Book Review - Humankind

[Ralphie ★]

I am aboot halfway through and so far it has been excellent, very thought-provoking.  The arthur is trying to convince the reader that people are basically good as opposed to bad.  This is an age old question and he has some new takes on it.  He sort of delights in debunking famous experiments like the Stanford Prison experiment and the Stanley Milgram electric shock experiment.  He also covers theories on what happened on Easter Island, which is always a fascinating topic.  He says he and some of the people who he reports on did a lot of digging into archives and were often amazed at how different the popular story has become, like the Kitty Genovese story.  It is always fascinating the different takes on the same event by different people.  Like the classic example for me, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in Annie Hall on frequency of sex.

 

[Razors Edge ★]

1 hour ago, Philander Seabury said:

He sort of delights in debunking famous experiments like the Stanford Prison experiment and the Stanley Milgram electric shock experiment. 

I'm guessing, as those are 50 year old psychology experiments, they have LONG LONG LONG ago been examined, tweaked, refuted, updated, and thoroughly re-imagined.

1 hour ago, Philander Seabury said:

The arthur is trying to convince the reader that people are basically good as opposed to bad.

I think most of us feel like humans' default setting is "good", but circumstances, individual character flaws (psychopath, sociopath, other brain issues), and zeitgeist play into folks behaving poorly.  We see it today easily enough - essentially "good" people behaving poorly in very specific situations or around certain issues.  

Humans are a social - highly social - species. We NEED each other, and are far stronger together than apart, so "goodness" is sort of cooked in to our DNA. 

[JerrySTL ★]

1 hour ago, Philander Seabury said:

like the Kitty Genovese story

Does he subscribe to the police coverup story where the people did call the cops many times but the cops didn't show for a long, long time.

[Ralphie ★]

14 minutes ago, JerrySTL said:

Does he subscribe to the police coverup story where the people did call the cops many times but the cops didn't show for a long, long time.

No, nothing about that. His main thing was the media ignored things like she did die in the arms of a neighbor who came out to help her. That basically they had their story and they were sticking to it. 

[Ralphie ★]

31 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

Humans are a social - highly social - species. We NEED each other, and are far stronger together than apart, so "goodness" is sort of cooked in to our DNA. 

Yup, that is his theory. He calls us “homo puppy”. 

[JerrySTL ★]

2 hours ago, Philander Seabury said:

No, nothing about that. His main thing was the media ignored things like she did die in the arms of a neighbor who came out to help her. That basically they had their story and they were sticking to it. 

I just started reading Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us by Benjamin Radford. Seems that they might be complimentary so I just ordered Humankind.