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Sapiens.
A Brief History Of Mankind by Yuval Noah Harari.
Prof. Yuval Noah Harari has a PhD in History
from the University of Oxford and lectures
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing
in world history.
His books have been translated into 50+ languages,
with 12+ million copies sold worldwide.
'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind' (2014)
looked deep into our past, 'Homo Deus: A Brief
History of Tomorrow' (2016)
considered far-future scenarios, and '21 Lessons
for the 21st Century' (2018) zoomed in on
the biggest questions of the present moment.
An Animal of No Significance.
Three important revolutions shaped the course
of history: the Cognitive Revolution kick-started
history about 70,000 years ago.
The Agricultural Revolution sped it up about
12,000 years ago.
The Scientific Revolution, which got under
way only 500 years ago, may well end history
and start something completely different.
This book tells the story of how these three
revolutions have affected humans and their
fellow organisms.
The most important thing to know about prehistoric
humans is that they were insignificant animals
with no more impact on their environment than
gorillas, fireflies or jellyfish.
Just 6 million years ago, a single female
ape had two daughters.
One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees,
the other is our own grandmother.
Over the generations, the people of Flores
became dwarves.
This unique species, known by scientists as
Homo floresiensis, reached a maximum height
of only 3.5 feet and weighed no more than
fifty-five pounds.
They were nevertheless able to produce stone
tools, and even managed occasionally to hunt
down some of the island’s elephants – though,
to be fair, the elephants were a dwarf species
as well.
Today there are many species of foxes, bears
and pigs.
The earth of a hundred millennia ago was walked
by at least six different species of man.
It’s our current exclusivity, not that multi-species
past, that is peculiar – and perhaps incriminating.
Mammals weighing 130 pounds have an average
brain size of 12 cubic inches.
The earliest men and women, 2.5 million years
ago, had brains of about 36 cubic inches.
Modern Sapiens sport a brain averaging 73–85
cubic inches.
Neanderthal brains were even bigger.
In Homo sapiens, the brain accounts for about
2–3 per cent of total body weight, but it
consumes 25 per cent of the body’s energy
when the body is at rest.
Archaic humans paid for their large brains
in two ways.
Firstly, they spent more time in search of
food.
Secondly, their muscles atrophied.
An upright gait required narrower hips, constricting
the birth canal – and this just when babies’
heads were getting bigger and bigger.
Death in childbirth became a major hazard
for human females.
Women who gave birth earlier, when the infant’s
brain and head were still relatively small
and supple, fared better and lived to have
more children.
Natural selection consequently favoured earlier
births.
And, indeed, compared to other animals, humans
are born prematurely, when many of their vital
systems are still under-developed.
A colt can trot shortly after birth; a kitten
leaves its mother to forage on its own when
it is just a few weeks old.
Human babies are helpless, dependent for many
years on their elders for sustenance, protection
and education.
One of the most common uses of early stone
tools was to crack open bones in order to
get to the marrow.
Some researchers believe this was our original
niche.
...humankind ascended to the top so quickly
that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust.
Since long intestines and large brains are
both massive energy consumers, it’s hard
to have both.
By shortening the intestines and decreasing
their energy consumption, cooking inadvertently
opened the way to the jumbo brains of Neanderthals
and Sapiens.
When Homo sapiens landed in Arabia, most of
Eurasia was already settled by other humans.
What happened to them?
There are two conflicting theories.
The ‘Interbreeding Theory’ tells a story
of attraction, sex and mingling.
As the African immigrants spread around the
world, they bred with other human populations,
and people today are the outcome of this interbreeding.
The opposing view, called the ‘Replacement
Theory’ tells a very different story – one
of incompatibility, revulsion, and perhaps
even genocide.
Tolerance is not a Sapiens trademark.
In modern times, a small difference in skin
colour, dialect or religion has been enough
to prompt one group of Sapiens to set about
exterminating another group.
Would ancient Sapiens have been more tolerant
towards an entirely different human species?
It may well be that when Sapiens encountered
Neanderthals, the result was the first and
most significant ethnic-cleansing campaign
in history.
The Tree of Knowledge.
The appearance of new ways of thinking and
communicating, between 70,000 and 30,000 years
ago, constitutes the Cognitive Revolution.
But the most important information that needed
to be conveyed was about humans, not about
lions and bison.
Our language evolved as a way of gossiping.
According to this theory Homo sapiens is primarily
a social animal.
Social cooperation is our key for survival
and reproduction.
As far as we know, only Sapiens can talk about
entire kinds of entities that they have never
seen, touched or smelled.
But fiction has enabled us not merely to imagine
things, but to do so collectively.
Such myths give Sapiens the unprecedented
ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers.
Sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible
ways with countless numbers of strangers.
That’s why Sapiens rule the world, whereas
ants eat our leftovers and chimps are locked
up in zoos and research laboratories.
