Humankind - 03/23/21

 Hello Wonderful People, 


Book 16: Humankind: A Hopeful History (9/10)


Premise: Humans are much more kind then we give ourselves credit for, and many horrific things we've heard, are either carefully trimmed or completely false. 


Rutger Bregman brings a breath of fresh air to the world of Social Sciences. So lets dive right in. "Lord of the Flies" is often considered a realistic, however the one time Bregman could find that young boys actually were marooned on an island for an extended period of time the exact opposite happened. The boys who were stuck on Ata island were kind, helped each other, and dealt with arguing in a way to prevent fighting. 


The Stanford Prison experiment,  that horrendous show of how humans can quickly devolve when people get the smallest bit of authority. A staged play more than an experiment according to the students who participated, the guards forced to behave poorly, the prisoners acting for the experiment. The creator of the experiment knew it wasn't great, however he wanted the fame. When the experiment was recreated for a tv show, this time with no directives for the guards, it turned out to be extremely boring and dissolved into democracy. 


Countless examples like this, along with why humans do behave poorly. Reading through these pages is almost like a sigh of relief for humanity. As stated in the book "There seems to be a negative relationship between the news and reality". So I'll leave you with the epilogue's 10 rules to live by 

I: When in doubt, assume the best

II: Think in win-win scenarios

III: Ask more questions

IV: Temper your empathy, train your compassion

V: Try to understand the other, even if you don't get where they're coming from

VI: Love your own as others love their own

VII: Avoid the news

VIII: Don't punch Nazis

IX: Come out of the closet: don't be ashamed to do good

X: Be realistic


So be happy, the world is doing better than you think. 

and remember dear readers, Stay Vivid.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fuzz - 10/2/2021

 Hello Animal Lovers, Book 46: Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law (9.5/10) Premise: What do humans do when animals invade their houses, swarm their airports, or jaywalk? Mary Roach is one of my favorite authors, and for good reason. She investigates things that most people rarely think about. What happens to our bodies after we die? What happens to Humans when they go to war? The Science of Tattoos.... And a host of other topics.  This books dives into how humans cohabitate with nature that we don't necessarily want around. Not bed bugs and cockroaches, but bears in cities, moose on the roads, monkeys swarming cities, and rats in the Vatican.  Usually on location Mary talks about spending a few days living the life of the people who are dealing with these problems and working with them or talking about them about how this will progress in the future.  Without a play by play it's pretty hard to summarize this book since she jumps from topic to topic and animal to animal...
Read more

In Order to Live - 10/02/2021

 Hello Freedom Lovers,  Book 44: In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom (7/10) Premise: One girls life going from growing up in North Korea, Escaping to China, Mongolia, South Korea, and her eventually the United States.  Starting out we have Yeonmi, a young North Korean girl who loves her country, and is instep with it's ideals. Slowly until her early teenage years she starts to distrust it more and more as her father gets in legal trouble and is taken away, and her mother has to leave them for long periods of time.  Following rumors her older sister, and then Yeonmi and her mother escape to China. Being sold from person to person, she soon realizes that the ones who helped her escape our really just human trafficers who are selling her and her mother as wives to Chinese men who cannot find wives. While the food is plentiful and the country is much better than what she left she is in no way happy with her situation.  Working as a online chat...
Read more

Verity - 9/1/21

 Hello Aware Humans,  Book 42 Verity - (7/10) Premise: A small time writer gets the chance of a life time to help "Co-Author" a famous book series after the original author gets into an accident and is considered brain dead.  This is a romance novel touted as a thriller and while it's not my normal genre of choice I will admit it was a bit of a page turner.  Minor Spoilers ahead:  Lowen Ashleigh runs into Jeremey Crawford just before a meeting, cue meet cute. It turns out Jermey wants to hire Lowen to finish writings his famous wives books. His wife was in an accident and while alive does not respond to any stimulations.  Jeremey has been through a lot recently, he lost both his twin daughters and now his wife. It is just his son and himself. Lowen goes up to his house (after agreeing to finish the books) and stays for a few days. Eventually the few days turns into more while she researches the book and starts falling for Jeremy.  However Lowen doesn't...
Read more