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Sapiens - A review by Venkat.

Venkat is very passionate about Sapiens and the ideas from the book, so I requested him to write the review but somehow it was not happening, so I wrote one in the meanwhile, Now he has penned his thoughts and I am glad he did, for this is more than just a review of the book...

Krishna-

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Prof. Yuval Noah Harari is one of the most entertaining and informative books that I have read in a long time. This has been recommended by former President Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates among others. This has been translated into multiple languages since 2014 and has been an international bestseller. 

Prof. Harari states – 70,000 years ago, humans developed cognitive ability which bestowed them to think and communicate in abstract terms (ones that defy objective reality). If we were to ask ourselves what set us apart from other animals, this is that moment in our evolutionary path. Animals still completely rely on biology for their evolution – which is painfully slow.

While all other animals still have a limit on their pack – by believing in stories that are fictitious, humans broke that barrier. These fictional stories gave us multiple identities and enabled us to cooperate with complete strangers to achieve our goals. Material needs ensued invention of money, companies myth; need for social order birthed religions-gods myth; these and fortuitous foray into agriculture enabled us to live in few thousands together – from alpha males to tribal chieftains, we moved on to Empires myth which coagulated into nation, country myths, etc.

One of the offshoots of the scientific revolution - project Gutenberg started publishing books which helped successive generations of humans to stand on the shoulders of their forebears and shoot for stars. Consider this for a moment, it just took 60 years since the invention of the airplane for humans to send a man to the moon.

In retrospect, it has been a good ride for humans. Why complain?

The imagined identities that we amassed (which we call growing up) from such fictional stories– is causing more harm by dividing us now into us vs them, good vs evil, what’s true vs what’s not, and worse still, we do not seem to care for truth either. To make matters worse – Silicon Valley social media giants are competing with one another to capture and retain our eyeballs. They are exploiting our vulnerabilities by racing to the bottom of our brain stem through their suggestions for us to read, watch videos, associate oneself with one or another moral group. The result? We now live in balkanized communities with more stark fault lines and conversations between groups is impossible. Technology has been leveraged in the elections last few years world over to manipulate people’s will by pressing our emotional buttons without our knowledge or consent; If this continues – Civilizations and Democracy as we know of, would be a thing of past.

To be fair – humans have always had differences of opinion. But when you combine that with complete communication breakdown with the other side, indulge in name calling, de-humanize people in opposite camps – we have been through those situations in the past and those did not end well.

In a globalized world – we all are more interconnected and interdependent than we believe we are. If we consider every major challenge facing humans now – nature of future job market in the age of AI, impact of climate change, nuclear weapons– all these needs coordinated responses from all countries.

Is there a way out? What could I do as a responsible human? At an individual level – we could spend time and educate ourselves. With so many layers of identities each one of us accumulate as part of growing up – member of a family, company, culture, region, religion, language, country, philosophy, etc. – we need to train ourselves to see and experience reality without any of these imagined identities.

Sapiens could help you get there. If. only. you. want. to.

Venkat-