The third installment of the Hunger Games trilogy – “Mockingjay: Part 1” – is set to premiere at midnight tonight, and we’re pretty stoked. If you know the background of the Hunger Games, you know this brutal but redemptive story brings up powerful questions of love, hardship, and the nature of humanity – so in honor of the occasion, we’re inviting you to consider a few positive conclusions we can draw from it.
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“Five Lessons in Human Goodness from ‘The Hunger Games'”
By Jeremy Adam Smith
Image courtesy of http://www.tele-smart.com/blog
In the dystopian future world of The Hunger Games, 24 teenagers are forced to fight to the death, their battle turned into televised entertainment. But what raises The Hunger Games above similar stories is that it is mainly preoccupied with how human goodness can flourish even in the most dehumanizing circumstances. The vision of human beings as fundamentally caring and connected is not merely wishful thinking. In fact, it’s been tested by a great deal of scientific research. Here are five examples:
1. Killing is against human nature.
Katniss, a skilled hunter and the hero of The Hunger Games, is indeed horrified by the prospect of dying—but her worst fears revolve around needing to kill other people.
Research says that Katniss is the rule, not the exception. Sociologist Randall Collins comes to a similar conclusion in his massive study Violence: “Humans are hardwired for interactional entrainment and solidarity; and this is what makes violence so difficult.”
2. Wealth makes us less compassionate.
The citizens of the Capitol brutally exploit the 12 districts of the country of Panem, giving themselves a very high standard of living while deliberately keeping the rest in a state of abject poverty. The movie and the book take pains to reveal how much this limits their ability to empathize with the less fortunate—a situation confirmed by research.
3. People are motivated to help others by empathy, not reason or numbers.
“If you really want to stay alive, you get people to like you,” says their drunken, traumatized mentor, Haymitch. It’s the first advice he gives to the heroes, Katniss and Peeta, and a surprising amount of the film’s action revolves around their efforts to win people’s sympathy, which results in “sponsorships” that help them in their most desperate moments.
4. Power flows from social and emotional intelligence, not strength and viciousness.
Peeta proves particularly adept at manipulating the emotions of the “Hunger Games” audience. He seldom actually lies to anyone, but he does artfully reveal and conceal his emotions to maximize their impact and win support for their survival. In contrast, the characters who rely on brute force and violent prowess find themselves isolated and defeated in the end. It’s the most compassionate characters who ultimately triumph, which is exactly what research in social and emotional intelligence predicts will happen.
5. Social connection trumps power and independence.
“The upshot of 50 years of happiness research is that the quantity and quality of a person’s social connections—friendships, relationships with family members, closeness to neighbors, etc.—is so closely related to well-being and personal happiness the two can practically be equated,” writes Christine Carter in her Raising Happiness blog.
In the book, when one character tells Katniss she’s a survivor, her reply is telling: “But only because someone helped me.” Katniss is tough and resourceful, but, in the end, it’s her ability to connect with others that saves her.
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