Human Kind – A Hopeful History
by Rutger Bregman
The same with sexually transmitted diseases. Virtually unknown in nomadic times, among pastoralists they began running rampant. Why?
The reason is rather embarrassing. When humans began raising livestock, they also invented bestiality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humankind:_A_Hopeful_History
Page 46 [Rousseau:]
The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, ‘This is mine,’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, how many wars, how many murders, how many misfortunes and horrors, would that man have saved the human species, who pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditches should have cried to his fellows: Be sure not to listen to this imposter; you are lost, if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong equally to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.
…
In the good old days before bureaucrats and kings, Rousseau believed at everything was better. Back when humans existed in a ‘state of nature’ we were still compassionate beings.
Page 63
Не suspected, he said, that the changes in these foxes had everything to do with hormones. The more amiable foxes produced fewer stress hormones and more serotonin (the ‘happy hormone’) and oxytocin (the ‘love hormone’).
Page 104
The same with sexually transmitted diseases. Virtually unknown in nomadic times, among pastoralists they began running rampant. Why?
The reason is rather embarrassing. When humans began raising livestock, they also invented bestiality. Read: sex with animals. As the world grew increasingly uptight, the odd farmer covertly forced himself on his flock.
And that’s the second spark for the male obsession with female virginity.
Apart from the matter of legitimate offspring, it was also a fear of STDs. Kings and emperors, who had entire harems at their disposal, went to great lengths to ensure their partners were ‘pure’. Hence the idea, still upheld by millions today, that sex before marriage is a sin.
Page 168
Painstaking analyses of the hundreds of sessions at Milgram’s shock machine furthermore reveal that subjects grew more disobedient the more overbearing the man in the grey coat became. Put differently: Homo Puppy did not brainlessly follow the authority’s orders. Turns out we have a downright aversion to bossy behaviour.
Page 171
warped ideas and fantasies, it’s patently obvious that Eichmann was no brainless bureaucrat. He was a fanatic. He acted not out of indifference, but out of conviction. Like Milgram’s experimental subjects, he did evil because he believed he was doing good.
Page 172
The perpetrators believed they were on the right side of history.
Page 175
‘What distinguishes Me heroes, Hollander observes, ‘is largely a teachable competency at resisting questionable authority.’
Page 198
permanent settlements? It can be no accident that the first archaeological evidence for war suddenly appears approximately ten thousand years ago, coinciding with the development of private property and farming.
Page 205
Psychologist Roy Baumeister calls the fallacious assumption that our enemies are malicious sadists ‘the myth of pure evil’. In reality, our enemies are just like us.
Page 216
… empathy makes us less forgiving, because the more we identify with victims, the more we generalise about our enemies.
Page 225
The individuals who rise to positions of power, Keltner found, are the friendliest and the most empathic.‘ It’s survival of the friendliest.
Page 227
In a 2014 study, three American neurologists used a ‘transcranial magnetic stimulation machine’ to test the cognitive functioning of powerful and less powerful people. They discovered that a sense of power disrupts what is known as mirroring, a mental process which plays a key role in empathy.
Page 230
The female of the species seem to have been key to o this process, because, while not as strong as the males, they close ranks any time one of their own gets harassed by the opposite sex. If necessary, they bite his penis in half.
Thanks to this balance of power, bonobo females can pick and choose their own mates, and the nicest guys usually finish first.
Page 238
In a hierarchically organised society, the Machiavellis are one step ahead. They have the ultimate secret weapon to defeat their competition.
They’re shameless.
Page 258
The Golem Effect is a kind of nocebo: a nocebo that causes poor pupils to fall further behind, the homeless to lose hope and isolated teenagers to radicalise. It’s also one of the insidious mechanisms behind racism, because when you’re subjected to low expectations, you won’t perform at your best, which further diminishes others’ expectations and thus further undermines your performance.
Page 283
Anthropologists suspect that for most of human history children were permitted to play as much as they pleased.
Page 284
For children, the dawn of civilisation brought the yoke of mind-numbing farm labour, as well as the idea that children required raising, much like one might raise tomatoes. Because if children were born wicked, then you couldn’t leave them to their own devices.
Page 289
Try to picture a school with no classes or classrooms. No homework or grades. No hierarchy of vice-principals and team leaders – only teams of autonomous teachers (or ‘coaches’ as they’re called here). Actually, the students are the ones in charge. At this school, the director is routinely booted.