Sociological research has shown that the maximum
‘natural’ size of a group bonded by gossip
is about 150 individuals.
Most people can neither intimately know, nor
gossip effectively about, more than 150 human
beings.
Any large-scale human cooperation – whether
a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient
city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in
common myths that exist only in people’s
collective imagination.
Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless
go together on crusade or pool funds to build
a hospital because
they both believe that God was incarnated
in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified
to redeem our sins.
States are rooted in common national myths.
Two Serbs who have never met might risk their
lives to save one another because both believe
in the existence of the Serbian nation, the
Serbian homeland and the Serbian flag.
Judicial systems are rooted in common legal
myths.
Two lawyers who have never met can nevertheless
combine efforts to defend a complete stranger
because they both believe in the existence
of laws, justice, human rights – and the
money paid out in fees.
There are no gods in the universe, no nations,
no money, no human rights, no laws, and no
justice outside the common imagination of
human beings.
Unlike lying, an imagined reality is something
that everyone believes in, and as long as
this communal belief persists, the imagined
reality exerts force in the world.
No one was lying when, in 2011, the UN demanded
that the Libyan government respect the human
rights of its citizens, even though the UN,
Libya and human rights are all figments of
our fertile imaginations
The real difference between us and chimpanzees
is the mythical glue that binds together large
numbers of individuals, families and groups.
This glue has made us the masters of creation.
A Day in the Life of Adam and Eve.
Our eating habits, our conflicts and our sexuality
are all the result of the way our hunter-gatherer
minds interact with our current post-industrial
environment, with its mega-cities, aeroplanes,
telephones and computers.
T
his environment gives us more material resources
and longer lives than those enjoyed by any
previous generation, but it often makes us
feel alienated, depressed and pressured.
To understand why, evolutionary psychologists
argue, we need to delve into the hunter-gatherer
world that shaped us, the world that we subconsciously
still inhabit.
There are even a number of present-day human
cultures in which collective fatherhood is
practised, as for example among the Barí
Indians.
According to the beliefs of such societies,
a child is not born from the sperm of a single
man, but from the accumulation of sperm in
a woman’s womb.
A good mother will make a point of having
sex with several different men, especially
when she is pregnant, so that her child will
enjoy the qualities (and paternal care) not
merely of the best hunter,
but also of the best storyteller, the strongest
warrior and the most considerate lover.
If this sounds silly, bear in mind that before
the development of modern embryological studies,
people had no solid evidence that babies are
always sired by a single father rather than
by many.
Many scholars vehemently reject this theory,
insisting that both monogamy and the forming
of nuclear families are core human behaviours.
Though ancient hunter-gatherer societies tended
to be more communal and egalitarian than modern
societies, these researchers argue,
they were nevertheless comprised of separate
cells, each containing a jealous couple and
the children they held in common.
The Stone Age should more accurately be called
the Wood Age, because most of the tools used
by ancient hunter-gatherers were made of wood.
The heated debates about Homo sapiens’ ‘natural
way of life’ miss the main point.
Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, there
hasn’t been a single natural way of life
for Sapiens.
There are only cultural choices, from among
a bewildering palette of possibilities.
There is some evidence that the size of the
average Sapiens brain has actually decreased
since the age of foraging.
Survival in that era required superb mental
abilities from everyone.
When agriculture and industry came along people
could increasingly rely on the skills of others
for survival, and new ‘niches for imbeciles’
were opened up.
You could survive and pass your unremarkable
genes to the next generation by working as
a water carrier or an assembly-line worker.
Average life expectancy was apparently just
thirty to forty years, but this was due largely
to the high incidence of child mortality.
Children who made it through the perilous
first years had a good chance of reaching
the age of sixty, and some even made it to
their eighties.
Among modern foragers, forty-five-year-old
women can expect to live another twenty years,
and about 5–8 per cent of the population
is over sixty.
Ancient foragers also suffered less from infectious
diseases.
Most of the infectious diseases that have
plagued agricultural and industrial societies
(such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis)
originated in domesticated animals and were
transferred to humans only after the Agricultural
Revolution.
The Flood.
As they pushed on, they encountered a strange
universe of unknown creatures that included
a 450-pound, six-foot kangaroo, and a marsupial
lion, as massive as a modern tiger, that was
the continent’s largest predator.
Koalas far too big to be cuddly and cute rustled
in the trees and flightless birds twice the
size of ostriches sprinted on the plains.
Dragon-like lizards and snakes seven feet
long slithered through the undergrowth.
The giant diprotodon, a two-and-a-half-ton
wombat, roamed the forests.
Of the twenty-four Australian animal species
weighing 100 pounds or more, twenty-three
became extinct.
Around 14,000 BC, the chase took some of them
from north-eastern Siberia to Alaska.
Of course, they didn’t know they were discovering
a new world.
For mammoth and man alike, Alaska was a mere
extension of Siberia.
However, around 12,000 BC global warming melted
the ice and opened an easier passage.
