[Namsan Ddalggakbari] Humans Are Good, Only Politicians and News Make Villains

Woman Stabbed in Front of 38 People, Residents Say "We Don't Want to Get Involved"
Incorrect Media Reports Distort Facts, Victim Actually Rushed to Help

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Jong-hwa] What if all the common sense and facts you have always thought were 'obvious' were actually false? If you are still accepting these 'wrong facts' that shake your values, how would you act?

Rutger Bregman, a leading Dutch journalist and thinker, wrote Humankind: A Hopeful History from Our Hidden Human Nature, which hopes to change your terrible and pessimistic view of humanity.

On the early morning of March 13, 1964, in front of an apartment complex in New York, a 28-year-old woman named Kitty was stabbed. Kitty shouted, "I've been stabbed! Please help!" but no one helped her. Dozens of neighbors looked out their windows as if watching a reality show, yet no one intervened.

Exposing Pessimistic Views of Humanity

One of the callers later said, "I didn't want to get involved." These six words resonated worldwide. Regarding the incident, The New York Times reported, "Thirty-eight respectable citizens of Queens who obey the law watched for more than 30 minutes as a murderer stabbed a woman three times." Another article described the events at the Austin Street apartments and homes as "a symptom revealing the terrible reality of the human condition."

However, later research by the author revealed a different truth. The author analyzed, "Kitty did not die because she woke up all her neighbors; on the contrary, she died because she woke them all up. If the deceased woman had been attacked in a deserted alley with only one witness, she might have survived."

Let's go back to that day. A female neighbor stopped her husband from calling the police, saying, "They must have already made about 30 calls." Other neighbors felt similarly. The street was dark, and the silhouette of a woman shouting and staggering was clearly a drunk. There was a bar just above the street, so this was not unusual. Still, at least two people did call the police, but the police, saying "we have already received reports," treated it as a common domestic dispute and did not respond.

The media's focus solely on the murder and the attitude of the 38 witnesses painted the residents as "people with terrible human nature." Two or three people actually ran to save her. Kitty died in the arms of a neighbor who rushed to help her. Ironically, the very woman who said "I didn't want to get involved" was the one who held the bloodied Kitty in her arms and witnessed her final moments. She swore never to speak to reporters again, saying they only published what they wanted to hear.

Advice to 'Stay Away from News and Push Notifications'

In this way, the judgment that "humans are inherently evil" has become accepted. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, which even won the Nobel Prize in Literature, is the pinnacle of distorted humanity. Golding, who held the abnormal belief that "humans will naturally behave badly," wrote the novel. Fiction and reality are different. The boys in the novel divided into factions and fought, but in reality, they did not.

In September 1966, six boys rescued from Ata Island in the South Pacific survived healthily for 15 months on an uninhabited island by helping each other. When they occasionally quarreled, each would go to the opposite side of the island to cool off for about four hours, then apologize and maintain their friendship.

The reason you have a negative view of humanity is because you were persuaded by writers like Golding who held negative prejudices about humans, journalists who create issues, twisted scholars chasing fame and praise, and politicians obsessed with agendas.

The author advises you to "stay away from the news" to correct your distorted view of 'human nature.' The same applies to social media. Hate speech spread by just two bad actors is pushed to the top of feeds by algorithms. Digital platforms profit by exploiting our negative biases. The worse people behave, the more profit is made.

The author emphasizes, "Stay away from television news and push notifications, and read more in-depth Sunday newspapers or investigative reports, whether online or offline. Just as you are careful about the food you put into your body, be careful about what information you feed your mind." Humans are inherently good. It is time to look at humanity with a new perspective.

Humankind, by Rutger Bregman, translated by Cho Hyun-wook, Influential, 22,000 KRW.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.