Hey peeps! It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog and reviewed a book, been a busy with my college stuff and took a little break from everyday life but I’m back now. So let’s get started!
About the book: Sapiens: The brief history of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari originally published in 2011. A non-fictional comic account that begins with the origin of species and ends with post-humans. Humans since the beginning of time walked through the earth but through different species, including several which have become extinct. But can its full sweep be conveyed in one fell swoop- 350 pages? Not really. Harari talks about present, possible future and the factors which could have affected the past thus leading to certain characteristics and behavioural patterns.
Book Review:
For the first half of our existence we potter along unremarkably; then we undergo a series of revolutions. First, the "cognitive" revolution: about 70,000 years ago, we start to behave in far more ingenious ways than before, for reasons that are still obscure, and we spread rapidly across the planet. About 11,000 years ago we enter on the agricultural revolution, converting in increasing numbers from foraging (hunting and gathering) to farming. The "scientific revolution" begins about 500 years ago. It triggers the industrial revolution, about 250 years ago, which triggers in turn the information revolution, about 50 years ago, which triggers the biotechnological revolution, which is still wet behind the ears. Harari suspects that the biotechnological revolution signals the end of sapiens: we will be replaced by bioengineered post-humans, "amortal" cyborgs, capable of living forever.
Harari embeds many other momentous events, most notably the development of language: we become able to think sharply about abstract matters, cooperate in ever larger numbers, and, perhaps most crucially, gossip. There is the rise of religion and the slow overpowering of polytheisms by more or less toxic monotheisms. Then there is the evolution of money and, more importantly, credit. There is, connectedly, the spread of empires and trade as well as the rise of capitalism. One of the things which really outstands and attracts much attraction is his take on rise of religion. According to him, religion is the sole tactic to make groups of people more than 150, work under sheer concentration, honesty and co-operation. Wondering how the making up of myths and stories (Believable /Unbelievable) could hold such strong power over beings like us.
He accepts the common view that the fundamental structure of our emotions and desires hasn't been touched by any of these revolutions: "our eating habits, our conflicts and our sexuality are all a result of the way our hunter-gatherer minds interact with our current post-industrial environment, with its mega-cities, airplanes, telephones and computers … Today we may be living in high-rise apartments with over-stuffed refrigerators, but our DNA still thinks we are in the savannah." He gives a familiar illustration – our powerful desires for sugar and fat have led to the widespread availability of foods that are primary causes of bad lifestyle and ugliness. The consumption of pornography is another good example. It's just like overeating: if the minds of pornography addicts could be seen as bodies, they would look just like the grossly obese.
At some points, Harari sounds pessimist and sceptical.At one point Harari claims that "the leading project of the scientific revolution" is the Gilgamesh Project (named after the hero of the epic who set out to destroy death): "to give humankind eternal life" or "amortality". He is sanguine about its eventual success. But amortality isn't immortality, because it will always be possible for us to die by violence, and Harari is plausibly sceptical about how much good it will do us. The deaths of those we love may become far more terrible.
Even if we put all these points aside, there's no guarantee that amortality will bring greater happiness. But at other instances, he shows optimism as well. Harari draws on well-known research that shows that a person's happiness from day to day has remarkably little to do with their material circumstances. Certainly money can make a difference – but only when it lifts us out of poverty. After that, more money changes little or nothing. Certainly a lottery winner is lifted by her luck, but after about 18 months her average everyday happiness reverts to its old level. If we had an infallible "happy meter", and toured Orange County and the streets of Kolkata, it's not clear that we would get consistently higher readings in the first place than in the second.
Much of Sapiens is extremely interesting, and it is often well expressed. As one reads on, however, the attractive features of the book are overwhelmed by carelessness, exaggeration and sensationalism. Never mind his standard and repeated misuse of the saying "the exception proves the rule" (it means that exceptional or rare cases test and confirm the rule, because the rule turns out to apply even in those cases). There's a kind of vandalism in Harari's sweeping judgments, his recklessness about causal connections, his hyper-Procrustean stretching’s and lopping of the data.
Harari hates "modern liberal culture", but his attack is a caricature and it boomerangs back at him. Liberal humanism, he says, "is a religion". It "does not deny the existence of God"; "all humanists worship humanity"; "a huge gulf is opening between the tenets of liberal humanism and the latest findings of the life sciences". This is silly. It's also sad to see the great Adam Smith drafted in once again as the apostle of greed. Still, Harari is probably right that "only a criminal buys a house … by handing over a suitcase of banknotes" – a point that acquires piquancy when one considers that about 35% of all purchases at the high end of the London housing market are currently being paid in cash.
Regardless of the drawbacks, the human project will march on. Having remade the Earth, Mr. Harari says, we will remake ourselves. Within decades we will see a radical amplification of human abilities, whether by direct mental connection to the Internet, the adoption of cyborg technology, the manipulation of the human genome, or all three. Eventually we will change so much that Homo sapiens will effectively cease to exist. Our descendants may become incomprehensible to us. The only thing stopping this picture, in Mr. Harari’s view, is the possibility of environmental catastrophe, which also may wipe out our species.
This book is what these Reddit threads would be like if they were written not by adolescent autodidacts but by learned academics with impish senses of humour. If you’re one of those who randomly look for inapplicable fact book, then this book might just be perfect for you! But for others with time-bounded reading time, I’d rather recommend better ones.
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