Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (2014)

A quick history of humanity for laypeople

This book reads more like a very long extended article. It… is okay. The author seems somewhat depressed. 7 billion humans need to eat. Sorry, animals. I think Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now is a better book in this genre, though somewhat different. These are my notes on the book.

Despite repeated trips to the natural history museum, this book helps penetrate the idea that humans are really old, and evolved as hunter gatherers; modernity is thus something very new.  Humans evolved some 2 million years ago, or so, in East Africa, and only recently rose to the top of the food chain with their intellect.  Humans evolved to function well in groups of, at most, about 150.  The appearance of the state and the rule of law has enabled humans to live in much more enormous groups of people.  Money, as pointed out a million times over in literature, Man’s Search for Meaning, and by Thomas Sowell, envelopes so much information and meaning in it that it is indispensable to modern society; dreams of the Marxist utopia without exchange and currency are beyond deluded.  Argues something along the lines of a Steven Pinker-esque that maybe the current state of the state isn’t so bad, that violence is at all time lows, that the Soviet Union was a horrible mistake, but so too was unfettered capitalism in Marx’s era.  “... despite all the talks of terrorism and war, the average person was more likely to kill himself than to be killed by a terrorist, a soldier or a drug dealer.” (Post 9/11).  Draws somewhat depressing conclusions about the agricultural and industrial revolutions, and the future of humanity; does not seem that the author actually cares too much for being here, these revolutions without which he would not exist.  Points out, as does Haidt, that evolution did not serve happiness, only furthering man, with its population explosion over the past century of more than 5x, up to now 7B people. “...a happy hermit's genetic line will go extinct as the genes of a pair of anxious parents ger carried on to the net generation.  Happiness and misery play a role in evolution only to the extent that they encourage or discourage survival and reproduction.  Perhaps it’s not surprising, then , that evolution has moulded us to be neither too miserable nor too happy.”   “Having so recently been one of the underdogs of the savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position... Many historical calamities... have resulted from this over-hasty jump.” “Tolerance is not a Sapiens trademark.”  Talks about the myths we believe in, fictions, which enable modern society, from the LLC to money to property rights, from redemption of sin through Christ’s body and blood, to the border of the nation state, joining people together in patriotism.  Notes the dispute between different theories of what is “natural” for humans, from families to polyamory and those in-between.  “Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, there hasn’t been a single natural way of life for Sapiens.  There are only cultural choices...”  “How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty five?  But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school... and a sense that life Is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad.”  Points out the fact that cynics would not bother with building modernity; thus beliefs very much impact what people do and thus outcomes; culture is very important.    “...most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids.  Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to another.” Whether it is a pyramid or a house in the suburbs with a pool.  “Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid in the first place.” “There is no way out of the imagined order.  When we break down our prison walls and run towards freedom, we are in fact running into the more spacious exercise yard of a bigger prison.”  This, the same grand realization of Pierre in War and Peace.  Points out the differences between Alpha males over time, with a picture of Barack Obama vs. Louis XIV (with his heels and King Cape and long hair).  “Ever since the French Revolution, people throughout the world have gradually come to see both equality and individual freedom as fundamental values.  Yet the two values contradict each other.  Equality can be ensured only by curtailing the freedoms of those who are better off.  Guaranteeing that every individual will be free to do as he wishes inevitably short-changes equality.  The entire political history of the world since 1789 can be seen as a series of attempts to reconcile this contradiction.”  As points out Popper, we cannot live up to our ideals.  “Such contradictions are an inseparable part of every human culture... responsible for the creativity and dynamism of our species... Consistency is the playground of dull minds.”  Points out “The largest and most famous such experiment was conducted in the Soviet Union, and it failed miserable.  ‘Everyone would work according to their abilities, and receive according to their needs’ turns out in practice into ‘everyone would work as little as they can get away with, and receive as much as they could grab’.”  “Money is accordingly a system of mutual trust... the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.”  “Today religion is often considered a source of discrimination and disunion.  Yet, in fact, religion has been the third great unifier of humankind, alongside money and empires.”  (The latter of which caused cultures to assimilate and thus people work better along one another).  Social orders are fragile the larger they are, religion helped place some fundamental laws beyond challenge “the Will of God.”  Repeatedly references the living in the now of Buddhism, “What am I experiencing now?” instead of what would I rather be doing; this, later echoed in a modern way by Carl Rogers.  “... once you stop craving particular feelings, you can just accept them for what they are.  You live in the present moment instead of fantasising about what might have been”  Points out the unpredictability of history, from Christianity disposing Paganism in ancient Rome to Bolsheviks overthrowing the Russian social order – no one anticipated these things and would have been thought crazy for thinking them even possible (says author).  Says the West won the World because of its myths and beliefs, “The Chinese and Persians did not lack technological inventions... They lacked the values, myths, judicial apparatus and sociopoltiical structures that took centuries to form and mature in the West and which could not be copied and interanlised rapidly.  France and the United Sates quickly followed in Britain’s footsteps because the French and Americans already shared the most important British myths and social structures.  The Chinese and Persians could not catch up as quickly because they thought and organised their societies differently.”  This, the same conclusion reached by conservative Thomas Sowell and centrist Lawrence E Harrison, about the critical role culture places in economic development.  Imperialism, “...created the world as we know it, including the ideologies we use in order to judge them.”  They traveled the World to conquer, but with the idea that the World had to be explored and mastered.  Thus, “...they cannot be simply labelled as good or evil.”  Economies keep growing thanks to this ever-increasing scientific curiosity.  “If the labs do not fulfil these expectations before the bubble bursts, we are headed towards very rough times.” (Regarding technical innovation and how its needed to sustain the ever-growing economies).  Also illustrates the critical role of rule of law towards economic growth and the stability of the social order with examples about courts in Spain doing whatever the King wished, where courts in Holland would actually rule in favor of who was right or wrong in a property dispute.  “Better to do business with merchants than with kings, and better to do it in Holland than in Madrid... They, too, realise that if they want to keep their money and use it to gain more wealth, they are better off investing it where the rule of law prevails and where private property is respected...”  Regarding individualism vs. Collectivism, “Millions of years of evolution have designed us to live and think as community members.  Within a mere two centuries we have become alienated individuals.” “With the individual wielding unprecedented power to decide her own path in life, we find it ever harder to make commitments.  We thus live in an increasingly lonely world of unravelling communities and families.”  Points out the role of nuclear weapons in World hegemony and peace, “The Nobel Peace Prize to end all peace prizes should have been given to Robert Oppenheimer and his fellow architects of the atomic bomb.”  Due to the inability to use them via collective suicide.  Also points out the changing nature of wealth over time, no longer just a fixed pie as in the time of Jesus, when an rich man could not enter the Kingdom of Heaven; “Today, wealth consists mainly of human capital and organizational know-how.  Consequently it is difficult to carry it off or conquer it by military force.”  Points out the genetic role that is also played in human happiness; some people are just born more or less happy types than others; life can improve or not improve these genetic tendencies.