More from @rcbregman

Rutger Bregman

@rcbregman

9 Jun

@ezraklein

This is such a great conversation between Ta-Nehisi Coates and @ezraklein. Coates: ‘The notion that man is naturally in a state of war (…) is deep in Western philosophy. (...) Is that true? Or is that just an assumption that we made?’
vox.com/2020/6/5/21279…
/1 thread

I had the honour of being interviewed by Ezra a week earlier about my new book HUMANKIND: A HOPEFUL HISTORY. The timing wasn’t great, to put it mildly. Talking about the fundamental decency of people after the death of George Floyd… /2
podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/the…

But as Ezra says: ‘Now I think it wasn’t [ill-timed].' Big part of the book is about how we humans mirror each other. Someone gives you a compliment, you’re quick to return the favour. Somebody says something unpleasant, and you feel the urge to make a snide comeback. /3

Read 15 tweets

Rutger Bregman

@rcbregman

9 Jun

https://twitter.com/LeMediaPositif/status/1269652306162843661

A lot of people still think that we don't help each other when something like this happens (bystander effect). I interviewed psychologist Marie Lindegaard for my book, who found that in real-life situations (not lab experiments) people do help each other in 90 PERCENT of cases.

https://twitter.com/LeMediaPositif/status/1269652306162843661

A 2011 meta-analysis even found that there's a 'reverse bystander effect'.

When the situation is life-threatening and bystanders can communicate with each other 'additional bystanders even lead to more, rather than less, helping.' pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21534650/

But what about the famous Kitty Genovese case, who was killed in 1964 in New York when -supposedly- 37 bystanders saw it happening and did nothing?
Turns out: that was fake new avant la lettre. From my book:

Read 4 tweets

Rutger Bregman

@rcbregman

2 Jun

Today is the US publication day of my new book HUMANKIND, A HOPEFUL HISTORY. It feels strange to be publishing it right now, on #BlackOutTuesday, in the midst of a pandemic, while police are engaging in the most savage violence. /1 [thread]

A summary of the book in one sentence would be: ‘Most people are decent, but power corrupts.’

Could be a summary of this moment as well. We see the extraordinary courage of millions of protesters, and the total corruption of those who are supposed to ‘protect and serve’. /2

We've been here many times before. For centuries Western culture has been permeated by the idea that we humans are just selfish creatures. That cynical image of man has been proclaimed in many places - in films and novels, in history books and in scientific research. /3

Read 12 tweets

Rutger Bregman

@rcbregman

31 May

https://twitter.com/cowgrlmami/status/1266633264992837634

I think this is wrong. People don’t turn into monsters if you put them in a uniform. The Stanford Prison Experiment has been thoroughly debunked. See this recent paper, by the first researcher who went into the archives of the experiment: psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-45… [thread /1]

https://twitter.com/cowgrlmami/status/1266633264992837634

The police violence we see right now is, I think, the result of a much longer history of racism and terrible policing in the US. Take the ‘broken windows’ approach: the idea that you have to arrest people for the smallest of things to maintain the order. /2

Combine this with a crazy quota system, in which officers feel pressured to rack up as many citations as possible. Doesn’t take long before they start fabricating violations. Arresting kids for dancing in they subway, or people talking in the street etc. /3

Read 11 tweets

Rutger Bregman

@rcbregman

22 May

NEWS! The Real Lord of the Flies will become a movie!! The last two weeks have been a crazy rollercoaster 😅 (thread) /1 deadline.com/2020/05/new-re…

Lots of Hollywood studios suddenly wanted to buy the rights to the story of Sione, Luke, Mano, Tevita, Fatai and Kolo, the Tongan teenagers who survived for 15 months on an uninhabited island in 1965-66. /2

I interviewed Mano, Sione and Peter Warner (the captain who rescued the six boys) for my new book HUMANKIND. Two weeks ago, The Guardian published an excerpt, and the piece went viral (8 million views by now).
theguardian.com/books/2020/may… /3

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