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.p249 '''What the enlightenment got wrong?''' Bregman laments that Enlightenment philosophers assumed men could be wicked as well as good, and designed society ''as though'' people have a selfish nature. The impression I get is that Bregman assumes (almost?) all people are (or can be) innately good, or at least better than people are with group-imposed constraints. My "lived experience" is that people are innately different, and enough are "bad enough" to make life hell for the small or weak or different. Some of those "bad enough" people don't fit what seems to be Bregman's uniformly-OK model. .p253 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell | Bertrand Russell ]] became Bregman's hero at age 19 .p253-4 1959 Russell: "When you are studying any matter or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the fact and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed, but look only and solely at what are the facts." . Uhh ... facts are not labelled as such. Indeed, even "proven scientific facts about physical reality" are tentative, until new (and perhaps exotic) observations modify (and occasionally refute) "facts". .p254 Russell calls his approach "The Will to Doubt" ... which is the title of [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Henry_Lloyd#The_Will_to_Doubt | Alfred Henry Lloyd's 1907 essay collection, responding to the 1896 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James | William James ]] essay collection [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Will_to_Believe | The Will to Believe ]] . I see too much "all or none" thinking. Indeed, treating '''everyone''' as a psychopath or criminal is wrong. Treating everyone as a saint can get you killed or maimed. What is the best approach to a veiled and uncertain world? .p255 "... If you go around forever doubting people ..." is silly absolutist non-reasoning. Of COURSE you start out by treating all others as good, while reserving enough ''ability to doubt'' so that you can intelligently modify your prior assumptions and deal with the specific situation that presents itself. You don't have to "carry a big stick", but be able to take away the big stick from a surprisingly hostile other - and wield that stick to get away, if trapped. |
http://wiki.keithl.com/Humankind
Humankind
A Hopeful History
Rutger Bergman . 2019 . BeavLib 128 BRE
- pxiii London shop wrecked during the Blitz: MORE OPEN THAN USUAL
- pxvii civilian bombings strengthened German economy, production of tanks up 9x, fighter jets 14x
- p004 2025 post Katrina New Orleans; journalists, police, governor claim anarchy
- p005 "gunfire" a relief valve on a gas tank, superdome 4 natural cause deaths, one suicide, one overdose, no officially reported rape or murder, "looting" was police-organized survival scavenging
- p005 "Robin Hood Looters" rescue squad
p006 Rebecca Solnit 2009 A Paradise Built in Hell Tigard 303.485 SOL
- p007 Dictators and despots, governors and generals assume average Joe is just like them
p014 Jacobs: Back To Reality news opposite of reality
p016 Frans de Waal/ The Bonobo and the Atheist / Cedar Mill 599.815 WAAL
- p017 "We become what we teach" Robert H. Frank 2011 "The Darwin Economy" PSU Basement HB95.F723 2011
- p017 St. Augustine "Mo one is free from sin, not even an infant whose span of earthly life is but a single day."
- p018 Gandhi, Mandela
- p019 "For every misanthropic argument you deflate, two more will pop up in its place. Veneer theory is a zombie that just keeps on coming back"
p023 William Golding 1954 Lord of the Flies
- p024 Golding alcoholic, prone to depression, encouraged his students to attack each other
- p025 Frans de Waal: There is no shred of evidence that this is what children left to their own devices will do"
p026 1966 October 6 Australian The Age, "Sunday Showing for Tongan Castaways": Six boys marooned on Tongan atoll 'Ata for more than a year.
