Did they ever make you read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies in high school? 

In case you got to skip it, I’ll summarize: A group of schoolboys stranded on a desert island quickly devolve from well-behaved kids into murderous barbarians.

That book has been translated into more than 30 languages, made into a film and helped win its author a Nobel Prize for literature.

But it also reinforces a stereotype about human behavior that isn’t true.

You see, Golding’s story is based on the idea that people are inherently bad.

But if we’re all made in the image of the divine, wouldn’t it make more sense if the opposite were true?

After all, when there’s a crisis — like the recent flooding in Asheville — we’re more likely to see people band together to help than hurt each other.

Rutger Bregman’s well-researched book Humankind: A Hopeful History shows how every branch of science has evidence that proves we’re basically good. If you’ve been feeling hopeless lately, I recommend you pick up a copy.

So if we’re basically good, why are people always talking about how bad or downright evil we are?

Maybe it’s because they have a dim view of themselves.

Bregman points out that William Golding was an alcoholic who struggled with depression. A WWII veteran, Golding once said that he understood the evil of the Nazis because he knew he was capable of it. He was a schoolteacher who thought of his students as ill-behaved hooligans and beat his own children.

I imagine if I was a frustrated teacher, writing a story about my rotten students doing horrible things would be incredibly cathartic.

But that doesn’t make it true. 

What would happen if a shipload of boys in real life got stranded on a deserted island?

Well, it did happen! And it’s one of the wonderful stories Bregman tells in his book. 

You see, in the 1960s, a ship captain rescued six boys aged 13 to 16 who’d been stranded on a tiny, rocky island in the South Pacific. 

The teenagers survived shipwreck, lack of water, harsh conditions and broken bones for more than 15 months by maintaining a strict no-fighting policy, cultivating the land to grow vegetables and keeping fit in a gym they built. They even created a badminton court! 

Badminton? I can’t think of anything more civilized.

Proximity did not make enemies of the boys. In fact, they remained friends with each other and the ship captain for the rest of their lives.

Reading Lord of the Flies when I was 15 depressed me. Learning about the six schoolboys from Tongo last week gave me hope.

There is a saying from the Talmud: “We don’t see people as they are; we see them as we are.” 

We spend so much time in our own heads that it’s easy to think everyone is like us. We forget that when we’re in dialogue with others that they may not share the same values or point of view. 

Being different from us doesn’t make them bad. It just makes them different.

Misunderstanding that can lead to accidental upsets and potential conflict. And it feeds the prevailing narrative of badness that consistently floods over us from all the junk we consume on our phones and TVs.

If we give into that belief that people are out to get us and can’t be trusted, or if we think badly of ourselves, that will color how we view other people. Over time, we’ll be so scared and shut down, we won’t be able to see them as they are.

Instead, I encourage you to practice assuming positive intent and look for the good.

You probably already do this when you think of your loved ones and neighbors because you know them. 

It’s when we start to think outside of our circle that our view of others becomes less compassionate and kind.

But what if we could extend the grace we give the people we know to those we’ve never met?

What if we consider that the reports of horrible things we hear about in the papers or on social media are exceptions rather than the rule?

What if we allow ourselves to see the spark of the divine in everyone we see? Especially those with whom we disagree?

Practice seeing the best in others. Over time, you may discover you’ve become better for it.