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Precisely during the global epidemic there are those who have proven that in the end not everything is bad here

If you too have lost hope of humanity, and the corona plague has only strengthened your claim that man is the most selfish creature to walk the earth - the book "The Human Race: A History of Hope" by the Dutch historian Rutcher Rahman is exactly what you need to restore faith in man

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Wednesday, September 23, 2020, 1:28 PM

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American soldier carrying a woman in his arms during the Vietnam War, 1971 (Photo: Imagebank GettyImages)

"Body filthy, matted hair and wild, and any who buys blanket Ralph the end of innocence, the darkness in the human heart"

- from "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding, 1954 (translated by Amir Zuckerman)

- Genesis Chapter 8, Verse 21 The

Roman playwright Titus Macius Plautus was among the most prolific creators of ancient Rome. Of the dozens of comedies he wrote, 21 have been preserved to this day. In the play "The Donkeys", written in the early 2nd century BC, Plautus wrote the sentence The Latin is famous: "Homo homini lupus est", or in the more familiar Hebrew version: "man to man wolf". More than two thousand years later and the sentence became so common that almost no one dares to challenge it. We all seem to agree: man is the most cruel creature on The surface of the earth, is selfish, treacherous and cruel even towards its peers.

In fact, the only problem with the law, as Canadian anthropologist Serge Bouchard has argued, is that it is unfair to wolves, which come out very badly compared to humans.

Ze'ev Jabotinsky used the proverb (in its original Latin version) to explain the direct connection he saw between anti-Semitism in Europe and racism against blacks in the United States.

Sigmund Freud referred to the phrase as incontrovertible: "A man has the ability to seduce his neighbor to satisfy his aggression, to exploit him for unpaid work, to use him for unsatisfied sexual gratification, to occupy his property, to humiliate him, to cause pain, to torture and kill. "Man to man wolf? Who can stand up to all his human experience in life and history and can muster the courage to contradict this claim?"

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No man is arrogant enough to declare himself the one who can beat Corona.

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Well, the Dutch historian Rutcher Brahman mustered the courage, and in his new book "The Human Race: A History of Hope" he tries to prove exactly this scandalous and inconceivable claim: Humans are actually cool.

Unlike other researchers who have tried to show the positive sides of humanity, he does not glorify charities, criticizes animal welfare organizations or environmental activists but rather the opposite.

He finds his evidence for the goodness of man in soldiers in world wars, in criminals imprisoned in prisons and among armed militias that operate for racist motives.

With deliberate pathos (or not) Rahman begins the book by claiming that he is about to engage with a radical idea that has been erased from the pages of history.

He's exaggerating, and he knows it.

Rahman is far from being the first thinker to deal with the question of the human instinct, nor is he the first to try to contradict the biblical claim that "the human instinct is evil from its youth."

Scientists, artists, philosophers and clerics have been dealing with the issue for centuries.

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes immortalized in his influential book "Whale" that man's natural state is "a man's war with his brother."

His main opponent was the Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who claimed that man is a "noble savage" and the development of modern society corrupts the soul of man, who finds himself dependent on institutions that artificially oppose his character.

Brahman seeks to prove Rousseau's teachings with historical and scientific tools, and throughout most of the book he at least manages to convince that man is far less bad than we thought, and for some reason we fell in love with man's thought as a vile and destructive creature.

It is a cynical thought that can explain many things, and it becomes especially relevant nowadays at a time when the world has to deal with a global plague.

The book was written even before the corona outbreak, and it helps to put the disease in proportion, for better or worse.

On the one hand the human race has managed to overcome bigger and more difficult challenges than the corona, and on the other hand, can we really trust our neighbor to keep the minimum guidelines like wearing a mask and social distance to protect ourselves?

Came up with an "inconceivable" idea.

Ruthar Rahman

Throughout most of the first part of the book, Rahman mainly deals with shattering prejudices that have become truths that no one bothers to refute at all.

For example, the story of "Beelzebub", which is familiar to most of us in terms of maturity in literature.

The book, which won William Golding the Nobel Prize, is for some reason considered a guide to the "animal" soul of the young man in field conditions, away from civilization.

Golding's line of thought fitted just amazingly for England, and in general for the post-World War II Western world.

