ED’S LETTER

Iclearly remember the first time I read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, because the horror of it has never left me. If you happily can’t remember it, here’s a one-line summary: a group of boys stranded on a desert island instantly form power hierarchies and, in the absence of external civilising influences, become brutal and vicious. The idea is that civilisation is a thin veneer, easily stripped away – and when it is, the real nature of humans is base and cruel. In the many years since, that hasn’t really been the way the world seems to me. I think that generally, people are pretty kind and want to cooperate, even in dire circumstances. So I’m delighted to hear about Humankind, a new book by Dutch historian and writer Rutger Bregman, which looks at human behaviour over the years. Among many other real examples of human decency, one of the true stories he unearthed is about six boys from Tonga who went on a fishing trip in 1965 and were adrift for eight days before washing up on a rocky island. They were rescued more than a year later, during which time they had established a food garden, a little commune, a kind of open-air gym, a permanent fire and a chicken pen (no idea where the chickens came from). One of them had made a kind of rudimentary guitar and they came together every morning and evening to sing and pray. Take THAT, Ralph!

That’s been my experience of humans all over the world during lockdown, too. In the case of our frontline workers, they’ve taken enormous risks on our behalf; the rest of us have tried to help where we can and everyone has been reasonably good humoured about it all – other than about the cigarette ban in South Africa, but that’s got more to do with the lung-corroding air of corruption than the lack of gaspers, I would say. These are really testing times for us all, and I think by far the majority of us are coming up shining.

Here’s to Humankind!

Love, Suzy