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The result was a quota system in which officers felt pressured to issue as many fines and rack up as many citations as possible.
In reality, criminals walked free while thousands of innocent people became suspects.
The broken windows strategy has also proven synonymous with racism. Data show that a mere 10 per cent of people picked up for misdemeanours are white.37 Meanwhile, there are black teenagers who get stopped and frisked on a monthly basis–as they have been for years–despite never having committed an offence.
the broken windows theory is underpinned by a totally unrealistic view of human nature. It’s yet another variant on veneer theory.
Family and friends were mobilised to make sure these teenagers knew there were people who loved them.
‘What’s easy,’ scoffed the police superintendent, ‘is to pass tough new laws. Harder is to go through a real process with individuals: a panel of experts, counselling, healthcare, assistance getting back into education, with employment, maybe accommodation […] We don’t do this out of political conviction; we do it because we think it works.’48
The psychologist’s name was Gordon Allport, and all his life he’d pondered two basic questions: 1) Where does prejudice come from, and 2) How can you prevent it? After years of research, he’d found a miracle cure. Or at least he thought he had. What was it? Contact. Nothing more, nothing less. The
If blacks and whites could only meet–at school, at work, in church, or anywhere at all–they could get to know one another better. After all, we can only love what we know.6 This, in a nutshell, is the contact hypothesis.
The secret behind the whole campaign? The rebels aren’t seen as monsters, but as ordinary people. ‘We aren’t searching for a criminal,’ Juan explains, ‘but for a child, missing in the jungle.’18
When peace spread like an epidemic that Christmas in 1914, few soldiers were immune. One of the rare exceptions was a stiff-necked twenty-five-year-old corporal in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, who declared that ‘Such things should not happen in wartime.’ His name was Adolf Hitler.23
For even in wartime there’s a mountain of peace ready to rise up at any moment. To push that mountain back below the surface, generals, politicians and warmongers have to draw on every means at their disposal, from fake news to sheer force. Humans are simply not wired for war.
‘If you make a film about a man kidnapping a woman and chaining her to a radiator for five years–something that has happened probably once in history–it’s called searingly realistic analysis of society. If I make a film like Love Actually, which is about people falling in love, and there are about a million people falling in love in Britain today, it’s called a sentimental presentation of an unrealistic world.’ Richard Curtis
But what if you still get scammed? Psychologist Maria Konnikova talks about this in her fascinating book on professional con artists.3 You might expect her main tip would be to always be on guard. But no. Konnikova, the leading expert on frauds and swindles, comes to a very different conclusion. Far better, she says, is to accept and account for the fact that you’ll occasionally be cheated. That’s a small price to pay for the luxury of a lifetime of trusting other people.
The wonderful fact is that we live in a world where doing good also feels good. We like food because without food we’d starve. We like sex because without sex we’d go extinct. We like helping because without each other we’d wither away. Doing good typically feels good because it is good.
In the same vein, the literature on forgiveness emphasises that forgiving others works in our own self-interest.6 It’s not only a gift, but a good deal, because to forgive is to stop wasting your energy on antipathy and grudges. Effectively, you liberate yourself to live. ‘To forgive is to set a prisoner free,’ wrote the theologist Lewis B. Smedes, ‘and discover that the prisoner was you.’7
we saw that empathy can be a bad guide: the simple fact is we’re not always good at sensing what others want. All those managers, CEOs, journalists and policymakers who think they do are effectively robbing others of their voice. This is why you so seldom see refugees interviewed on TV. This is why our democracy and journalism constitute mostly one-way traffic. And this is why our welfare states are steeped in paternalism.
that’s what empathy does to us. It’s exhausting. In
Ricard concentrated on calling up feelings of warmth, concern and care. Instead of personally experiencing their suffering, he kept himself removed from it. On her monitor, Singer could instantly see the difference, because wholly different parts of Ricard’s brain lit up. Empathy mostly activates the anterior insula, which sits just above our ears, but flashing now were his corpus striatum and orbitofrontal cortex.
Ricard’s new mentality is what we call compassion. And, unlike empathy, compassion doesn’t sap our energy. In fact, afterwards Ricard felt much better. That’s because compassion is simultaneously more controlled, remote and constructive. It’s not about sharing another person’s distress, but it does help you to recognise it and then act. Not only that, compassion injects us with energy, which is exactly what’s needed to help.
When we use our intellect to try to understand someone, this activates the prefrontal cortex, an area located just behind the forehead that’s exceptionally large in humans.13
Who raise unpleasant subjects that make you uneasy. Cherish these people, because they’re the key to progress.
As humans, we differentiate. We play favourites and care more about our own. That’s nothing to be ashamed of–it makes us human. But we must also understand that those others, those distant strangers, also have families they love. That they are every bit as human as we are.
Watching the evening news may leave you feeling more attuned to reality, but the truth is that it skews your view of the world. The news tends to generalise people into groups like politicians, elites, racists and refugees. Worse, the news zooms in on the bad apples. The same is true of social media.
Because bad behaviour grabs our attention, it’s what generates the most clicks, and where we click the advertising dollars follow.17 This has turned social media into systems that amplify our worst qualities.
Kindness is catching. And it’s so contagious that it even infects people who merely see it from afar.
