that the islanders
felt compelled to produce more and
more Moai. Trees were cut and crops
were grown to feed the workforce. With
the trees felled, the land eroded and the
crops failed. A huge civil war took
place and survivors went on a rampage
destroying the moai. In his 2005
bestseller Collapse, geologist Jared
Diamond repeats that story. New
evidence has appeared from a new look at
Roggeveen’s log book. Roggeveen described
a society healthy and happy. He does not see
fallen statues. Skulls from Easter
Island show no signs of warfare. Diamond
overestimates the likely population. Bregman
says a much lower estimate, some 2,200, better
fits the observations of the first
Europeans who landed there. Bregman’s story
finds that a large fraction of the
population was later captured and shipped to
Peru as slaves. With the end of
slavery, the surviving slaves in Peru were
shipped back to their island but they
took smallpox with them. Smallpox decimated
the remaining few islanders who had
not been taken away and reduced in number as
slaves in Peru. A once viable human
community had been destroyed. Part II, After
Auschwitz, begins by noting that the
horrors of WWII were produced by homo sapiens
in a civilization - the land of Kant, Goethe,
Beethoven and Bach. The
new science of the social psychologists
included
a series of experiments in the 60s and 70s
that appeared to show how homo sapiens
is capable of appalling acts on others.
Bregman re-examines the data and the students
who are cast into roles as jailers and the
jailed the Stanford basement
experiment. He reexamines the data around the
Shock Machine experiment at Yale.
He looks beyond the newspapers at the death of
Catherine Susan Genovese after her
screaming for help on the street outside her
New York apartment building. The
detective work on the original published
accounts makes an interesting read.
Suffice it to say that the evidence shows the
outcome of each story is different
from that popularly promulgated. The Stanford basement
section adds an examination of two related
stories of boys sent to a camping trip
that was a behavioural experiment. In each
case the boys were set up in competitive
teams and competition was fanned. A theft was
staged to encourage fighting
between the groups. Yet it seemed that once
rapport was established between the
boys early on, fighting was too hard to start!
Bregman re-examines the evidence
and reinterprets the reported stories. The
reinterpreted stories show that
people in charge failed in some way – the
scientists who manipulated the students
in the Stanford basement failed as did the
police chiefs and the editor of the story
about Catherine Genovese’s death on her
street. Part III then examines
why good people can turn bad. They
really can turn bad, but sapiens doesn’t
easily switch over to a monster. Bregman
titles a section Empathy Blinds,
but he opens by saying that it is friendship
or camaraderie that allowed Nazis
to fight on when WWII was obviously lost. It
was not their belief in Nazi-ism. Similarly,
American soldiers fought with and for their
comrades in WWII. The same factor works
for terrorists blowing themselves up with and
for others they trust and love. It
is not their belief in a religion. There is an
added account of Baby Lab –
where the behavior of toddlers is examined.
Without distractions, toddlers favour
a good puppet, not a bad. But they can be
given coloured shirts and learn to
favour their colour. Empathy is bad bad
because homo sapiens can suck up far
too much of one person’s feelings, but cannot
easily deal with the feelings of
a whole number of people. Sapiens becomes
blinded and so distracted from the
notion of fairness – the egalitarian trait.
Which child gets the bed in
hospital? Judgment is affected if sapiens is
asked to think how Mary, the one
whose story we know feels. The neediest child
may then not get hospital treatment,
but Mary may. What affects people
asked to kill another person? Distance. Forget
the knife and bayonet. They are
too near to another human to easily use. The
bow and arrow, the grenade, the
aerial bomb or shell are used because they
distance the actor from the act.
There is of course training or drugging an
army to increase killing. Given sapiens tends
to be friendly, how is it that sapiens allows
her and himself to be ruled by
shameless specimens – the narcissists,
egomaniacs and opportunists. The section
entitled Power Corrupts looks at that. Was Machiavelli,
the author of The Prince correct to
advise power must be taken using any
and all means including lying and deceit? A
professor exploring places like a college
dorm room where people vie for leadership
found that the friendliest and most empathetic
rose to power – the Machiavelli types got
chased out. The sequel is how power
affects the person who holds it. People in
power behave like people who receive
a blow on the head and have a kind of brain
damage. It makes a person
insensitive, feeling disconnected from others
and viewing others in a negative
light. We might pick a considerate person to
lead us, but once power is
experienced things change. The person
Machiavelli describes is the alpha male
chimpanzee
said the author of a book on Chimpanzee
Politics.
