A meaningful life
can be extremely satisfying even in the midst of hardship, whereas a
meaningless life is a terrible ordeal no matter how comfortable it is – Yuval
Noah Harari
There are some books
that make you sit up and do a lot of “deep thinking”, make you question your core beliefs and as a result, possibly alter you as a person. Sapiens: A Brief
History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari is one of them.
Harari is an Israeli
historian and a professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem. He is gay, vegan and a practitioner of Vipasana meditation for 20
years (and vocal about all of them). Harari specialized in medieval and
military history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has a Doctorate from
Oxford. He has many best sellers and articles to his name, Sapiens being the
foremost among them. Sapiens was published in Hebrew in 2011, became a national
best seller in Israel and was published in English in 2014; it has since been
translated into some 50 languages. It made Harari a superstar.
Sapiens is
breath-taking in its scope (which is the entire history of our Human race and
projections for the future thrown in for a good measure!), Provocative in its
assertions, entertaining in its language; this book is surely an
unputdownable. Some of what is written
in the book is not new or original, some are wild assertions too, but the
extraordinary writing paints a macro view of the different stages of our evolution through our many revolutions makes this book very engaging and important. As you read, you will agree that
Harari does have a different way of looking at things e.g., "we did not
domesticate wheat. It domesticated us", “Consistency is the playground of
dull minds” (The last one would have
been inspired by Oscar Wilde who said “Consistency is the last refuge of the
unimaginative” ).
Sapiens is mostly
about how we (Humans) came to dominate the Earth - in spite of having many
disadvantages and being an “insignificant animal” (sic) and a little about what
may lie ahead for us in the years to come. The book traces human history
through various human revolutions, It starts with the first, about 70,000 years
ago with the cognitive revolution, and then to around 12,000 years ago as the
agricultural revolution starts with domestication of plants and animals and
start to settle down in colonies; third is the scientific revolution, about 500
years ago that leads to industrial and later information revolution about 50
years ago and then the Biotech revolution – which is just evolving and
transforming; probably into bio-engineered cyborgs that could live forever –
which in some ways signal the end for Sapiens!
The key change, of
course is the start of the cognitive revolution, which set us on a different
evolutionary arc. This Cognitive revolution helped us to create stories and
imagined realities (myths) like money, country, God (yes, all these are only
real because we have collectively chosen to believe so), this enabled us to
work in large groups in a flexible, cooperative manner, that in turn enabled us
to create economy, empire and religion. This was a game-changer as we out ran
(or wiped out) our competitors including our cousins the powerful Neanderthals
- who lived until about 40,000 years ago. Much like the network of low powered
computers made the mighty standalone mainframes insignificant and eventually
obsolete. Long story short; our human domination is the outcome of our
cooperation and ability to use tools and technologies and the cooperation is
because of our beliefs in common ideological or religious myths.
The future according
to Harari, holds dangers and opportunities. From what I read, opportunities for
a minority and dangers for the majority, primarily because of the gaps between
rich and poor and a huge class of humans who would be rendered useless thru AI.
We are seeing both these scenarios are already in play, the divide between poor
and rich is wider than ever before – (the Oxfam report states that the wealth
gap continued to widen in 2017, with 82% of global wealth generated going to
the wealthiest 1%. Another report states that 2,153 billionaires owned as much
wealth as the bottom 4.6 billion people in 2019) and more and more workers
losing jobs to AI, robotics and automation in general and unable to repurpose themselves
(Forrester predicts job losses of 29% by 2030 with only 13% job creation to
compensate). Such economic disparity along with job loss is a perfect recipe
for political instability and a general moral crisis (Widening income
inequality is the defining challenge of our time- 2015 IMF report). History
proves that humans have not handled power responsibly, for us the relationship between
power and responsibility is inversely proportional.
Harari touches upon
various topics across a wide spectrum; globalization, human greed, the
definition of happiness; whatever the topic Harari never ceases to surprise
with his ability to connect the dots (which at times, does look a little
far-fetched) and thus creating an amazing visual of the past and future of
mankind. So, as Aristotle said; ‘It is the mark of an educated mind to be able
to entertain a thought without accepting it’ or as Venkat says ‘leave your
opinions in the parking lot’ and get ready to ‘immerse yourself’ (this is
important) and start to question your values, judgements and the opinions that
you left behind at the parking lot!
Sapiens is
listed as one of 10 favourite books of Bill Gates and is the Gaurdian’s best
brainy books of the decade
“You could
never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas
after death in monkey heaven.”
― Yuval Noah
Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Our imagined orders of yesterday