Making use of the new corridor, people moved
south en masse, spreading over the entire
continent.
By 10,000 BC, humans already inhabited the
most southern point in America, the island
of Tierra del Fuego at the continent’s southern
tip.
But no longer.
Within 2,000 years of the Sapiens arrival,
most of these unique species were gone.
According to current estimates, within that
short interval, North America lost thirty-four
out of its forty-seven genera of large mammals.
South America lost fifty out of sixty.
Perhaps if more people were aware of the First
Wave and Second Wave extinctions, they’d
be less nonchalant about the Third Wave they
are part of.
If we knew how many species we’ve already
eradicated, we might be more motivated to
protect those that still survive.
History’s Greatest Fraud.
The transition to agriculture began around
9500–8500 BC in the hill country of south-eastern
Turkey, western Iran, and the Levant.
Wheat and goats were domesticated by approximately
9000 BC; peas and lentils around 8000 BC;
olive trees by 5000 BC; horses by 4000 BC;
and grapevines in 3500 BC.
No noteworthy plant or animal has been domesticated
in the last 2,000 years.
If our minds are those of hunter-gatherers,
our cuisine is that of ancient farmers.
Sapiens could dig up delicious truffles and
hunt down woolly mammoths, but domesticating
either species was out of the question.
Rather than heralding a new era of easy living,
the Agricultural Revolution left farmers with
lives generally more difficult and less satisfying
than those of foragers.
Hunter-gatherers spent their time in more
stimulating and varied ways, and were less
in danger of starvation and disease.
The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged
the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind,
but the extra food did not translate into
a better diet or more leisure.
Rather, it translated into population explosions
and pampered elites.
The average farmer worked harder than the
average forager, and got a worse diet in return.
The Agricultural Revolution was history’s
biggest fraud.
The culprits were a handful of plant species,
including wheat, rice and potatoes.
These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather
than vice versa.
According to the basic evolutionary criteria
of survival and reproduction, wheat has become
one of the most successful plants in the history
of the earth.
the new agricultural tasks demanded so much
time that people were forced to settle permanently
next to their wheat fields.
This completely changed their way of life.
We did not domesticate wheat.
It domesticated us.
The life of a peasant is less secure than
that of a hunter-gatherer.
Cultivating wheat provided much more food
per unit of territory, and thereby enabled
Homo sapiens to multiply exponentially.
This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution:
the ability to keep more people alive under
worse conditions.
Humans, like many mammals, have hormonal and
genetic mechanisms that help control procreation.
In good times females reach puberty earlier,
and their chances of getting pregnant are
a bit higher.
In bad times puberty is late and fertility
decreases.
People tried to space their children three
to four years apart.
Women did so by nursing their children around
the clock and until a late age (around-the-clock
suckling significantly decreases the chances
of getting pregnant).
But by the time they reach that age, they
have large mortgages, children to school,
houses in the suburbs that necessitate at
least two cars per family,
and a sense that life is not worth living
without really good wine and expensive holidays
abroad.
What are they supposed to do, go back to digging
up roots?
No, they double their efforts and keep slaving
away.
One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries
tend to become necessities and to spawn new
obligations.
Once people get used to a certain luxury,
they take it for granted.
Then they begin to count on it.
Finally they reach a point where they can’t
live without it.
This discrepancy between evolutionary success
and individual suffering is perhaps the most
important lesson we can draw from the Agricultural
Revolution.
Building Pyramids.
The Agricultural Revolution made the future
far more important than it had ever been before.
Farmers must always keep the future in mind
and must work in its service.
Until the late modern era, more than 90 percent
of humans were peasants who rose each morning
to till the land by the sweat of their brows.
The extra they produced fed the tiny minority
of elites – kings, government officials,
soldiers, priests, artists and thinkers – who
fill the history books.
History is something that very few people
have been doing while everyone else was ploughing
fields and carrying water buckets.
People today spend a great deal of money on
holidays abroad because they are true believers
in the myths of romantic consumerism.
Romanticism tells us that in order to make
the most of our human potential we must have
as many different experiences as we can.
We must open ourselves to a wide spectrum
of emotions; we must sample various kinds
of relationships; we must try different cuisines;
we must learn to appreciate different styles
of music.
Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes
perfectly with consumerism.
Their marriage has given birth to the infinite
‘market of experiences’, on which the
modern tourism industry is founded.
The tourism industry does not sell flight
tickets and hotel bedrooms.
It sells experiences.
Like the elite of ancient Egypt, 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 the other.
They may take the form, for example, of a
suburban cottage with a swimming pool and
an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse
with an enviable view.
Few question the myths that cause us to desire
the pyramid in the first place.
The inter-subjective is something that exists
within the communication network linking the
subjective consciousness of many individuals.
If a single individual changes his or her
beliefs, or even dies, it is of little importance.
However, if most individuals in the network
die or change their beliefs, the inter-subjective
phenomenon will mutate or disappear.