Yet sapiens is equally
close to the bonobos species that behave very
differently. Sapiens’ history was mainly that
of a hunter-gatherer. Those politics
were closer to that of the bonobos. There,
Machiavellian behaviour was a
formula for disaster. Leadership was temporary
and decisions were made as a
group. Like bonobos, humans have an innate
aversion to excessive inequality. Nomadic
leaders showed modesty but the leaders of the
settlements justified their privileges
with claims of connections to the gods. The
better their story, the bigger their
share of the pie. The single human tends to
have a connection with 70 to 150
other humans. It has been argued by some that
the post “civilization” myths
allowed humans to work together with strangers
on a huge scale. However, the largest
part of homo sapiens’ history was as a hunter
gatherer. On that model, groups
were indeed small but they regularly swapped
members with other groups creating
an immense network. Indeed, tribes like the
Ache in Paraguay have members who
meet more than a thousand people in their
lifetime. Prehistoric people had rich
imaginations. The world’s oldest temple at
Gobekli Tepe, Turkey, was built by thousands
of people. But those prehistoric myths were
“not stable” says Bregman. Things changed
with the ability to raise an army and to use
it to kill any opposition. Today,
the threat of violence remains a means of
projecting power. So, 10,000 years
ago, with the arrival of private property and
farming, it became hard to unseat
the powerful. In cities and states rulers
gained command over armies. People
have managed periodically to unseat rulers by
revolution. Some societies have managed
to arrange a system of distributed power -
democracy – where people chose those
who have power over them, but this tends to be
a form of elective autocracy
originally designed to exclude the rank and
file. Efforts to get better leaders
falter because power causes people to lose the
kindness and modesty that got
them elected. In a hierarchically arranged
society the leaders have Machiavelli’s
answer – they are just shameless. Bregman thinks
about what went wrong with the
enlightenment - that period of new
thinking
– the philosophic revolution that gave the
modern world. It began as the 17 th century
finished and ran until the American and French
revolutions near the end of the
18 th century. Those thinkers thought sapiens
was evil but they put their faith
in rational thought. Some reasoned that our
bad side could produce a public
good. The founder of economics Adam Smith
thought that self-interest could pull
the butcher and baker into a market that
worked for the benefit of everyone.
Similarly, the suspicions of the selfishness
and the search for power of a
congressperson or a judge or senator could be
solved by checks and balances
among the congress, court and senate. Bregman
wonders if the assumption about
evil and selfishness was valid. Could schools
and governments be set up with different
assumptions? His Part 4, A New Realism
looks at that. Bregman tells how
he was impressed by hearing philosopher
Bertrand Russell argue that the logic
and the evidence must be believed – not what
you want to believe. Philosopher
James said that some things have to be taken
on trust. Friendship; love; trust
and loyalty become true because we believe
them. Bregman tells how
rats in a maze that students believe are more
intelligent actually perform
better than rats they are told are less
intelligent. This happens as the
students treat the ones said to be more
intelligent better and that improves
performance. The same works with teachers who
give two groups of elementary
pupils an IQ test. The group of pupils the
teacher is told are the brighter students
in fact do better although they are initially
just part of the same pool of
students. The students are unaware of their
classification before the test. The
power of expectation works its magic. This is
a phenomenon that has not be
sufficiently applied! Sadly, a reverse effect,
negative expectations, also
works. Poorer students attract low
expectations and that delivers worse results
– and so on. Sapiens is very sensitive to
other people and tends to mirror
them. In fact sapiens finds it hard to stand
up to the group. Can thinking the
worst about people result because we think
others are doing it? Does that spiral
worse and worse? Bregman says that this kind
of negative spiral can lead
someone into becoming a perpetrator of acts of
racism or honour killing. The
person themselves may condemn the act as
wrong, but they feel alone and go
along with it. Trust often begins when someone
dares to go against the flow of
the group. There is a story
about Jos de Blok who was given the Albert
Medal fro his revolutionary work on The
Power of Intrinsic Motivation. Forget the
business courses, the pay increase incentives
to get people to work, the assumptions that
people won’t get up of the couch if
they are not threatened or offered bribes.
These are the assumptions of
Frederick Taylor’s widely read Scientific
Management. Yet researchers found
that in some cases sticks and carrots cause
work performance to slack off.
Bonusses can blunt intrinsic motivations and
creativity. How you get paid can
make you a different person. Jos de Blok
developed self-directed teams and hands off
management for a big Dutch
healthcare organization. Employees are seen as
intrinsically motivated
professionals and experts on how their jobs
ought to be done. He formed teams
and trust with a maximum of 12 with maximum
autonomy who plan their schedules
and employ their co-workers. There is a site
where colleagues can pool their
knowledge and experience. A team has a budget
for training and each group of 50
teams has a coach to call in if they get
stuck. There is a main office to deal
with finances. With this, Blok was “Best
Employer” had “Best Marketting”. There
was high client satisfaction, costs slightly
below average and care above
average. It’s not perfect of course.
