Sapiens (Yuval Harari) -- 5/5
A lot has been written about this book, both positively and negatively. Some see it as an overly simplified view of history that gets certain facts wrong. Others see it as a cohesive narrative that ties together many disparate historical events.
I firmly believe this book should be taught everywhere. If I read this in high school I may have understood why the East India Company, Crusades, Industrial Revolution or any of the facts I had to memorize were important.
The book traces human history through broad eras that aren't focused on any particular country, race or technology. These eras are highlighted by the societal, psychological, biological and other changes we experienced as a species.
The Cognitive Revolution (knowledge, cooperation, cultural evolution)
The Agricultural Revolution (the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions)
The Unification of Mankind (money, imperialism, religion)
The Scientific Revolution (science, capitalism, empire, industry)
He finishes in a somewhat odd place discussing human happiness. New skills, behaviors and ways of thinking did not necessarily make for a better life . With all we learned are we happier?
The main question is whether people know the truth about themselves . What evidence do we have that people today understand this truth any better than ancient foragers or medieval peasants ?
Notes
Part One: The Cognitive Revolution
Human Anatomy
Horses and donkeys have a recent common ancestor and share many physical traits . But they show little sexual interest in one another . They will mate if induced to do so – but their offspring , called mules , are sterile . Mutations in donkey DNA can therefore never cross over to horses , or vice versa . The two types of animals are consequently considered two distinct species , moving along separate evolutionary paths . By contrast , a bulldog and a spaniel may look very different , but they are members of the same species , sharing the same DNA pool . They will happily mate and their puppies will grow up to pair off with other dogs and produce more puppies .
Women paid extra . An upright gait required narrower hips , constricting the birth canal – and this just when babies ’ heads were getting bigger and bigger . Death in childbirth became a major hazard for human females . Women who gave birth earlier , when the infant’s brain and head were still relatively small and supple , fared better and lived to have more children . Natural selection consequently favoured earlier births . And , indeed , compared to other animals , humans are born prematurely , when many of their vital systems are still under - developed . A colt can trot shortly after birth ; a kitten leaves its mother to forage on its own when it is just a few weeks old . Human babies are helpless , dependent for many years on their elders for sustenance , protection and education .
Most top predators of the planet are majestic creatures . Millions of years of dominion have filled them with self - confidence . Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana republic dictator . Having so recently been one of the underdogs of the savannah , we are full of fears and anxieties over our position , which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous . Many historical calamities , from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes , have resulted from this over - hasty jump .
Knowledge
Most people can neither intimately know , nor gossip effectively about , more than 150 human beings . Even today , a critical threshold in human organisations falls somewhere around this magic number . Below this threshold , communities , businesses , social networks and military units can maintain themselves based mainly on intimate acquaintance and rumour - mongering . There is no need for formal ranks , titles and law books to keep order . 3A platoon of thirty soldiers or even a company of a hundred soldiers can function well on the basis of intimate relations , with a minimum of formal discipline . A well - respected sergeant can become ‘ king of the company ’ and exercise authority even over commissioned officers . A small family business can survive and flourish without a board of directors , a CEO or an accounting department . But once the threshold of 150 individuals is crossed , things can no longer work that way . You cannot run a division with thousands of soldiers the same way you run a platoon . Successful family businesses usually face a crisis when they grow larger and hire more personnel . If they cannot reinvent themselves , they go bust .
The secret was probably the appearance of fiction . Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths .
The ability to create an imagined reality out of words enabled large numbers of strangers to cooperate effectively . But it also did something more . Since large - scale human cooperation is based on myths , the way people cooperate can be altered by changing the myths – by telling different stories . Under the right circumstances myths can change rapidly . In 1789 the French population switched almost overnight from believing in the myth of the divine right of kings to believing in the myth of the sovereignty of the people . Consequently , ever since the Cognitive Revolution Homo sapiens has been able to revise its behaviour rapidly in accordance with changing needs . This opened a fast lane of cultural evolution , bypassing the traffic jams of genetic evolution . Speeding down this fast lane , Homo sapiens soon far outstripped all other human and animal species in its ability to cooperate .
