A review by lachateau
Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman

hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

5.0

"The threat of violence is still very much present, and it's pervasive. It's the reason why immigrants can't simply stroll across the border in the fiction. Money may be a fiction, but it's enforced by the threat of very real violence."

The remedy for hate, injustice, and prejudice: “Every one of them is a human being of flesh and blood. Someone who in a different life might have been our friend, our family, our beloved. They have people they love at home.” 

When history + philosophy becomes one!! Got this recommendation from my therapist in hospital and Dr. Julie Clinical Psychologist (watch her Youtube pls she is an angel). Already dig myself into this book since the early of December  and finally I can finish reading it at the end of January! This book taught me many things; it can come from the shortage of huge tragedy that happened in the past, how people change because of it, and how it might be knowledge for all of us to learn. For example,  in our multifold years of life, we have learned that most people get along as best they can. They don’t intend to hurt anyone. It is merely a terrible by-product of surviving. Quite similar with what I found in Hobbes’ theory— we as human beings always have choice, like John Kramer said: “free will.” we can choose to be good or bad, in everything we do, over anything, over anytime. And it all were driven by fear; a perpetual of restless desire of power. I also learned about John Locke, his theory isn’t as extreme and more tangible than Hobbes’ because we are motivated to pursue things if they promise pleasure and to avoid things if they promise pain. 

I also found Paul Bloom as he wrote the sweet spot! It's part of his research on the pleasure of suffering and searchlight of how empathy blinds. The numerous times this book has associations with my other favorite authors (Mississippi for Hobbes theory and Auschwitz camp 1944). He is a writer that purposes a pleasure in the middle of suffering.  One thing is certain: if empathy makes us less forgiving, the more we identify with victims, the more we generalize about our enemies. the bright spotlight we shine on Our chosen few makes us blind to the perspective of our adversaries, since everybody else falls outside our view. It’s like the mechanism that puppy expert Brian Hare talked about—both those (and xenophobia) go hand in hand like two sides of the same coin.

Humankind, like its title, is a book about a kindness in human. How we can find it in every little thing happens in our lives. And the author package it on many theories that ever happened in the past, and how the scientists made the proof into it. Not just blunt research, they also related it into many things that we have on our world today. I believe every one need to have this copy in their shelves!! Those we are seeking for justice in people's kindness, the impact of tragedy that we usually found on out history books, this book definitely made for you.