How amazing to remember that this is ultimately just a book imagined by a schoolteacher.

In reality, Rahman reveals, such a true story took place.

A group of children who were swept away to a lonely island and lived on it alone for several years until they were found.

Their story, which compared to the plot of "Beelzebub" took place in reality, is significantly different from the famous story.

For some reason, he is much less famous.

Another story, a little more familiar, that helps prove Bramman's claim is about the "1914 Christmas ceasefire."

The period is World War I, and the German and British soldiers decided on their own to stop fighting.

They got out of the trenches, exchanged presents, drank a little, smoked a little, and started playing football.

It was an exceptional case of a "peace agreement" born out of the lines of fire themselves and not on the part of the statesmen.

It is a reminder that the human psyche seeks peace and tranquility, not war.

It is no coincidence that generals have since studied the case and are working hard to prevent such situations from becoming possible.

If "man to man wolf" why would anyone put on a mask?

(Photo: Israel Police Spokeswoman)

Brahman's choice to believe in human altruism is not only based on a positive way of thinking or turning a spotlight on positive anecdotes from human history, but mainly on shattering familiar myths.

For example, he breaks down two of the most famous experiments in the history of the social sciences - "Milgram's experiment in obedience to authoritative figures" and "Philippe Zimbardo's" Stanford Prison Experiment ".

The experiments, which supposedly proved the primordial cruelty that exists in all of us, were landmarks in social psychology.

They also helped determine the ethical boundaries of such experiments, and therefore never failed to contradict them, and so we were left with the assertion that within every person lurks a darkness that erupts when we receive instructions from those in authority or when we receive authority ourselves.

Rahman performs real ant work to prove that the experiments were conducted in a non-objective and non-sterile manner, and the results of the experiments simply do not meet any standard of serious research.

This is a piece of argument, certainly when it comes to such famous studies, conducted by such esteemed professionals (Milgram and Zimbardo have become rock stars for everything, not just within the scientific world).

But his claims make sense, and he presents references and references to each statement.

But Brahman was not offended, he simply notes that other serious studies like him have been done by reputable bodies - but as expected, the media has managed to ignore them.

Reconstruction of the football match between German and English soldiers during the First World War (Photo: Imagebank GettyImages)

In general, for Brahman, the media is one of the great enemies of humanity.

The tendency to look for the bad news, the rotten apples and all the evil in the world - is a kind of circle that feeds itself.

The more the media highlights stories that portray man as cruel, corrupt and rotten, the more viewers lose faith in the human race.

If my neighbor is cruel, corrupt and rotten - I should also become one.

Rahman does not seek to re-educate the press, but asks his readers to consume as little of them as possible.

It is easy to get excited about Brahman's theories.

It's a great idea to fall in love with.

We're not that bad, and could be better off here if we just changed things up a bit.

Here, Rahman even refers to the great climate crisis on the way as something that will be very easy for us to deal with because in the end we are adaptable creatures.

how fun.

But when he comes to prove that humans are not a collection of evil egos, he tries to prove the complete opposite, as if we are all just good and incomprehensible creatures.

This binary approach is at best childish, and at worst very unprofessional, probably on the part of a scientist.

The state of man, like the state of human society, is much more complex.

There are quite a few moments so dark in human history that it is difficult to dismiss them in theories, for example the Holocaust of the Jewish people is in contrast to any claim of human kindness.

Rahman manages to neutralize this mine in a rather dignified manner.

He cannot undo the cruelty from which Auschwitz's separate planet was born, and so he imposes on it Hannah Arendt's theory of "banality of evil."

Later he will also explain how to deal with neo-Nazis (with successful examples from modern-day Germany), terrorists and just plain evil-seekers.

Bottom line this is a book recommended for cynics as it is recommended for human lovers.

Within the popular science genre this is one of the most enjoyable books to read that have come out in recent years.

Brahman's conclusions are extreme, and his proposals to improve society and the personal lives of all of us are almost unworkable - but one can agree that we live wrong, and civilization has built around us a cage of gold that we are not in a hurry to break out.

It is possible that in another 500 years this book will be read as some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

In other words: leave the depressing feed of Facebook or Twitter, and go read this book.

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