p027 Peter Warner Mano Totau
p029 Boys at Saint Andrews Anglican boarding school in Nukuʻalofa
- p036 This is real life, unlike so-called reality shows
p075 Raymond Dart 1924 skull of Australopithecus africanus numerous injuries, killer ape theory
p081 Samuel Marshall 1946 Men Against Fire disagreement
p082 1% of USAF fighter pilots brought down 40% Bvtn 355.0019 GRO 2009
p083 After Gettysburg, 90% of 27574 muskets recovered from battlefield still loaded, 12,000 double loaded, 6,000 triple-loaded, one had 23 balls in the barrel .. time-consuming gun-loading an excuse for not firing it, most soldiers not trying to kill the enemy
p084 Randall Collins Violence PSU Basement HM1121.C64 2008
- I would like to believe this, but sadly I'm not convinced by Bregman, and others find flaws with Collins
p086 Australopithecus africanus skull damage actually predatory birds
- p087 Chagnon gave them axes and machetes in exchange for their help, hence encouraged violence says
Robert M. Sapolsky ] [[ https://wccls.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S143C3392037
- killers have 3x more children? killers 35yo, "peaceniks" 25yo, Chagnon did not correct for ages
- Chagnon only counted killers who survived revenge. in 1995 Chagnon was barred from returning
p088 Steven Pinker The Better Angels of Our Nature claimed 14% homicide rates in 8 primitive societies
p089 Anthropologist Douglas P. Fry: NOT "War mortality", actually shot by Paraguayan slave traders and frontiersmen
p091 R. Brian Ferguson Pinker's List. Exaggerating Prehistoric War Mentality
p095 Christopher Boehm 1999 Hierarchy in the Forest. The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior PSU Basement GN281.4.B64
- Nomadic foragers are universally -- and all but obsessively -- concerned with being free of the authority of others
p102 settlements -> oppression, kings
p115 Jacob Roggeveen Easter Island 1722 moai 10 meter statues
p117 Erich von Däniken 1935 Swiss hotel manager
p117 Easter Islanders / Rapa Nui Polynesians arrived from the Gambier Islands, 2600 km to the east notheast.
p117 Anthroplogist Katherine Routledge 1914
p119 William Mulloy Contemplate the Navel of the World Cannibalism, "The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth"
- p124 BUT ... there is NO archaeological evidence of cannibalism or large-scale warfare in 469 recently examined skulls
- p127 Likely cause of deforestation - introduced Polynesian rats ate the tree seeds
p127 Mara Mulrooney 2013 An island-wide assessment of the chronology of settlement and land use on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) based on radiocarbon data
p130 myths of conflict and disaster confabulated by Thor Heyerdahl, no prior publications or sources, nothing written by captain Cook
- p132 1407 islanders taken by Peruvian slave ships in 1862
- p133 Survivors sent back with smallpox. In 1877, 110 inhabitants remained
p137 How do you explain Auschwitz?
- p138 wild west of social psychology, shocking experiments led to fame
p147 Robber's Cave Experiment If anything was proved, it was once kids become friends it's very hard to turn them against each other.
p140 1971 August Philip Zimbardo Stanford prison experiment
- p148 Zimbardo briefed the "guards" on their role, unmistakable instructions
p149 demand characteristics tutn "scientific experiment" into a staged production
p149 French sociologist Thibault Le Texier Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment
- p150 Experiment dreamed up by undergraduate David Jaffe
- p151 "based on my previous experience as master sadist" (??)
- the authors cite is to archives at Stanford, seemingly unavailable online
- p152 "soft" guard John Markus (?) instructed by Jaffe to be tough
p153 The Lifespan of a Lie "prisoner" Douglas Korpi faked breakdown
p154 2001 BBC re-creationThe Experiment
- p155 didn't tell the guards what to do
- p156 prisoners and guards commiserate, by day 7 vote together to create a commune
Reicher and Haslam 2006Rethinking the psychology of tyranny: The BBC prison study
p166 Stanley Milgram 1962 shock experiment
- did not inform 600 participants that the shocks were faked
- there were too many people who bowed to authority
p168 when Milgram instructs participants "You have no other choice, you must go on", everybody stops ... instant disobedience
- we have a downright aversion to bossy behavior ... participants racked woith doubt
- p170 Evil has to be disguised as doing good
p173 Hannah Arendt spoke in enigmatic aphorisms, easily misunderstood
"Eichmann did not think ... from someone else's perspective Roger Berkowitz
Eichmann was a joiner, not a monster or robot
- p174 the shock experiments were about conformity
p175 German diplomat Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz warned Danish Jews, 99% survived the war
- Bo Lidegaard "Countrymen: The Untold Story of How Denmark's Jews Escaped the Nazis ..." Central 940.53 L714c 2013
- p177 resistance newspaper Dansk Maandpost: "We Danes don't barter with our Constitution, and least of all in the matter of citizen's equality
p180-194 28yo Catherine Susan "Kitty" Genovese
- 1964 March 13 3:19 am first attack, "Oh my God he stabbed me! Help me!"
- 350am first call to police, who arrive in two minutes ... too late
- p182 media storm
p184 bystander effect, individuals less likely to offer help to a victim in the presence of other people
- p185 individuals alone help, without exception. With 5 other students nearby, only 62% took action
Kitty Genovese died because the whole neighborhood heard her scream, not in spite of it.