Memory Overload.
Between the years 3500 BC and 3000 BC, some
unknown Sumerian geniuses invented a system
for storing and processing information outside
their brains,
one that was custom-built to handle large
amounts of mathematical data.
The Sumerians thereby released their social
order from the limitations of the human brain,
opening the way for the appearance of cities,
kingdoms and empires.
The data-processing system invented by the
Sumerians is called ‘writing’.
(The Sumerians used a combination of base-6
and base-10 numeral systems.
Their base-6 system bestowed on us several
important legacies, such as the division of
the day into twenty-four hours and of the
circle into 360 degrees.)
the first texts of history contain no philosophical
insights, no poetry, legends, laws, or even
royal triumphs.
They are humdrum economic documents, recording
the payment of taxes, the accumulation of
debts and the ownership of property.
Writing was born as the maidservant of human
consciousness, but is increasingly becoming
its master.
Our computers have trouble understanding how
Homo sapiens talks, feels and dreams.
So we are teaching Homo sapiens to talk, feel
and dream in the language of numbers, which
can be understood by computers.
There is No Justice in History.
According to a famous Hindu creation myth,
the gods fashioned the world out of the body
of a primeval being, the Purusa.
The sun was created from the Purusa’s eye,
the moon from the Purusa’s brain, the Brahmins
(priests) from its mouth,
the Kshatriyas (warriors) from its arms, the
Vaishyas (peasants and merchants) from its
thighs, and the Shudras (servants) from its
legs.
‘Look,’ said the average white citizen,
‘blacks have been free for generations,
yet there are almost no black professors,
lawyers, doctors or even bank tellers.
Isn’t that proof that blacks are simply
less intelligent and hard-working?’
Trapped in this vicious circle, blacks were
not hired for white-collar jobs because they
were deemed unintelligent, and the proof of
their inferiority was the paucity of blacks
in white-collar jobs.
Such vicious circles can go on for centuries
and even millennia, perpetuating an imagined
hierarchy that sprang from a chance historical
occurrence.
Unjust discrimination often gets worse, not
better, with time.
Money comes to money, and poverty to poverty.
Education comes to education, and ignorance
to ignorance.
Those once victimised by history are likely
to be victimised yet again.
And those whom history has privileged are
more likely to be privileged again.
Culture tends to argue that it forbids only
that which is unnatural.
But from a biological perspective, nothing
is unnatural.
Whatever is possible is by definition also
natural.
A truly unnatural behaviour, one that goes
against the laws of nature, simply cannot
exist, so it would need no prohibition.
No culture has ever bothered to forbid men
to photosynthesise, women to run faster than
the speed of light, or negatively charged
electrons to be attracted to each other.
Since myths, rather than biology, define the
roles, rights and duties of men and women,
the meaning of ‘manhood’ and ‘womanhood’
have varied immensely from one society to
another.
The most common theory points to the fact
that men are stronger than women, and that
they have used their greater physical power
to force women into submission
First, the statement that ‘men are stronger
than women’ is true only on average, and
only with regard to certain types of strength.
Women are generally more resistant to hunger,
disease and fatigue than men.
There are also many women who can run faster
and lift heavier weights than many men.
women have, throughout history, been excluded
mainly from jobs that require little physical
effort (such as the priesthood, law and politics),
while engaging in hard manual labour in the
fields, in crafts and in the household.
If social power were divided in direct relation
to physical strength or stamina, women should
have got far more of it.
there simply is no direct relation between
physical strength and social power among humans.
People in their sixties usually exercise power
over people in their twenties, even though
twentysomethings are much stronger than their
elders.
Another theory explains that masculine dominance
results not from strength but from aggression.
Millions of years of evolution have made men
far more violent than women.
Women can match men as far as hatred, greed
and abuse are concerned, but when push comes
to shove, the theory goes, men are more willing
to engage in raw physical violence.
This is why throughout history warfare has
been a masculine prerogative.
As men competed against each other for the
opportunity to impregnate fertile women, an
individual’s chances of reproduction depended
above all on his ability to outperform and
defeat other men.
As time went by, the masculine genes that
made it to the next generation were those
belonging to the most ambitious, aggressive
and competitive men.
In order to ensure her own survival and the
survival of her children, the woman had little
choice but to agree to whatever conditions
the man stipulated so that he would stick
around and share some of the burden.
As time went by, the feminine genes that made
it to the next generation belonged to women
who were submissive caretakers.
Particularly problematic is the assumption
that women’s dependence on external help
made them dependent on men, rather than on
other women, and that male competitiveness
made men socially dominant.
Bonobo and elephant societies are controlled
by strong networks of cooperative females,
while the self-centred and uncooperative males
are pushed to the sidelines.
The Arrow of History.
Democrats want a more equitable society, even
if it means raising taxes to fund programmes
to help the poor, elderly and infirm.
