Rural Routes, Blog Version

A month or so ago (when I check, I see that it was two months ago. I confess that I have lost track of time), I participated in one of those Facebook activities that have become even more popular now than they were before COVID. For ten days, I posted one photo a day of a book cover with no explanations or literary criticism.

I did not spend a great deal of time selecting book covers. I took all the books from the same bookcase, ignoring the other three bookcases we have in the house. That said, the selected books were each special to me – either because of their quality or the memories they evoke. One of the books, for example, was one I specially loved reading to my children. Another was written by my creative writing instructor in university.

Since then, I have read a book that I do want to talk more about. “Humankind: A Hopeful History” first came to my attention when I watched a CNN interview with the book’s author Rutger Bregman.

The New York Times has called the Dutch writer “a more politically radical Malcolm Gladwell” and a previous book “Utopia for Realists” was a New York Times and Sunday Times best seller, translated into thirty-two languages.

Those details, plus the TV interview, prompted me to order the book. I am glad I did.

I have always believed in the importance of knowing what is happening in the world and a journalism degree only heightened that awareness. Yet the news, particularly the bad variety, is unrelenting. Perhaps, I sometimes think, there is also value in hiding under the bedcovers.

News is about the exceptional, Bregman argues, and the more exceptional something is, the more newsworthy it becomes. The more people who read the story, the more normal the exceptional becomes.

Bregman suggests that you will never see a headline saying ‘Number of people living in extreme poverty down by 137,000 since yesterday” even though it has been true every day for the past twenty-five years.

If the number of people living in extreme poverty rose by ten on just one of those days in twenty-five years, however, it would become a headline.

There are so many examples of bad human behaviour that we expect nothing less. Take the “Lord of the Flies” classic written by William Golding in 1951. Drop a half dozen adolescent boys on a deserted island and they will revert to their lesser selves. Students have read the book in classrooms ever since.

But Bregman tells his readers about a real-life scenario in which six boys were marooned on a rocky islet south of Tonga, an island group in the Pacific, for more than a year. “They had set up a  small commune with food garden, hollowed tree-trucks to store rainwater, a gymnasium with curious weights, a badminton court and chicken pens and a permanent fire, all from handiwork, an old knife blade and much determination”. Bregman interviewed the Australian sea captain who rescued them in September 1966, fifteen months after they first landed on the island.

Or consider the case of Catherine Susan Genovese, the young New York woman who was brutally murdered in 1964. Newspapers reported the fact that ‘37 who saw murder didn’t call police’. The case introduced the world to ‘the bystander effect’, the idea that people will watch others being hurt without lifting a finger to help.

In his research, Bregman discovered that one of Kitty’s neighbours, when told about the attacks, ran to help, and held the woman in her arms as she died. Kitty’s family later said they wished they had known that Kitty died in the arms of a friend; ‘it would have made such a difference to our family”. But the neighbour’s place in the story, although substantiated,  was never reported.

Five days later, an area resident spotted an unknown person carrying a TV set out of one of the apartments. He phoned a neighbour and the two of them held the robber captive until the police arrived. The thief also confessed to the murder of Kitty Genovese. In this case, the murderer was caught because of the intervention of two bystanders. That was never reported either.

Bregman is not naïve. He knows that humans can do and often will do bad things. But his examination of why those bad things are done leads to an understanding of human nature that is hopeful and uplifting.

As a treatment for what ails us these days, it worked for me.

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