- p186 Amsterdam 2016: car accidentally rolls into icy water, Ruben Abrahams runs for hammer then jumps in, along with 3 other bystanders
- If bystanders communicate, they coordinate and help more. Inverse/reverse bystander effect
- wrongly referenced, undated paper, working title "Almost Everything You Think You Know About the Bystander Effect is Wrong"
actually 2020 Would I be helped? Cross-national CCTV footage shows that intervention is the norm in public conflicts. also
p189 Joseph De May investigates Kitty Genovese murder
stories are not evidence
- p189 it is cold outside, most residents have their windows shut, the streets are poorly lit, most assume staggering woman is drunk
p190 "38 eyewitnesses" ... vast majority were not eyewitnesses
p190 two actual witnesses Joseph Fink saw murder, shrugged, took a nap.
- p191 Karl Ross was drunk, and afraid of police because he was gay, which was illegal.
p191 NYT metropolitan editor Abe Rosenthal was notorious homophobe, and misreported facts about witnesses
- p192 Journalists actively tormented neighbors, including Farrar
- p192 Radio reporter Danny Meenan asked NYT reporter about absent exculpatory facts, told "It would have ruined the story"
- p193 5 days later, Raoul Cleary and Jack Brown call police about burglar, who confesses to the murder. No newspaper reported it.
p203 sociologist Morris Janowitz why did losing Germans continue to fight?
- p204 answer, Kameradschaft, friendship to their mates. p206 Camaraderie wins wars
- p207 terrorists ditto, no mental illness
- p208 four pairs of brothers involved with 2001 Twin Tower attacks
p209 six month infants prefer good to bad 2007 Hamlin
p210 Not like me = bad: infants prefer those who harm dissimilar others 2013 Hamlin
- p211 Born xenophobes, innate aversion to the unfamiliar
- I suppose that helps them preferentially bond to mommy
p211 Warneken/Tomasello 2014 Extrinsic Rewards Undermine Altruistic Tendencies in 20-Month-Olds
- p213 Similar toddlers dressed in red and blue shirts developed same-color group identities
p214 Paul Bloom 2016 Against Empathy 152.41 BL
- p218 Bayonets almost never used, less than 1%, remote killing with bombs, mortars, etc. 75%
p219 drugs dull empathy; 1940 Paris fell due to German methamphetamine
Shooting up : a short history of drugs and war / 2016 / Łukasz Kamieński
p220 Shira Maguen Impact of Killing
p221 Michael Bond 2015 The Power of Others: Peer Pressure, Groupthink, and How the People Around Us Shape Everything We Do Amazon used $6.50, few libraries
p227 Dacher Keltner 2016 The Power Paradox, How We Gain and Lose Influence
p227 Jeremy Hogeveen Power Changes How the Brain Responds to Others
p227 Jerry Useem Atlantic 2017 Power Causes Brain Damage
p227 Ena Inesi How Power Corrupts Relationships: Cynical Attributions for Others' Generous Acts
- p228 People who feel powerless ... hesitate and underestimate themselves
p229 Frans de Waal 2007 Chimpanzee Politics Central 599.885 W1118c 2007
p249 What the enlightenment got wrong? Bregman laments that Enlightenment philosophers assumed men could be wicked as well as good, and designed society as though people have a selfish nature. The impression I get is that Bregman assumes (almost?) all people are (or can be) innately good, or at least better than people are with group-imposed constraints. My "lived experience" is that people are innately different, and enough are "bad enough" to make life hell for the small or weak or different. Some of those "bad enough" people don't fit what seems to be Bregman's uniformly-OK model.
p253 Bertrand Russell became Bregman's hero at age 19
- p253-4 1959 Russell: "When you are studying any matter or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the fact and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed, but look only and solely at what are the facts."
- Uhh ... facts are not labelled as such. Indeed, even "proven scientific facts about physical reality" are tentative, until new (and perhaps exotic) observations modify (and occasionally refute) "facts".
p254 Russell calls his approach "The Will to Doubt" ... which is the title of Alfred Henry Lloyd's 1907 essay collection, responding to the 1896 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James essay collection The Will to Believe
I see too much "all or none" thinking. Indeed, treating everyone as a psychopath or criminal is wrong. Treating everyone as a saint can get you killed or maimed. What is the best approach to a veiled and uncertain world?
p255 "... If you go around forever doubting people ..." is silly absolutist non-reasoning. Of COURSE you start out by treating all others as good, while reserving enough ability to doubt so that you can intelligently modify your prior assumptions and deal with the specific situation that presents itself. You don't have to "carry a big stick", but be able to take away the big stick from a surprisingly hostile other - and wield that stick to get away, if trapped.