Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman (Bloomsbury, 2020)
According to bumper sticker wisdom, a cynic is a disillusioned optimist but Rutger Bregman , the Dutch author of ‘Utopia for Realists’, wants at all costs for us to resist cynical thinking about humankind.
The premise of this ‘hopeful history’ is that humans have been given a bad press and that, far from being selfish, mean and mean-minded they are on the whole actually quite nice.
A large chunk of the blame for humanity’s negative image is laid at the door of the mainstream media who realize that sensational stories about the nastiness and brutishness of people helps sell copies and/or serves as effective click-bait.
Bregman concedes that his views may come as a shock to many and admits that when he initially pitched the idea of the book to a number of publishers they thought he was nuts. Since we know where we stand with cynicism, to argue the contrary is, he acknowledges, “downright threatening, subversive and seditious.” Continue reading
In his chosen career as a novelist Evelyn Waugh has to write about human beings but you get the strong feeling from this cynical and morally vacuous novel that he didn’t like people much. He became a committed Catholic soon afterwards and presumably he took comfort from an organized religion that takes it for granted that we are all born sinners.