But that infringes on the freedom of individuals
to spend their money as they wish.
Why should the government force me to buy
health insurance if I prefer using the money
to put my kids through college?
Republicans, on the other hand, want to maximise
individual freedom, even if it means that
the income gap between rich and poor will
grow wider and that many Americans will not
be able to afford health care.
If tensions, conflicts and irresolvable dilemmas
are the spice of every culture, a human being
who belongs to any particular culture must
hold contradictory beliefs and be riven by
incompatible values.
It’s such an essential feature of any culture
that it even has a name: cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance is often considered a
failure of the human psyche.
In fact, it is a vital asset.
Had people been unable to hold contradictory
beliefs and values, it would probably have
been impossible to establish and maintain
any human culture.
Today, we are used to thinking about the whole
planet as a single unit, but for most of history,
earth was in fact an entire galaxy of isolated
human worlds.
One of the most interesting examples of this
globalisation is ‘ethnic’ cuisine.
In an Italian restaurant we expect to find
spaghetti in tomato sauce; in Polish and Irish
restaurants lots of potatoes; in an Argentinian
restaurant we can choose between dozens of
kinds of beefsteaks;
in an Indian restaurant hot chillies are incorporated
into just about everything; and the highlight
at any Swiss café is thick hot chocolate
under an alp of whipped cream.
But none of these foods is native to those
nations.
Tomatoes, chilli peppers and cocoa are all
Mexican in origin; they reached Europe and
Asia only after the Spaniards conquered Mexico.
Julius Caesar and Dante Alighieri never twirled
tomato-drenched spaghetti on their forks (even
forks hadn’t been invented yet), William
Tell never tasted chocolate, and Buddha never
spiced up his food with chilli.
Potatoes reached Poland and Ireland no more
than 400 years ago.
The only steak you could obtain in Argentina
in 1492 was from a llama.
Merchants, conquerors and prophets were the
first people who managed to transcend the
binary evolutionary division, ‘us vs them’,
and to foresee the potential unity of humankind.
For the merchants, the entire world was a
single market and all humans were potential
customers.
They tried to establish an economic order
that would apply to all, everywhere.
For the conquerors, the entire world was a
single empire and all humans were potential
subjects, and for the prophets, the entire
world held a single truth and all humans were
potential believers.
They too tried to establish an order that
would be applicable for everyone everywhere.
The Scent of Money.
In a barter economy, every day the shoemaker
and the apple grower will have to learn anew
the relative prices of dozens of commodities.
If one hundred different commodities are traded
in the market, then buyers and sellers will
have to know 4,950 different exchange rates.
And if 1,000 different commodities are traded,
buyers and sellers must juggle 499,500 different
exchange rates!
How do you figure it out?
(Current problem in the crypto space.)
Some societies tried to solve the problem
by establishing a central barter system that
collected products from specialist growers
and manufacturers and distributed them to
those who needed them.
The largest and most famous such experiment
was conducted in the Soviet Union, and it
failed miserably.
‘Everyone would work according to their
abilities, and receive according to their
needs’ turned out in practice into ‘everyone
would work as little as they can get away
with, and receive as much as they could grab’.
More moderate and more successful experiments
were made on other occasions, for example
in the Inca Empire.
Yet most societies found a more easy way to
connect large numbers of experts – they
developed money.
Money is not coins and banknotes.
Money is anything that people are willing
to use in order to represent systematically
the value of other things for the purpose
of exchanging goods and services.
The sum total of money in the world is about
$60 trillion, yet the sum total of coins and
banknotes is less than $6 trillion.
More than 90 percent of all money – more
than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts
– exists only on computer servers.
When a wealthy farmer sold his possessions
for a sack of cowry shells and travelled with
them to another province,
he trusted that upon reaching his destination
other people would be willing to sell him
rice, houses and fields in exchange for the
shells.
Money is accordingly a system of mutual trust,
and not just any system of mutual trust: money
is the most universal and most efficient system
of mutual trust ever devised.
The silver shekel was not a coin, but rather
0.3 ounces of silver.
When Hammurabi’s Code declared that a superior
man who killed a slave woman must pay her
owner twenty silver shekels, it meant that
he had to pay 6 ounces of silver, not twenty
coins.
Counterfeiting is not just cheating – it’s
a breach of sovereignty, an act of subversion
against the power, privileges and person of
the king.
The legal term is lese-majesty (violating
majesty), and was typically punished by torture
and death.
The Indians had such a strong confidence in
the denarius and the image of the emperor
that when local rulers struck coins of their
own they closely imitated the denarius, down
to the portrait of the Roman emperor!
The name ‘denarius’ became a generic name
for coins.
Muslim caliphs Arabicised this name and issued
‘dinars’.
The dinar is still the official name of the
currency in Jordan, Iraq, Serbia, Macedonia,
Tunisia and several other countries.
Imperial Visions.