Part Two: The Agricultural Revolution
Evolution Success vs Individual Suffering
If a species boasts many DNA copies , it is a success , and the species flourishes . From such a perspective , 1,000 copies are always better than a hundred copies . This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution : the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions .
One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations .
This discrepancy between evolutionary success and individual suffering is perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from the Agricultural Revolution .
History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets .
Part Three: The Unification of Humankind
Money
Its development required no technological breakthroughs – it was a purely mental revolution . It involved the creation of a new inter - subjective reality that exists solely in people’s shared imagination . Money is not coins and banknotes . Money is anything that people are willing to use in order to represent systematically the value of other things for the purpose of exchanging goods and services . Money enables people to compare quickly and easily the value of different commodities ( such as apples , shoes and divorces ) , to easily exchange one thing for another , and to store wealth conveniently . There have been many types of money . The most familiar is the coin , which is a standardised piece of imprinted metal . Yet money existed long before the invention of coinage , and cultures have prospered using other things as currency , such as shells , cattle , skins , salt , grain , beads , cloth and promissory notes . Cowry shells were used as money for about 4,000 years all over Africa , South Asia , East Asia and Oceania . Taxes could still be paid in cowry shells in British Uganda in the early twentieth century .
not just any system of mutual trust : money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised . What created this trust was
If anyone dares counterfeit this coin , it means he is fabricating my own signature , which would be a blot on my reputation . I will punish such a crime with the utmost severity . ’ That’s why counterfeiting money has always been considered a much more serious crime than other acts of deception . Counterfeiting is not just cheating – it’s a breach of sovereignty , an act of subversion against the power , privileges and person of the king .
Imperialism
It is difficult to rule an empire in which every little district has its own set of laws , its own form of writing , its own language and its own money . Standardisation was a boon to emperors .
We can understand the decolonisation process of the last few decades in a similar way . During the modern era Europeans conquered much of the globe under the guise of spreading a superior Western culture . They were so successful that billions of people gradually adopted significant parts of that culture . Indians , Africans , Arabs , Chinese and Maoris learned French , English and Spanish . They began to believe in human rights and the principle of self - determination ,
Religion
Religion can thus be defined as a system of human norms and values that is founded on a belief in a superhuman order . This involves two distinct criteria : 1 . Religion is an entire system of norms and values , rather than an isolated custom or belief . Knocking on wood for good luck isn’t a religion . Even a belief in reincarnation does not constitute a religion , as long as it does not validate certain behavioral standards . 2 . To be considered a religion , the system of norms and values must claim to be based on superhuman laws rather than on human decisions . Professional soccer is not a religion , because despite its many rules , rites and often bizarre rituals , everyone knows that human beings invented soccer themselves , and FIFA may at any moment enlarge the size of the goal or cancel the offside rule .
Some readers may feel very uncomfortable with this line of reasoning . If it makes you feel better , you are free to go on calling Communism an ideology rather than a religion . It makes no difference . We can divide creeds into god - centred religions and godless ideologies that claim to be based on natural laws . But then , to be consistent , we would need to catalogue at least some Buddhist , Daoist and Stoic sects as ideologies rather than religions . Conversely , we should note that belief in gods persists within many modern ideologies , and that some of them , most notably liberalism , make little sense without this belief . It would be impossible to survey here the history of all the new modern creeds , especially because there are no clear boundaries between them . They are no less syncretic than monotheism and popular Buddhism . Just as a Buddhist could worship Hindu deities , and just as a monotheist could believe in the existence of Satan , so the typical American nowadays is simultaneously a nationalist ( she believes in the existence of an American nation with a special role to play in history ) , a free - market capitalist ( she believes that open competition and the pursuit of self - interest are the best ways to create a prosperous society ) , and a liberal humanist ( she believes that humans have been endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights ) . Nationalism will be discussed in Chapter 18 . Capitalism – the most successful of the modern religions – gets a whole chapter , Chapter 16 , which expounds its principal beliefs and rituals . In the remaining pages of this chapter I will address the humanist religions . Theist religions sanctify the gods . Humanist religions sanctify humanity , or more correctly , Homo sapiens . Humanism is a belief that Homo sapiens has a unique and sacred nature , which is fundamentally different from the nature of all other animals and of all other phenomena .
