Why do I always like to speak ill of my former leader?

Why do we like to speak ill of leaders behind their backs? A brief history of mankind tells you the answer.

Maitian reading club

20 19-04- 16 23:03

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When three or five colleagues get together, it is inevitable to speak ill of the leader.

Why do we like to speak ill of leaders behind their backs and enjoy it? Are we too narrow-minded? Or is the leader really an asshole and deserves to be spoken ill of by us?

A friend replied: Why do you want to speak ill of leaders behind their backs? That's not easy, because I dare not face to face.

Of course, this is a joke. Why?

As it happens, the book A Brief History of Mankind tells you the answer.

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A Brief History of Mankind is a historical work by Israeli historian yuval Harari, which was first published in 20 14. Once published, it became a best seller.

The full name of this book is "A Brief History of Mankind: From Animals to God", which tells how people changed from animals to highly developed human beings today.

Among them, an important skill for human beings to form extensive cooperation and defeat other animals is "gossip", that is, to speak ill of others.

criticize

Isn't that incredible? How did "speaking ill" become an important skill for human beings to overcome other animals?

Let's take a look at the explanation in the book A Brief History of Mankind. To sum up, there are the following three points:

First, for the cruel natural environment, the more important information of human beings is not only the danger of the outside world, but also about human beings themselves.

How to understand it? Quite simply, many animals, such as green monkeys, can distinguish the external dangers such as "lions" and "eagles" by their calls.

But in addition to external dangers, what is more important is human cooperation. It is necessary to know who among the members hates who, who loves who, who is honest, who is unreliable, who is a liar and so on.

Only through cooperation can human beings become stronger, so "speaking ill" is very important.

Speak ill of the leader

Second, it is not easy to speak ill of others.

It is common for us to speak ill of leaders today, but it is very difficult for animals.

Even if there are only dozens of people, it is amazing to know the changing relationship between them at any time.

Let's do a simple math operation:

A tribe of 50 people has 1225 species in a one-to-one combination, and other more complex social combinations are difficult to count.

Gossip skill

Third, "gossip" and "speaking ill" can expand the size of the tribe.

About 70,000 years ago, modern Homo sapiens developed language skills, enabling them to gossip for hours.

In this way, they can know exactly who is stronger and more credible in their tribe, and then follow.

So the scale of tribes can be expanded, and Homo sapiens can develop closer and more complicated forms of cooperation.

cooperate

Perhaps, this "gossip" theory sounds a bit ridiculous.

But now there are a lot of research results to support this theory.

Even today, most interpersonal communication is in the form of gossip.

Imagine this:

When a group of historians get together, will they talk about the causes of the First World War? Maybe, but they talk more. A professor must have been caught stealing vegetables by his wife.

Will a group of employees get together to discuss how to improve the company's performance? Maybe, but we are talking more about the preference of female leaders for male subordinates, because this male subordinate is a small meat.

Ordinary people are keen on entertainment gossip, such as the salty pig hand on the bus, Mr. Chen who loves photography, and Mr. Liu who is involved in such events.

Although we hate people who speak ill of others behind their backs, it is these people who mastered the earliest fourth power 70 thousand years ago, just as journalists broke some scandals to protect the public from deception and harm.

Of course, we don't encourage to speak ill of others behind their backs, but we should also be clear about the positive significance behind "speaking ill".

Whether they are tribal leaders tens of thousands of years ago or heads of various positions today, as long as they really have leadership and can lead the public forward, the public is naturally willing to follow.

Does "speaking ill" just eliminate some leaders who have no leadership?

This is the explanation of why we like to speak ill of leaders behind their backs in A Brief History of Mankind. Do you agree?

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