First, to qualify for that designation you
have to rule over a significant number of
distinct peoples, each possessing a different
cultural identity and a separate territory.
Second, empires are characterised by flexible
borders and a potentially unlimited appetite.
They can swallow and digest more and more
nations and territories without altering their
basic structure or identity.
The British state of today has fairly clear
borders that cannot be exceeded without altering
the fundamental structure and identity of
the state.
A century ago almost any place on earth could
have become part of the British Empire.
Evolution has made Homo sapiens, like other
social mammals, a xenophobic creature.
Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into
two parts, ‘we’ and ‘they’.
In the language of the Dinka people of the
Sudan, ‘Dinka’ simply means ‘people’.
People who are not Dinka are not people.
The Dinka’s bitter enemies are the Nuer.
What does the word Nuer mean in Nuer language?
It means ‘original people’.
The sun never set on the British mission to
spread the twin gospels of liberalism and
free trade.
The Soviets felt duty-bound to facilitate
the inexorable historical march from capitalism
towards the utopian dictatorship of the proletariat.
Many Americans nowadays maintain that their
government has a moral imperative to bring
Third World countries the benefits of democracy
and human rights, even if these goods are
delivered by cruise missiles and F-16s.
Commercial tea farming did not exist in India
until the mid-nineteenth century, when it
was introduced by the British East India Company.
It was the snobbish British sahibs who spread
the custom of tea drinking throughout the
subcontinent.
The Law of Religion.
Religion can thus be defined as a system of
human norms and values that is founded on
a belief in a superhuman order.
This involves two distinct criteria:
Animists thought that humans were just one
of many creatures inhabiting the world.
Polytheists, on the other hand, increasingly
saw the world as a reflection of the relationship
between gods and humans.
In fact, most polytheist and even animist
religions recognised such a supreme power
that stands behind all the different gods,
demons and holy rocks.
In classical Greek polytheism, Zeus, Hera,
Apollo and their colleagues were subject to
an omnipotent and all-encompassing power – Fate
(Moira, Ananke).
The fundamental insight of polytheism, which
distinguishes it from monotheism, is that
the supreme power governing the world is devoid
of interests and biases,
and therefore it is unconcerned with the mundane
desires, cares and worries of humans.
The Greeks did not waste any sacrifices on
Fate, and Hindus built no temples to Atman.
There are necessarily many of these smaller
powers, since once you start dividing up the
all-encompassing power of a supreme principle,
you’ll inevitably end up with more than
one deity.
Hence the plurality of gods.
The insight of polytheism is conducive to
far-reaching religious tolerance.
Since polytheists believe, on the one hand,
in one supreme and completely disinterested
power, and on the other hand in many partial
and biased powers,
there is no difficulty for the devotees of
one god to accept the existence and efficacy
of other gods.
Polytheism is inherently open-minded, and
rarely persecutes ‘heretics’ and ‘infidels’.
In many cases the imperial elite itself adopted
the gods and rituals of subject people.
The Romans happily added the Asian goddess
Cybele and the Egyptian goddess Isis to their
pantheon.
The only god that the Romans long refused
to tolerate was the monotheistic and evangelising
god of the Christians.
The Roman Empire did not require the Christians
to give up their beliefs and rituals, but
it did expect them to pay respect to the empire’s
protector gods and to the divinity of the
emperor.
This was seen as a declaration of political
loyalty.
When the Christians vehemently refused to
do so, and went on to reject all attempts
at compromise, the Romans reacted by persecuting
what they understood to be a politically subversive
faction.
And even this was done half-heartedly.
Still, if we combine all the victims of all
these persecutions, it turns out that in these
three centuries, the polytheistic Romans killed
no more than a few thousand Christians.
In contrast, over the course of the next 1,500
years, Christians slaughtered Christians by
the millions to defend slightly different
interpretations of the religion of love and
compassion.
The Christian saints did not merely resemble
the old polytheistic gods.
Often they were these very same gods in disguise.
For example, the chief goddess of Celtic Ireland
prior to the coming of Christianity was Brigid.
When Ireland was Christianised, Brigid too
was baptised.
She became St Brigit, who to this day is the
most revered saint in Catholic Ireland.
Zoroastrians saw the world as a cosmic battle
between the good god Ahura Mazda and the evil
god Angra Mainyu.
Gautama found that there was a way to exit
this vicious circle.
If, when the mind experiences something pleasant
or unpleasant, it simply understands things
as they are, then there is no suffering.
If you experience sadness without craving
that the sadness go away, you continue to
feel sadness but you do not suffer from it.
There can actually be richness in the sadness.
If you experience joy without craving that
the joy linger and intensify, you continue
to feel joy without losing your peace of mind.
He encapsulated his teachings in a single
law: suffering arises from craving; the only
way to be fully liberated from suffering is
to be fully liberated from craving;
and the only way to be liberated from craving
is to train the mind to experience reality
as it is.
