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> So a great story but I don't know how much can be extrapolated from it about human behaviour in general. Given that this really happened, a lot. Lord of the

> So a great story but I don't know how much can be extrapolated from it about human behaviour in general. Given that this really happened, a lot. Lord of the Flies came out of the fantasy of an English superintendent. Yet, it has permeated our culture as a cautionary tale about human behavior. It is 100% fiction. I’d like to recommend Humankind by Rutger Bregman - a wonderful book dismantling the toxic narratives we have about ourselves.

strken 5y ago
I haven't read Humankind yet, but a recent review I have read[0] gives a mix of positives and negatives to it. A lot of the cited studies are controversial in their own right: S.L.A. Marshall's claim that only 15% of soldiers in WW2 fired their weapons is based on subjective evidence, omits mention of whether they had any opportunity to fire, and has many other flaws that have since been picked apart, for example. This is not to say that our negativity is justified! Only that Bregman seems to have as persistent a bias to positivity as other writers have to negativity. [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-humankind https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-human...
- skrebbel 5y ago
  I read both the book and this review, and while the review makes some valid points, it also holds the book to a pretty high bar. Usually I'm all for doing exactly that, but this book is not about hard scientific proof for some fancy new theory. It's about an idea, the idea that humans are good by default. To be taken seriously as an idea, it only needs as much proof as the idea it's rejecting, which is that humans are a razor thin layer of civility over evil, savage animals. It's about debunking that as much as it is about proposing an alternative. I think Bregman is perfectly happy to leave the hard science for the scientists. If readers agree that his idea is at least as plausible as the one he's up against, he's done pretty well. And to my reading, even this review agrees with that.
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
Cultural experience matters a lot here though. If 6 boys who dealt with hard grueling hunter gatherer labor, they'd have no issue pulling themselves up by their makeshift sandals so to speak, in the jungle. Western boys who may have had at worst, had a few days of hard labor, the rest school and sports, not so much. Your forgetting about culture shock. White boys who know nothing of hunting and gathering aren't going to fare well compared to Tongan boys who studied the school or hard knocks first hand. It's like dropping a black bear in the Arctic and guffawing that it can't adapt like the polar bear! They're not equipped for the situation appropriately. People are trusting. We know this. People want to work together. People want to survive. The simple fact that we are here today is evidence of that. Hunter gatherers, trusting an outsider showing them dropping seeds in the group produces crops. And now we have iPhones. All because baseline humans are "selfishly selfless." We learned that delaying gratification of the Id can provide greater rewards. That's why we aren't still animals fighting over berries with grizzley bears...
- filleduchaos 5y ago
  I have no idea where you are getting the idea that six boarding school boys had "dealt with hard gruelling hunter gatherer labour" or "studied the school of hard knocks first hand". That is an amazing amount of assumption to draw out of the simple fact that they were Tongan.
anotherman554 5y ago
Lord of the flies was written shortly after world war 2, which also really happened... I don't take it seriously as a story of what would really happen if boys ended up on an island, but humans killing each other for dumb reasons is not the stuff of fantasy.
- filleduchaos 5y ago
  "Distasteful" and "dumb" are far from the same thing, and the second world war happened for the former and not the latter.
  - anotherman554 5y ago
    It's a distinction without a difference- one could argue a less primitive species wouldn't have found itself caught in world wars. The man-children starting world wars are paralleled by the children-children killing each other on the island.
    - jpttsn 5y ago
      Your ”less primitive” species would have had what reason to split the atom?
      - anotherman554 5y ago
        I think it's fair to say that pacifists do in fact, sometimes invent things.
    - filleduchaos 5y ago
      Reducing the historical and contemporary reasons why humans engage in war to people being "man-children" is a level of sticking-my-head-in-the-sand that I hope to never attain. I've never understood the urge to think of people and things one morally/politically disagrees with as simply stupid, braindead or immature - but there seem to be way too many people who seem incapable of contending with the idea that humans can be intelligent and highly amoral/immoral.
ThrowawayR2 5y ago
> "Lord of the Flies came out of the fantasy of an English superintendent." One would think that a schoolmaster would have excellent insight into the behavior of children and young adults. In any case, a quick look at the commonness of bullying (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicides_that_have_been_attributed_to_bullying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicides_that_have_bee...) should quickly persuade anyone that Lord of the Flies, despite being fiction, is not all that unrealistic.
nesarkvechnep 5y ago
I second that book, it's great.

