Human Kind

A hopeful history

Tapa blanda, 496 páginas

Idioma English

Publicado el 1 de mayo de 2021 por Bloomsbury.

ISBN:
978-1-4088-9894-9
¡ISBN copiado!
Número OCLC:
1119596186

Ver en OpenLibrary

(1 reseña)

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A Guardian, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and Daily Express Book of the Year

‘Hugely, highly and happily recommended’ Stephen Fry
‘You should read Humankind. You’ll learn a lot (I did) and you’ll have good reason to feel better about the human race’ Tim Harford
'Made me see humanity from a fresh perspective' Yuval Noah Harari

It’s a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we’re taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest. Humankind makes a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good. By thinking the worst of others, we bring out the worst in our politics …

3 ediciones

First half of the book drags it down

The book pushes back against the cynical narrative that we humans are selfish beings, that we only do good when it serves us. The narrative that said that the Stanford Prison Experiment revealed what being human is etc. (Stanford Prison Experiment's results were coerced and the study isn't valid, which i learned from this book)

He is right to push back against it but he goes too far, he says we are the opposite, that we are by default good, he picks instances of good behaviour and attributes it to our nature, he picks instances of bad behaviour and attributes it to a mismatch between our nature and our environment. Which results in the first half reading like Motivated Reasoning which I would say it is. If the first half was saying that we are neither good nor bad, we have potential for both and the environment brings out one …

Temas

  • hope
  • politics
  • global