The modern age has witnessed the rise of a
number of new natural-law religions, such
as liberalism, Communism, capitalism, nationalism
and Nazism.
If a religion is a system of human norms and
values that is founded on belief in a superhuman
order, then Soviet Communism was no less a
religion than Islam.
Scientists studying the inner workings of
the human organism have found no soul there.
They increasingly argue that human behaviour
is determined by hormones, genes and synapses,
rather than by free will – the same forces
that determine the behaviour of chimpanzees,
wolves, and ants.
Our judicial and political systems largely
try to sweep such inconvenient discoveries
under the carpet.
But in all frankness, how long can we maintain
the wall separating the department of biology
from the departments of law and political
science?
The Secret of Success.
This is one of the distinguishing marks of
history as an academic discipline – the
better you know a particular historical period,
the harder it becomes to explain why things
happened one way and not another.
Level two chaos is chaos that reacts to predictions
about it, and therefore can never be predicted
accurately.
Markets, for example, are a level two chaotic
system.
Most scholars in the humanities disdain memetics,
seeing it as an amateurish attempt to explain
cultural processes with crude biological analogies.
But many of these same scholars adhere to
memetics’ twin sister – postmodernism.
Postmodernist thinkers speak about discourses
rather than memes as the building blocks of
culture.
Yet they too see cultures as propagating themselves
with little regard for the benefit of humankind.
The Discovery of Ignorance.
But the single most remarkable and defining
moment of the past 500 years came at 05:29:45
on 16 July 1945.
At that precise second, American scientists
detonated the first atomic bomb at Alamogordo,
New Mexico.
From that point onward, humankind had the
capability not only to change the course of
history, but to end it.
Throughout history, societies have suffered
from two kinds of poverty: social poverty,
which withholds from some people the opportunities
available to others; and biological poverty,
which puts the very lives of individuals at
risk due to lack of food and shelter.
Perhaps social poverty can never be eradicated,
but in many countries around the world biological
poverty is a thing of the past.
The Marriage of Science and Empire.
Astronomers predicted that the next Venus
transits would occur in 1761 and 1769.
So expeditions were sent from Europe to the
four corners of the world in order to observe
the transits from as many distant points as
possible.
In 1761 scientists observed the transit from
Siberia, North America, Madagascar and South
Africa.
Many cultures drew world maps long before
the modern age.
Obviously, none of them really knew the whole
of the world.
No Afro-Asian culture knew about America,
and no American culture knew about Afro-Asia.
But unfamiliar areas were simply left out,
or filled with imaginary monsters and wonders.
These maps had no empty spaces.
They gave the impression of a familiarity
with the entire world.
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
Europeans began to draw world maps with lots
of empty spaces – one indication of the
development of the scientific mindset, as
well as of the European imperial drive.
The empty maps were a psychological and ideological
breakthrough, a clear admission that Europeans
were ignorant of large parts of the world.
The discovery of America was the foundational
event of the Scientific Revolution.
It not only taught Europeans to favour present
observations over past traditions, but the
desire to conquer America also obliged Europeans
to search for new knowledge at breakneck speed.
The Aztec Empire was an extremely centralised
polity, and this unprecedented situation paralysed
it.
Montezuma continued to behave as if he ruled
the empire, and the Aztec elite continued
to obey him, which meant they obeyed Cortés.
This situation lasted for several months,
during which time Cortés interrogated Montezuma
and his attendants, trained translators in
a variety of local languages,
and sent small Spanish expeditions in all
directions to become familiar with the Aztec
Empire and the various tribes, peoples and
cities that it ruled.
The Capitalist Creed.
Banks are allowed to loan $10 for every dollar
they actually possess, which means that 90
percent of all the money in our bank accounts
is not covered by actual coins and notes.
Because credit was limited, people had trouble
financing new businesses.
Because there were few new businesses, the
economy did not grow.
Because it did not grow, people assumed it
never would, and those who had capital were
wary of extending credit.
The expectation of stagnation fulfilled itself.
Today, there is so much credit in the world
that governments, business corporations and
private individuals easily obtain large, long-term
and low-interest loans that far exceed current
income.
Smith made the following novel argument: when
a landlord, a weaver, or a shoemaker has greater
profits than he needs to maintain his own
family,
he uses the surplus to employ more assistants,
in order to further increase his profits.
The more profits he has, the more assistants
he can employ.
It follows that an increase in the profits
of private entrepreneurs is the basis for
the increase in collective wealth and prosperity.
All this depends, however, on the rich using
their profits to open new factories and hire
new employees, rather than wasting them on
non-productive activities.
Smith therefore repeated like a mantra the
maxim that ‘When profits increase, the landlord
or weaver will employ more assistants’ and
not ‘When profits increase,
Scrooge will hoard his money in a chest and
take it out only to count his coins.’
In order to control trade on the important
Hudson River, WIC built a settlement called
New Amsterdam on an island at the river’s
mouth.
