Our Superpower is our ability to cooperate

How many parents reading this article can remember studying “Lord of the Flies” at school? I have been influenced by it, particularly its bleak and unremitting assertion that we should weep, “For the loss of innocence, the darkness in man’s heart…”

On the very first day, the boys institute a democracy of sorts. One boy, Ralph, is elected to be the group’s leader. Athletic, charismatic and handsome, his game plan is simple: 1) Have fun. 2) Survive. 3) Make smoke signals for passing ships. Number one is a success. The others? Not so much. The boys are more interested in feasting and frolicking than in tending the fire. Before long, they have begun painting their faces. Casting off their clothes. They develop overpowering urges – to pinch, to kick, to bite, to kill.

The novel is fiction yet it has coloured our notions of how humankind acts when placed in a traumatic context (a war, a pandemic for instance).  Rutger Bregman researched Golding’s life and learned what an unhappy individual he had been: an alcoholic, prone to depression. “I have always understood the Nazis,” Golding confessed, “because I am of that sort by nature.” It was “partly out of that sad self-knowledge” that he wrote Lord of the Flies.

Bregman researched a little known story and found that there is real surprise here. After trawling the web for a while, he came across an obscure blog that told an arresting story: “One day, in 1977, six boys set out from Tonga on a fishing trip ... Caught in a huge storm, the boys were shipwrecked on a deserted island. What do they do, this little tribe? They made a pact never to quarrel.”

The six boys survived for a year on a rocky islet south of Tonga, an island group in the Pacific Ocean called Ata. Unlike the fictional novel, they cooperated, took time out when their emotions were frayed and even provided medical help for an injured boy.

Bregman has raised a very interesting question in his book. What is our default nature- savagery or cooperation? Was the fact that the boys were from a culture that specifically taught the importance of relying on “community” that allowed them to survive nobly unlike the appalling experience of the English boarding school boys.

Peter Warner, the skipper who rescued them and one of the boys Mano Totau are good friends all these years later. They both live in Queensland.

During the C-19 lockdown, we have witnessed random acts of kindness; creative video clips to keep people’s spirits up and tips on self-reliance and relieving boredom. Yes, there were some fights over toilet paper and illegal assemblies but it seemed that they were seriously outweighed by cooperation and kindness.

It is time we told a different kind of story. The real Lord of the Flies is a tale of friendship and loyalty; one that illustrates how much stronger we are if we can lean on each other. After my wife took Peter’s picture, he turned to a cabinet and rummaged around for a bit, then drew out a heavy stack of papers that he laid in my hands. His memoirs, he explained, written for his children and grandchildren. I looked down at the first page. “Life has taught me a great deal,” it began, “including the lesson that you should always look for what is good and positive in people.”

How true the quote: “I have been searching for ways to heal myself and found that kindness is the best way”. I think recent events prove that our “better angels” will ultimately prevail.

• This article contains adapted excerpts from Rutger Bregman’s Humankind, translated by Elizabeth Manton and Erica Moore.

Paul Cullen

paul.cullen@cg.catholic.edu.au