Why Study History?
the better you know a particular historical period , the harder it becomes to explain why things happened one way and not another .
So why study history ? Unlike physics or economics , history is not a means for making accurate predictions . We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons , to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable , and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we imagine . For example , studying how Europeans came to dominate Africans enables us to realise that there is nothing natural or inevitable about the racial hierarchy , and that the world might well be arranged differently .
As long as the hosts live long enough to pass along the parasite , it cares little about the condition of its host . In just this fashion , cultural ideas live inside the minds of humans . They multiply and spread from one host to another , occasionally weakening the hosts and sometimes even killing them .
‘ Arms racing ’ is a pattern of behaviour that spreads itself like a virus from one country to another , harming everyone , but benefiting itself , under the evolutionary criteria of survival and reproduction .
Part Four: The Scientific Revolution
Science and Empire
foundational event of the Scientific Revolution . It not only taught Europeans to favour present observations over past traditions , but the desire to conquer America also obliged Europeans to search for new knowledge at breakneck speed . If they really wanted to control the vast new territories , they had to gather enormous amounts of new data about the geography , climate , flora , fauna , languages , cultures and history of the new continent . Christian Scriptures , old geography books and ancient oral traditions were of little help .
Scientists have provided the imperial project with practical knowledge , ideological justification and technological gadgets . Without this contribution it is highly questionable whether Europeans could have conquered the world .
Without imperial support , it is doubtful whether modern science would have progressed very far . There are very few scientific disciplines that did not begin their lives as servants to imperial growth and that do not owe a large proportion of their discoveries , collections , buildings and scholarships to the generous help of army officers , navy captains and imperial governors .
Capitalism
Without a bakery , she can’t bake cakes . Without cakes , she can’t make money . Without money , she can’t hire a contractor . Without a contractor , she has no bakery . Humankind was trapped in this predicament for thousands of years . As a result , economies remained frozen . The way out of the trap was discovered only in the modern era , with the appearance of a new system based on trust in the future . In it , people agreed to represent imaginary goods – goods that do not exist in the present – with a special kind of money they called ‘ credit ’ . Credit enables us to build the present at the expense of the future .
Yet Smith’s claim that the selfish human urge to increase private profits is the basis for collective wealth is one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history – revolutionary not just from an economic perspective , but even more so from a moral and political perspective . What Smith says is , in fact , that greed is good , and that by becoming richer I benefit everybody , not just myself . Egoism is altruism .
Mercenary armies and cannon - brandishing fleets cost a fortune , but the Dutch were able to finance their military expeditions more easily than the mighty Spanish Empire because they secured the trust of the burgeoning European financial system at a time when the Spanish king was carelessly eroding its trust in him . Financiers extended the Dutch enough credit to set up armies and fleets , and these armies and fleets gave the Dutch control of world trade routes , which in turn yielded handsome profits . The profits allowed the Dutch to repay the loans , which strengthened the trust of the financiers .
The Dutch merchants financed conquest by getting loans , and increasingly also by selling shares in their companies that entitled their holders to receive a portion of the company’s profits .
The remains of the wall built by WIC to defend its colony against Native Americans and British are today paved over by the world’s most famous street – Wall Street .
The Mississippi Bubble was one of history’s most spectacular financial crashes . The royal French financial system never recuperated fully from the blow . The way in which the Mississippi Company used its political clout to manipulate share prices and fuel the buying frenzy caused the public to lose faith in the French banking system and in the financial wisdom of the French king . Louis XV found it more and more difficult to raise credit . This became one of the chief reasons that the overseas French Empire fell into British hands . While the British could borrow money easily and at low interest rates , France had difficulties securing loans , and had to pay high interest on them
An oil - rich country cursed with a despotic government , endemic warfare and a corrupt judicial system will usually receive a low credit rating . As a result , it is likely to remain relatively poor since it will not be able to raise the necessary capital to make the most of its oil bounty . A country devoid of natural resources , but which enjoys peace , a fair judicial system and a free government is likely to receive a high credit rating . As such , it may be able to raise enough cheap capital to support a good education system and foster a flourishing high - tech industry .
