[Summary] Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari — 3 Takeaways, 2 Quotes, 1 Question.
How did 8 billion animals become gods?
Sapiens is Yuval Noah Harari’s expansive historical account of the Homo Sapiens species.
In a mere 400 pages, Harari takes readers on a fascinating journey across 100,000 years of our species’ evolution — from our dominance over the Neanderthals to our transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers, to the spread of religion, imperialism, and money. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology, and economics, the book explores the numerous factors which led to our species coming out at the top of the food chain.
Sapiens divides human history into four main sections:
- The Cognitive Revolution
- The Agricultural Revolution
- The Unification of Humankind
- The Scientific Revolution
While this will likely be the longest book summary I’ll write (ever…), it definitely doesn’t do justice to Harari’s work, so I highly recommend grabbing your own copy if you find this topic interesting.
For now though, I’m focusing my summary on the section which I found the most compelling: The Cognitive Revolution.
3 Takeaways
#1: Humans have been able to cooperate in large numbers due to our shared belief in myths.
Sociological research has shown that the maximum “natural” size of a tribe/group is about 150 individuals — beyond that number, social order tends to destabilize and the group splits off into smaller subgroups.
So how is it possible that multinational corporations, modern states, or religious groups are able to achieve cooperation between thousands or even billions of individuals?
Harari argues that the answer lies in the wake of the Cognitive Revolution when humans developed the ability to share a collective imagination — or rather, the ability to transmit information to others about things that don’t really exist. This shared belief in common myths has allowed humans to cooperate in large numbers with, in many cases, complete strangers from around the world. For instance, two Catholic strangers from two different countries can nevertheless cooperate to pool digital funds to build a new church in another foreign country.
And while it’s easy to use religion as an example, this also applies to stock markets, the Internet, state borders, or global brands. Sure, there are physical manifestations of these entities such as cash, laptop screens, border walls, or logos, but these are only proxies to the abstract entities which exist only in our imaginations.
What I find most interesting is that while you can’t refute the objective reality of rivers, trees, or lions, the imagined reality of corporations, nations, or religions exist only as long as the majority of people continue to believe in them. Imagine what would happen to the stock market if tomorrow we all collectively decided to stop believing it exists.
#2: Humans have a unique ability to imagine social orders that define the relationship between individuals.
Throughout most of history, imagined social orders have been a big factor in creating strong and cohesive societies.
One example Harari explores is America’s 1776 Declaration of Independence, which famously states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In other words, this social order outlines that everyone deserves equal treatment.
Other times, these social orders have had more sinister effects such as the exploitation of the masses for the benefit of a privileged few. Here, Harari cites the famous Code of Hammurabi from ancient Babylon in 1776 BC, which essentially asserts that the gods have dictated that society be split into three classes: superior people, commoners, and slaves. In other words, this social order outlines that some people deserve better treatment than others.
The contradiction is clear between the two: humans are either equal or unequal. Harari argues though that both are actually wrong — neither have any objective, biological validity. Moreover, both are rooted in “universal principles” which exist only in our imaginations. From a purely biological standpoint, there’s certainly nothing about our genetics which dictates that some people deserve to be masters or slaves — but more importantly, there’s also nothing that asserts that everyone is equal.
“There are no such things as rights in biology”, Harari writes. It’s quite a controversial argument from the author (even I’m cringing as I write the following statement): the concept of “equality” is merely a figment of our imagination. Prescribing a social hierarchy goes against the rules of evolution, which is fundamentally based on randomness, not principles.
Despite these arguments, the key point is that if it weren’t for these imagined social orders, many of the greatest civilizations in our history wouldn’t have thrived, let alone existed. These “universal” orders enabled millions to cooperate in ways that wouldn’t have been possible without a shared imagination. While we could argue endlessly about the ethics and morality of these principles, they nevertheless existed because they proved to be useful.
#3: The world is converging into one mega-culture.
As our ability to cooperate improved over time, one of Harari’s most interesting discussions centers around the unification of humankind.
For most of history, the world was essentially a galaxy of isolated human worlds, with tribes or villages unaware of the existence of neighboring tribes in other regions, let alone other continents (consider that the Americas were once called “The New World”).
The last three millennia, however, saw the very gradual movement of small cultures merging into larger, more complex civilizations. Harari argues that this unification was driven primarily by three “imagined” universal orders: money, empires, and religions (which by the way is not limited to religions such as Christianity and Hinduism, but also ideologies like capitalism or liberal humanism). Each of these three is covered within their own chapters in greater detail, but essentially our collective imagination in these orders has allowed us to transcend our tribal “us vs. them” mentality, enabling us to cooperate and act in ways that are in the interest of our entire species (e.g. climate change, human rights, neoliberalism). No snail would ever lift a tentacle for equal rights of the global snail community, but humans do because we have the capability to unite as one.
To be fair, we can’t have this discussion without addressing today’s divided environment, which seems to suggest otherwise. For example, when we consider the relatively recent rise of populism and nationalistic movements (e.g. Make America Great Again, Brexit, Occupy Wall Street, Duterte, Bolsonaro), we can see that these movements tend to be rooted in a backlash against globalization and the downstream effects of unifying the world. We could argue that these movements suggest that we’re trending back towards an “us vs. them” mentality. Even within a religion like Christianity we can see this trend of “2 steps forward, 1 step backward” in the way that it has united hundreds of millions around the world, while at the same time splintering into various sects such as Catholicism, Protestantism, or Orthodoxy.
Despite these reversals though, Harari argues that these “break-ups” are only “temporary reversals in an inexorable trend towards unity”. Looking at history in the span of decades or even centuries doesn’t provide much insight, but looking at it in the span of millennia when isolated human worlds gradually converged into a global economy makes the vision much clearer.
For now though — short of an alien invasion — only time will tell if we do indeed continue towards the path of unity.
2 Quotes
#1:
“You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.”
#2:
“Money is more open-minded than language, state laws, cultural codes, religious beliefs, and social habits. Money is the only trust system created by humans that can bridge almost any culture gap, and that does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age, or sexual orientation. Thanks to money, even people who don’t know each other can nevertheless cooperate effectively”
1 Question
If everyone believes it, is it still considered a lie?
Thanks for reading!
P.S. The link above that drives you to the book’s Amazon page is an affiliate link — meaning that, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and decide to purchase.
