Defending Our Nature
I want to believe human beings are good.
That’s probably why I expect friendly responses from strangers when I say hello to them… and why I feel disappointed when some of them just stare back at me like a steenbok caught in the headlights.
Maybe those people see strangers as threats because the media often focus on murder, theft and other violent events, and that gives them a negative take on human nature. But I don’t think the news is an accurate indication of the way most people behave.
Okay, bad things do happen, but I think they are the exceptions… which is why editors see them as newsworthy. Anyway, I’m writing about this now because being feared makes me uncomfortable… and because I’ve found some new evidence that suggests my take on our nature may be correct.
In a recent publication, social historian, Rutger Bregman, argues that humans are kind by nature and that most of us find it difficult to hurt others. That’s why he called his book Human Kind. And he uses a surprising source to back-up his claims. Military records.
According to Bregman, US Colonel, Samuel Marshall, observed American soldiers during a battle with Japanese troops during World War II. Then, when he interviewed them afterwards, he found that even when their lives were at risk, only 20 percent fired their rifles. The others didn’t run away; they just didn’t shoot.
Other research indicates that figure may hold for most armies and conflicts throughout history… but those findings are not publicised and they are difficult to prove. Marshall did, however, come up with hard evidence from the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War in 1863 to support his claim that most soldiers do not want to kill.
Ninety percent of the 27,574 rifles re
covered from the battlefield were fully loaded. That doesn’t make sense unless the soldiers didn’t want to shoot, because it took a long time to load a musket. Gun powder had to be poured down the barrel, a metal ball had to be inserted and rammed into place, the hammer had to be cocked and a firing cap had to be put in place before the trigger could be pulled.
Soldiers should have spent 95 percent of their time loading their rifles and five percent shooting them, so most of the recovered muskets should have been empty or just partially loaded. The possibility that most of the soldiers were just killing time is backed-up by the fact 12,000 muskets were double loaded and nearly 6,000 had been loaded three times without ever being fired.
US Air Force records, meanwhile, indicate most World War II fighter pilots weren’t too interested in killing either. They show one percent of the pilots were responsible for 40 percent of the planes shot down and that most pilots shot down no planes at all.
Bregman even uses a lack of early military records to support his case. Our earliest hunter gather ancestors left behind thousands of cave paintings, including many hunting scenes, so if they were warriors, I’m sure they would have painted pictures of battles on the rocks as well.
But I’m happy to say, not a single one has been found.