More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
So what is this radical idea? That most people, deep down, are pretty decent.
There is a persistent myth that by their very nature humans are selfish, aggressive and quick to panic. It’s what Dutch biologist Frans de Waal likes to call veneer theory: the notion that civilisation is nothing more than a thin veneer that will crack at the merest provocation.4 In actuality, the opposite is true. It’s when crisis hits–when the bombs fall or the floodwaters rise–that we humans become our best selves.
Catastrophes bring out the best in people. I know of no other sociological finding that’s backed by so much solid evidence that’s so blithely ignored. The picture we’re fed by the media is consistently the opposite of what happens when disaster strikes.
Dictators and despots, governors and generals–they all too often resort to brute force to prevent scenarios that exist only in their own heads, on the assumption that the average Joe is ruled by self-interest, just like them.
If there’s one lesson to be drawn from the nocebo effect, it’s that ideas are never merely ideas. We are what we believe. We find what we go looking for. And what we predict, comes to pass.
The news, according to dozens of studies, is a mental health hazard.
‘Life has taught me a great deal,’ it began, ‘including the lesson that you should always look for what is good and positive in people.’
That for tens of thousands of years, the nicest humans had the most kids. That the evolution of our species, in short, was predicated on ‘survival of the friendliest’.
Human beings, it turns out, are ultrasocial learning machines. We’re born to learn, to bond and to play. Maybe it’s not so strange, then, that blushing is the only human expression that’s uniquely human. Blushing, after all, is quintessentially social–it’s people showing they care what others think, which fosters trust and enables cooperation.
People are social animals, but we have a fatal flaw: we feel more affinity for those who are most like us.
The sad truth is that empathy and xenophobia go hand in hand. They’re two sides of the same coin.
We prefer a pound of the worst kind of misery over a few ounces of shame or social discomfort.