Healthcare can grow its own bureaucracies
who know nothing about healthcare. Blok wants
simplicity. Forget the product,
concentrate on the care. To do that, simplify
the billing and costs. And this
can go beyond the care sector. Bregman tells a
little about French auto parts
firm FAVI. “If one treats employees as if they
are responsible and reliable –
they will be” said the CEO! Nothing is more
powerful than people who do
something because they want to do it. Bergman turns to
education and child rearing. Play and
playfulness is important for children and
to all of us. In societies without school
children play grown and learn.
Playing together they learn to cooperate.
Things changes when humans settled in
one place. Farming brought labour. The firm
hand was needed. The church ran education
until the 19 th century. Good citizenship was
drilled into
students – in France with a consistent program
across the country. Play returned briefly with
the end of the 19 th century.
Since the 1980s the workplace and classroom
became busier. Education became
something to be endured. But Bergman tells of
another way – schools that
unchain the need to play – a place where kids
are in charge. But the “junk
playgrounds” that emerged from WWII were
regarded as ugly and dangerous – although
kids loved them. They are now earning a second
look. Can one go further?
Bergman tells of a school with no classes and
no classrooms, no homework and no
grades. Agora in Southern Holland has only
teams of autonomous teachers and the
students are in charge. Kids from all levels
are thrown together and each kid
has to develop an individual plan. Students
can learn what they want
with a coach. Some were students slated for
vocational schools. Bregman tells
us of the student who learnt about atomic
bombs, is developing a business plan
can hold a conversation in German and is
heading to an international university
program in Shanghai. Another is analytical,
devoted vegan, crazy about Korea
and aiming to study there. There is no
bullying and a real sense of community.
Students can take a breather when they want –
the doors are open. But there is
structure. There is a weekly meeting with a
coach – who is essential. And to
keep funding flowing the school has to deal
with standardized testing – and this
puts the brakes on some of the initiatives at
Agora. There are other examples.
They show kids can handle freedom. But the
opposite of play is not work – it is
depression. Bregman turns to
look at what democracy looks like in the
example of Torres, a municipality in
Venezuela.
A mayoral candidate ran on giving power to the
people – and narrowly won. Hundreds
of meetings began. The people had the budget
to spend. The governor suspended
the budget and sought to elect a new council
but the people marched to city
hall and wouldn’t go home until the budget was
adopted. Within 10 years Torres
had achieved decades worth of progress. It has
the largest participatory budget
in the world – 15,000 people give input.
Another example is Porto Alegre in
Brazil. And by 2016 more than 1500 cities from
New York City to Seville and
from Hamburg to Mexico City have some form of
participatory budgeting. It
undermines cynicism and builds engagement. It
moves from polarization to trust,
from complacency to citizenry, corruption to
transparency, self-interest to
solidarity, inequality to dignity. And yes
there are problems. There is a
supposed tragedy of “the commons” that Bregman
takes a look at. For millennia almost
everything on earth was in common. Only in the
last 10,000 years has that
changed. Bregman notes the writing of Garrett
Harding who alleged “Freedom in a
commons ... brings ruin to all” that was
widely reproduced and read. Elinor
Ostrom looked at what happens. People talk.
Farmers and fishermen and
neighbours can make agreements to stop fields
becoming deserts, lakes from
being overfished and wells from drying up.
Pooling resources is not a recipe
for tragedy. Ostrom got the 2009 Nobel Prize
for economics. Part 5, Turning
the Other Cheek takes a look at other
alternative behaviours. A story of a
mugger with a knife who takes a wallet. The
victim offers his coat because the
mugger seems cold. They go to a diner. The
mugger gives the wallet back so the
bill can be paid. The victim offers $20 if the
mugger hands over the knife. He
does. Psychologists call this non-complementary
behaviour. If you get
treated well, it’s easy to reciprocate. Jesus
wanted that to happen when you’re
not treated well. Can one assume the best of
enemies? Bregman tells the story
of an open Norwegian island jail where jailors
and the convicted eat meals together
and do activities together – aiming to ready
those convicted for return to civilian
life after jail. Inmates work to keep this
jail going – plough, plant, harvest,
cook and chop wood – with axes. Some can
commute to jobs on the mainland. The jail
has had several wide-eyed visits from
officials of US states. Bregman
introduces us to the influential “broken
window” article that ran in Atlantic
Monthly 40 years ago. Leave a car with
a broken window and it attracts being
trashed – so crack down on little details and
reduce crime! It appeared to work
when applied 40 years ago in the New York
Subway where rules were issued to
prevent any potential minor misbehaviour.
