Monday, 07 November 2022 | Kishan Kalra
GUSET COLUMN
Kishan Kalra
This recent book by Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, ‘Humankind: A Hopeful History’ appears to have started quite a debate. Broadly in the same genre as ‘Sapiens’ and ‘Homo Deus’ by the Israeli author Yuval Noah Harari, the reason for the debate is primarily the writer’s ‘radical’ proposal that “most people are decent”. Not surprising that many people look at this idea as ‘radical’ because of what has been happening in the world – overwhelming incidents of heinous crimes, rapes, murders, financial frauds, manipulations by social media, political skullduggery, racism, caste related tragic incidents, border disputes, wars, serious damage to the environment, suggestions that the Covid19 pandemic could’ve been engineered by China…….et al.
And yet, I think the presumption that this is a ‘radical’ idea is totally baseless. Perhaps the biggest culprit here is the social media based on an algorithm that pushes outrage. So, whatever seems nasty gets moved up to the top of our feeds. The nastiest tweets go viral and in just a few seconds millions around the world start absorbing the content and even reacting to it. Soon the TV channels and print media also pick up the same and, before you know the news – or fake news – about something really terrible is on top of the mind of a lot of people. It becomes a hot topic of discussion in various coffee groups and cocktail circuits. People react strongly and the talks reach the governments and the intelligentsia in many countries. Power of social media has suddenly become so great that what might have started as an insignificant non-event ends up occupying our mind space in a dangerous manner. It is similar with various social media platforms. And, of course, the din of TV channels with screaming macho anchors – with large followings and huge egos – causes more havoc. Knowing fully well that these self-appointed keepers of our collective conscience are doing this charade for improving their TRPs – that translate into massive advertising revenues – of their channels, we become gullible and often start believing and even quoting these nasty demi-gods. Next morning the bad news hits the headlines in national dailies.
Now, compare this with a perfectly nice, good news – say a person with disability achieving success in a difficult physical activity or someone donating their kin’s dead body for scientific research and organs transplant or a group of well-meaning residents collecting money and feeding thousands of poor hungry migrants trudging back to their villages after losing their jobs in the big cities or a group of students planting trees and cleaning up polluted water bodies or collecting garbage house to house, teaching the residents to segregate and compost the same or people travelling thousands of miles from their homes to help those struck with a natural disaster like floods, droughts and other calamities. Most such ‘good news’ almost never get picked up by our powerful social media. Admittedly there are exceptions. Social media has helped many long lost family members get united; it has saved the lives of several poor facing extreme hardships – if a do-gooder empathised with their plight, made a video and somehow managed to make that viral – getting literally flooded with help from unknown kind people. It has helped many in dire need of blood or an organ or money for a surgery get life-saving help from those willing to make a completely altruistic donation. Then again, such incidents also point out to the fact that ‘most people are decent’ as long as they get to know about someone in need.
So, we begin to mistrust people because we don’t hear about their good deeds but we constantly hear about the small minority that is engaged in horrible actions like robberies, rapes and murders or about those persecuting the less privileged minorities and ethnic groups or denying wages to temporary workers when the dreaded Covid-19 struck or loudmouths like Donald Trump – whose only avowed goal is to renew his lease on the White House for another term no matter what the cost – or other nasty leaders around the world always talking about their nuclear weapons and the damages they can inflict on unsuspecting innocent populations. These ‘sick’ minds are only a small minority in the world but our equally ‘sick’ media ensures that the din created by them is infinitely louder than that from the ‘decent people’ and do-gooders around the world.
I am in total agreement with Bregman when he makes the point that “most people are decent”. I admire him for his bold approach and his courage of conviction to come out with his book – which, on the face of it, seems to send out an unbelievable, almost outrageous message – and trying to wake up the world from its ‘social media conditioned’ bruised and battered mindset. No wonder, his message is being looked at as “radical”. It is only because we hear and read almost exclusively about the bad and nasty ones; about those who are perpetrating heinous crimes, violence, wars, hatred, mistrust and cynicism. Of course they are only a small minority. If it wasn’t for decent people many of our fleeing migrants would’ve died. If it wasn’t for the vast majority of decent people – manning our fine institutions like the defense, security, health care, civil administration, public transport, aviation, banks, disaster management services, scientific research etc. all over the world, humanity would have probably perished long ago.
Bregman more or less ‘proves’ by citing examples from history that it is not nature that is responsible for the “occasional bad behavior” of some people – it is more likely the way they were brought up. We know that often the way some people are treated by family and friends leads them to become rebellious and, in a burst of anger, they harm others. Probably if they had received proper guidance in such unfortunate situations, they would not have acted in a wrong manner. Haven’t we seen that soldiers on two sides of the Indo-Pak border – who have orders to kill each other in case of a trespass – regularly exchange greetings and sweets on festivals like Diwali and Eid. If it wasn’t for the innate good in them, how would this happen? His book is certainly not a ‘feel-good’ factor but a genuine study of human behavior and how it has evolved over the last 2,00,000 years. Basically people trust each other, are altruistic and keen on helping others. There is no better display of the ‘decent side of humanity’ than what happens in times of a crisis – a natural calamity or a war or even a personal tragedy.
The younger generation today are a much brighter lot than, say, those of us in 70s and 80s were in our youth. They are also much more progressive; they seem more concerned about broader issues confronting the world – for example the crucial matter of tackling climate change was given a big push by the Swiss teenager Greta Thunberg. Hundreds of young people, in India itself, have given up chances of grabbing high paying jobs and instead started ‘social start ups’ to work on causes like water conservation, air quality, waste management, renewable energy, efficient and organic agriculture, sericulture, ‘saving the forests’, improving public health care etc. All this awareness has received a further boost during the Covid pandemic. Call it a fall out but the world is bound to change post pandemic and surely ‘change for the better’. People are becoming more empathic to the poor and the disabled, more concerned about the environment, more conscious about ‘oppression of the minorities’, civil rights, gender parity etc. All in all, we hope to live in a better world after the virus decides to die out and people have learnt some lessons the hard way – lessons that should not have needed a deadly pandemic to teach us. There is great hope.
We should see an even greater percentage of ‘decent’ human beings and fewer goons, thieves, hate mongers, rapists, killers, exploiters, murky politicians and other enemies of society. I wish there were a few more books to convince the world that indeed, most people are decent.
(A veteran of the corporate world, the author now does only voluntary work in various spheres. Views expressed are personal)
