Humankind: A Hopeful History

the war ended, many British would yearn for the days of the Blitz, when everybody helped each other out and no one cared about your politics, or whether you were rich or poor.11

Vaccines now save more lives each year than would have been spared if we’d had world peace for the entire twentieth century.

I’m often reminded of what a Chinese politician said in the 1970s when asked about the effects of the French Revolution of 1789. ‘It’s a little too soon to say,’ he allegedly responded.62

As media scientist George Gerbner summed up: ‘[He] who tells the stories of a culture really governs human behaviour.’28

An old man says to his grandson: ‘There’s a fight going on inside me. It’s a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil – angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant, and cowardly. The other is good – peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest, and trustworthy. These two wolves are also fighting within you, and inside every other person too.’ After a mome

On one night in Dresden, more men, women and children were killed than in London during the whole war. More than half of Germany’s towns and cities were destroyed.

To this day, many remain convinced that the resilience the British people showed during the Blitz can be chalked up to a quality that is singularly British. But it’s not singularly British. It’s universally human.

There is a persistent myth that by their very nature humans are selfish, aggressive and quick to panic. It’s what Dutch biologist Frans de Waal likes to call veneer theory: the notion that civilisation is nothing more than a thin veneer that will crack at the merest provocation.4 In actuality, the opposite is true. It’s when crisis hits – when the

If there’s one lesson to be drawn from the nocebo effect, it’s that ideas are never merely ideas. We are what we believe. We find what we go looking for. And what we predict, comes to pass.