strken 5y ago

I haven't read Humankind yet, but a recent review I have read[0] gives a mix of positives and negatives to it. A lot of the cited studies are controversial in their own right: S.L.A. Marshall's claim that only 15% of soldiers in WW2 fired their weapons is based on subjective evidence, omits mention of whether they had any opportunity to fire, and has many other flaws that have since been picked apart, for example. This is not to say that our negativity is justified! Only that Bregman seems to have as persistent a bias to positivity as other writers have to negativity. [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-humankind https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-human...

skrebbel 5y ago
I read both the book and this review, and while the review makes some valid points, it also holds the book to a pretty high bar. Usually I'm all for doing exactly that, but this book is not about hard scientific proof for some fancy new theory. It's about an idea, the idea that humans are good by default. To be taken seriously as an idea, it only needs as much proof as the idea it's rejecting, which is that humans are a razor thin layer of civility over evil, savage animals. It's about debunking that as much as it is about proposing an alternative. I think Bregman is perfectly happy to leave the hard science for the scientists. If readers agree that his idea is at least as plausible as the one he's up against, he's done pretty well. And to my reading, even this review agrees with that.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

Cultural experience matters a lot here though. If 6 boys who dealt with hard grueling hunter gatherer labor, they'd have no issue pulling themselves up by their makeshift sandals so to speak, in the jungle. Western boys who may have had at worst, had a few days of hard labor, the rest school and sports, not so much. Your forgetting about culture shock. White boys who know nothing of hunting and gathering aren't going to fare well compared to Tongan boys who studied the school or hard knocks first hand. It's like dropping a black bear in the Arctic and guffawing that it can't adapt like the polar bear! They're not equipped for the situation appropriately. People are trusting. We know this. People want to work together. People want to survive. The simple fact that we are here today is evidence of that. Hunter gatherers, trusting an outsider showing them dropping seeds in the group produces crops. And now we have iPhones. All because baseline humans are "selfishly selfless." We learned that delaying gratification of the Id can provide greater rewards. That's why we aren't still animals fighting over berries with grizzley bears...

filleduchaos 5y ago
I have no idea where you are getting the idea that six boarding school boys had "dealt with hard gruelling hunter gatherer labour" or "studied the school of hard knocks first hand". That is an amazing amount of assumption to draw out of the simple fact that they were Tongan.

anotherman554 5y ago

Lord of the flies was written shortly after world war 2, which also really happened... I don't take it seriously as a story of what would really happen if boys ended up on an island, but humans killing each other for dumb reasons is not the stuff of fantasy.

filleduchaos 5y ago
"Distasteful" and "dumb" are far from the same thing, and the second world war happened for the former and not the latter.
- anotherman554 5y ago
  It's a distinction without a difference- one could argue a less primitive species wouldn't have found itself caught in world wars. The man-children starting world wars are paralleled by the children-children killing each other on the island.
  - jpttsn 5y ago
    Your ”less primitive” species would have had what reason to split the atom?
    - anotherman554 5y ago
      I think it's fair to say that pacifists do in fact, sometimes invent things.
  - filleduchaos 5y ago
    Reducing the historical and contemporary reasons why humans engage in war to people being "man-children" is a level of sticking-my-head-in-the-sand that I hope to never attain. I've never understood the urge to think of people and things one morally/politically disagrees with as simply stupid, braindead or immature - but there seem to be way too many people who seem incapable of contending with the idea that humans can be intelligent and highly amoral/immoral.

ThrowawayR2 5y ago

> "Lord of the Flies came out of the fantasy of an English superintendent." One would think that a schoolmaster would have excellent insight into the behavior of children and young adults. In any case, a quick look at the commonness of bullying (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicides_that_have_been_attributed_to_bullying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicides_that_have_bee...) should quickly persuade anyone that Lord of the Flies, despite being fiction, is not all that unrealistic.

nesarkvechnep 5y ago

I second that book, it's great.