Markets by themselves offer no protection against fraud , theft and violence . It is the job of political systems to ensure trust by legislating sanctions against cheats and to establish and support police forces , courts and jails which will enforce the law .
At the end of the Middle Ages , slavery was almost unknown in Christian Europe . During the early modern period , the rise of European capitalism went hand in hand with the rise of the Atlantic slave trade . Unrestrained market forces , rather than tyrannical kings or racist ideologues , were responsible for this calamity .
Some religions , such as Christianity and Nazism , have killed millions out of burning hatred . Capitalism has killed millions out of cold indifference coupled with greed .
The human species and the global economy may well keep growing , but many more individuals may live in hunger and want . Capitalism has two answers to this criticism . First , capitalism has created a world that nobody but a capitalist is capable of running .
The second answer is that we just need more patience – paradise , the capitalists promise , is right around the corner .
Industry
Counter - intuitively , while humankind’s use of energy and raw materials has mushroomed in the last few centuries , the amounts available for our exploitation have actually increased . Whenever a shortage of either has threatened to slow economic growth , investments have flowed into scientific and technological research .
There are many types of steam engines , but they all share one common principle . You burn some kind of fuel , such as coal , and use the resulting heat to boil water , producing steam . As the steam expands it pushes a piston . The piston moves , and anything that is connected to the piston moves with it . You have converted heat into movement !
Clearly the world does not lack energy . All we lack is the knowledge necessary to harness and convert it to our needs .
The modern capitalist economy must constantly increase production if it is to survive , like a shark that must swim or suffocate . Yet it’s not enough just to produce . Somebody must also buy the products , or industrialists and investors alike will go bust . To prevent this catastrophe and to make sure that people will always buy whatever new stuff industry produces , a new kind of ethic appeared : consumerism .
Each year the US population spends more money on diets than the amount needed to feed all the hungry people in the rest of the world .
The capitalist and consumerist ethics are two sides of the same coin , a merger of two commandments . The supreme commandment of the rich is ‘ Invest ! ’ The supreme commandment of the rest of us is ‘ Buy ! ’
Industrial Revolution
on a large set of scales , their combined mass would be about 300 million tons . If you then took all our domesticated farmyard animals – cows , pigs , sheep and chickens – and placed them on an even larger set of scales , their mass would amount to about 700 million tons . In contrast , the combined mass of all surviving large wild animals – from porcupines and penguins to elephants and whales – is less than 100 million tons . Our children’s books , our iconography and our TV screens are still full of giraffes , wolves and chimpanzees , but the real world has very few of them left . There are about 80,000 giraffes in the world , compared to 1.5 billion cattle ; only 200,000 wolves , compared to 400 million domesticated dogs ; only 250,000 chimpanzees – in contrast to billions of humans . Humankind really has taken over the world .
Ten years after the first commercial train service began operating between Liverpool and Manchester , in 1830 , the first train timetable was issued . The trains were much faster than the old carriages , so the quirky differences in local hours became a severe nuisance . In 1847 , British train companies put their heads together and agreed that henceforth all train timetables would be calibrated to Greenwich Observatory time , rather than the local times of Liverpool , Manchester or Glasgow . More and more institutions followed the lead of the train companies . Finally , in 1880 , the British government took the unprecedented step of legislating that all timetables in Britain must follow Greenwich . For the first time in history , a country adopted a national time and obliged its population to live according to an artificial clock rather than local ones or sunrise - to - sunset cycles .
You need to make a conscious effort not to know what time it is . The typical person consults these clocks several dozen times a day , because almost everything we do has to be done on time . An alarm clock wakes us up at 7 a.m . ,
The Industrial Revolution brought about dozens of major upheavals in human society . Adapting to industrial time is just one of them . Other notable examples include urbanisation , the disappearance of the peasantry , the rise of the industrial proletariat , the empowerment of the common person , democratisation , youth culture and the disintegration of patriarchy . Yet all of these upheavals are dwarfed by the most momentous social revolution that ever befell humankind : the collapse of the family and the local community and their replacement by the state and the market .
The family was also the welfare system , the health system , the education system , the construction industry , the trade union , the pension fund , the insurance company , the radio , the television , the newspapers , the bank and even the police .
