Humanity

This fascinating and profound book is about the psychology that made possible Hiroshima, the Nazi genocide, the Gulag, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and many other atrocities. The author reveals common patterns - how the distance and fragmented responsibility of technological warfare gave rise to Hiroshima; how the tribalism resulted in mutual fear and hatred in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia; how the systems of belief made atrocities possible in Stalin's Russia, in Mao's China and in Cambodia; and how the powerful combination of tribalism and belief enabled people to do otherwise unimaginable things in Nazi Germany. The common patterns suggest weak points in our psychology. The resulting picture is used as a guide for the ethics we should create if we hope to overcome them.