Except later evidence showed it wasn’t
so. Crime went down in this time period in
other cities – San Diego. Neither
does the broken window theory work generally.
Neighborhoods are not made safer
by passing out hundreds of parking tickets!
And whose safety is at stake? The
police activity was mirrored by rising reports
of police misconduct. Criminals
continued to walk free, but hundreds of
innocent people became suspects in
frivolous arrests. And the broken window
theory goes arm in arm with racism so that
the frivolous arrests tend to focus on people
of another colour or cultural tradition. Bregman has a
powerful moving story in his last Part – The
Best Remedy for Hate, Injustice
and Prejudice. The story begins of twin
brothers in post WWII South Africa
Constand and Abraham. They were Afrikaners, a
people who had known oppression
by the British, but who were raised as whites
in a country that turned to
segregation and apartheid. Abraham, “Braam”
went
to University and Constand joined the
military. While Constand befriended students
from all over the world, Constand developed a
deep bond with his military
colleagues. Braam became convinced apartheid
was wrong. When he returned, Braam
was a deserter. Meanwhile Constand was one of
South Africa’s most beloved
soldiers and in 1985 head of the Defence
Force. How can one address deep prejudice?
A scholar, Gorden Allport said “contact” –
meet and do something together like
the blacks and whites had done in the US Navy. In 1993 Constand had
retired. But he willingly the calls of
Afrikaner Resistance Movement to lead
the Afrikaner Volksfront, this is more
than a political party – it is
the army. The Afrikaners must again be willing
to defend themselves. It is 10
months to elections that will involve Nelson
Mandela and the black African
National Congress. Constand has refused to
meet Mandela. Braam meets with his
brother and realizes the situation is
dangerous and he must act. With Mandela’s
knowledge he asks his brother to meet Mandela.
And so Mandela greets Constand
and pours his tea. Mandela understands the
Afrikaner family’s struggle for
freedom from the British – it is like his own
struggle against Apartheid. He
can speak Afrikaans. He says there can be no
winners if the two go to war. And
so it went on. The two developed mutual
respect. In the end, the former general
was able to lay down his weapons and join the
election with his party. And the
Allport theory was corroborated by Thomas
Pettygrew. Contact enables more trust,
solidarity and mutual kindness. It allows you
to see the world through the eyes
of another person. It
changes you
because individuals with a more diverse group
of friends are more tolerant of
strangers. And it is contagious – when you see
it, you rethink your own biases.
Bad incidents have a bigger impact, but many
good contacts can overcome that.
Mandela had years in prison to develop his
understanding of this through his
contacts with jailors and more. Bregman adds to this
the interesting finding from data on violent
and non-violent resistance since
1900. Violent were 26% successful but
non-violent were 50% successful. This
account ends reminding readers that contact
works – but not instantaneously. In the last story
in the book, When the Soldiers Came Out of
the Trenches, Bregman reminds
us that on the first Christmas Eve of WWI in
1914, the soldiers in opposing trenches
were able to see each other as fellow humans.
This is evidence that hatred can
become friendship and bitter foes can shake
hands. British soldiers saw lights,
lanterns, Christmas trees and heard the
singing of “Stille Nacht”. They responded
by singing “The First Noel”. The Germans
applauded and sang “O Tannenbaum”.
Elsewhere on the front someone heard an offer
of tobacco and went out of a
trench. Soon little groups of soldiers were
meeting in no-mans-land and
de-bunking the propaganda produced about each
other. It wasn’t until 1981 that the
BBC made the public aware of the full extent
of the Christmas 1914 cessation of
fighting. Similar things happened in the Boer
War, the Spanish Civil War, the
American Civil War and in the Napoleonic wars.
Bregman adds an account of
peace-making that reached out to FARC rebels
in the Colombian jungle. The
initiative talked to the rebels as fellow
Colombians with homes and parents and
it encouraged them to go home for Christmas,
to get an amnesty, to learn a
trade and find a job. The book ends with
an Epilogue: Ten Rules to Live By. 1.
When in doubt assume the best. 2.
Think in win-win scenarios. 3. Ask more
questions. 4. Temper your empathy;
Train your compassion. 5. Try to understand
the other even if you don’t know
where they’re coming from. 6. Love your own as
others love their own. 7. Avoid
the news [thoughtful newspapers are OK]. 8.
Don’t punch Nazis. 9. Come out of
the closet; don’t be ashamed to do good. 10.
Be realistic [and courageous].