The two most important examples for the rise of such imagined communities are the nation and the consumer tribe . The nation is the imagined community of the state . The consumer tribe is the imagined community of the market . Both are imagined communities because it is impossible for all customers in a market or for all members of a nation really to know one another the way villagers knew one another in the past .
As long as millions of Germans believe in the existence of a German nation , get excited at the sight of German national symbols , retell German national myths , and are willing to sacrifice money , time and limbs for the German nation , Germany will remain one of the strongest powers in the world .
The decline of violence is due largely to the rise of the state . Throughout history , most violence resulted from local feuds between families and communities . ( Even today , as the above figures indicate , local crime is a far deadlier threat than international wars . )
It is perhaps debatable whether violence within states has decreased or increased since 1945 . What nobody can deny is that international violence has dropped to an all - time low . Perhaps the most obvious example is the collapse of the European empires . Throughout history empires have crushed rebellions with an iron fist , and when its day came , a sinking empire used all its might to save itself , usually collapsing into a bloodbath . Its final demise generally led to anarchy and wars of succession . Since 1945 most empires have opted for peaceful early retirement . Their process of collapse became relatively swift , calm and orderly .
The independent states that came after these empires were remarkably uninterested in war . With very few exceptions , since 1945 states no longer invade other states in order to conquer and swallow them up .
First and foremost , the price of war has gone up dramatically .
Secondly , while the price of war soared , its profits declined .
While war became less profitable , peace became more lucrative than ever .
Last but not least , a tectonic shift has taken place in global political culture . Many elites in history – Hun chieftains , Viking noblemen and Aztec priests , for example – viewed war as a positive good . Others viewed it as evil , but an inevitable one , which we had better turn to our own advantage . Ours is the first time in history that the world is dominated by a peace - loving elite – politicians , business people , intellectuals and artists who genuinely see war as both evil and avoidable . ( There
Happiness
But are we happier ? Did the wealth humankind accumulated over the last five centuries translate into a new - found contentment ?
As we have seen , new aptitudes , behaviours and skills do not necessarily make for a better life . When humans learned to farm in the Agricultural Revolution , their collective power to shape their environment increased , but the lot of many individual humans grew harsher .
Hence , though the last few decades have been an unprecedented golden age for humanity , it is too early to know whether this represents a fundamental shift in the currents of history or an ephemeral eddy of good fortune . When judging modernity , it is all too tempting to take the viewpoint of a twenty - first - century middle - class Westerner .
Family and community seem to have more impact on our happiness than money and health .
But the most important finding of all is that happiness does not really depend on objective conditions of either wealth , health or even community . Rather , it depends on the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations .
Huxley’s disconcerting world is based on the biological assumption that happiness equals pleasure . To be happy is no more and no less than experiencing pleasant bodily sensations .
Liberal politics is based on the idea that the voters know best , and there is no need for Big Brother to tell us what is good for us . Liberal economics is based on the idea that the customer is always right . Liberal art declares that beauty is in the eye of the beholder . Students in liberal schools and universities are taught to think for themselves . Commercials urge us to ‘ Just do it ! ’ Action
People who have been raised from infancy on a diet of such slogans are prone to believe that happiness is a subjective feeling and that each individual best knows whether she is happy or miserable . Yet this view is unique to liberalism . Most religions and ideologies throughout history stated that there are objective yardsticks for goodness and beauty , and for how things ought to be .
People are liberated from suffering not when they experience this or that fleeting pleasure , but rather when they understand the impermanent nature of all their feelings , and stop craving them . This is the aim of Buddhist meditation practices .
When the pursuit stops , the mind becomes very relaxed , clear and satisfied .
You live in the present moment instead of fantasising about what might have been .
The main question is whether people know the truth about themselves . What evidence do we have that people today understand this truth any better than ancient foragers or medieval peasants ?
Intelligent Design
After 4 billion years of natural selection , Alba stands at the dawn of a new cosmic era , in which life will be ruled by intelligent design . If this happens , the whole of human history up to that point might , with hindsight , be reinterpreted as a process of experimentation and apprenticeship that revolutionised the game of life .