Human kind!

Humankind is truly human kind

I have been reading Humankind: A New History of Human Nature by Rutger Bregman which was published last week.  Its central thesis is that homo sapiens became smarter than other human species because we were friendlier to each other and that, all things being equal, we prefer to continue being so.

He demolishes various iconic symbols of ‘man’s descent’, refuting the validity of the sentiment behind Lord of the Flies with a real-life example of six teenage boys shipwrecked on ‘Ata Island near Tonga, rescued in September 1966 after fifteen months.  They were all in excellent health and spirits when rescued, despite the island being considered to be uninhabitable.

Bregman also shows how research such as the Stanford Prison experiment and Stanley Milgram’s Shock Machine experiment were deeply flawed and the conclusions they drew, that just under the surface, we are really heartless beasts, were not justified by the research conducted.

Altogether, a compelling case that humans really are better off working together and that is how people will behave unless constraints or external motivations are placed upon them.  This is the way we are built.

Bregman only really touches on the implications for education but I think modern educators can readily see that he has demolished the ‘scientific’ justification for the need to control young people rather than building strong, meaningful relationships between teachers and students and encouraging the same between students.

So how do we as adults make this shift?

In two steps.  The first step is to quieten down our own red brains so that we are not limiting students’ development of autonomy (‘do no harm’).  The second step is to model to students how adults pay full attention to others, treating them as people, not as problems to be solved nor as tasks to be completed, and then respond with kindness and compassion.

Let’s get back to who we really are.

The Red Brain Blue Brain Reading Club is live and in week 8.  Download a copy of the ebook and follow a loosely structured 9-week process to get to grips with managing your red brain.  You can join at any time.

John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation. At the core of this work is the practice of encounter.  Earlier blogs can be found here.

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