The colony was threatened by Indians and repeatedly
attacked by the British, who eventually captured
it in 1664.
The British changed its name to New York.
The remains of the wall built by WIC to defend
its colony against Indians and British are
today paved over by the world’s most famous
street – Wall Street.
In the late 1830s the Chinese government issued
a ban on drug trafficking, but British drug
merchants simply ignored the law.
Chinese authorities began to confiscate and
destroy drug cargos.
The drug cartels had close connections in
Westminster and Downing Street – many MPs
and Cabinet ministers in fact held stock in
the drug companies – so they pressured the
government to take action.
In 1840 Britain duly declared war on China
in the name of ‘free trade’.
It was a walkover.
The overconfident Chinese were no match for
Britain’s new wonder weapons – steamboats,
heavy artillery, rockets and rapid-fire rifles.
Under the subsequent peace treaty, China agreed
not to constrain the activities of British
drug merchants and to compensate them for
damages inflicted by the Chinese police.
Furthermore, the British demanded and received
control of Hong Kong, which they proceeded
to use as a secure base for drug trafficking
(Hong Kong remained in British hands until
1997).
In the late nineteenth century, about 40 million
Chinese, a tenth of the country’s population,
were opium addicts.
This is the fly in the ointment of free-market
capitalism.
It cannot ensure that profits are gained in
a fair way, or distributed in a fair manner.
On the contrary, the craving to increase profits
and production blinds people to anything that
might stand in the way.
When growth becomes a supreme good, unrestricted
by any other ethical considerations, it can
easily lead to catastrophe.
Some religions, such as Christianity and Nazism,
have killed millions out of burning hatred.
Capitalism has killed millions out of cold
indifference coupled with greed.
The Atlantic slave trade did not stem from
racist hatred towards Africans.
The individuals who bought the shares, the
brokers who sold them, and the managers of
the slave-trade companies rarely thought about
the Africans.
Nor did the owners of the sugar plantations.
Many owners lived far from their plantations,
and the only information they demanded were
neat ledgers of profits and losses.
The Wheels of Industry.
At first, the idea of using gunpowder to propel
projectiles was so counter-intuitive that
for centuries gunpowder was used primarily
to produce fire bombs.
But eventually – perhaps after some bomb
expert ground gunpowder in a mortar only to
have the pestle shoot out with force – guns
made their appearance.
About 600 years passed between the invention
of gunpowder and the development of effective
artillery.
separating the metal from its ore was extremely
difficult and costly.
For decades, aluminium was much more expensive
than gold.
In the 1860s, Emperor Napoleon III of France
commissioned aluminium cutlery to be laid
out for his most distinguished guests.
Less important visitors had to make do with
the gold knives and forks.
Two thousand years ago, when people in the
Mediterranean basin suffered from dry skin
they smeared olive oil on their hands.
To Harlow’s surprise, the infant monkeys
showed a marked preference for the cloth mother,
spending most of their time with her.
When the two mothers were placed in close
proximity, the infants held on to the cloth
mother even while they reached over to suck
milk from the metal mother.
carelessly on extravagant luxuries, whereas
peasants lived frugally, minding every penny.
Today, the tables have turned.
The rich take great care managing their assets
and investments, while the less well heeled
go into debt buying cars and televisions they
don’t really need.
A Permanent Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution turned the timetable
and the assembly line into a template for
almost all human activities.
Shortly after factories imposed their time
frames on human behaviour, schools too adopted
precise timetables, followed by hospitals,
government offices and grocery stores.
Even in places devoid of assembly lines and
machines, the timetable became king.
If the shift at the factory ends at 5 P.M.,
the local pub had better be open for business
by 5:02.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the daily
life of most humans ran its course within
three ancient frames: the nuclear family,
the extended family and the local intimate
community.
Most people worked in the family business
– the family farm or the family workshop,
for example – or they worked in their neighbours’
family businesses.
The family was also the welfare system, the
health system, the education system, the construction
industry, the trade union, the pension fund,
the insurance company, the radio,
the television, the newspapers, the bank and
even the police.
Yet throughout history, such imagined communities
played second fiddle to intimate communities
of several dozen people who knew each other
well.
The intimate communities fulfilled the emotional
needs of their members and were essential
for everyone’s survival and welfare.
In the last two centuries, the intimate communities
have withered, leaving imagined communities
to fill in the emotional vacuum.
The two most important examples for the rise
of such imagined communities are the nation
and the consumer tribe.
In recent decades, national communities have
been increasingly eclipsed by tribes of customers
who do not know one another intimately but
share the same consumption habits and interests,
and therefore feel part of the same consumer
tribe – and define themselves as such.
This sounds very strange, but we are surrounded
by examples.
Madonna fans, for example, constitute a consumer
tribe.
They define themselves largely by shopping.
They buy Madonna concert tickets, CDs, posters,
shirts and ring tones, and thereby define
who they are.
In the year 2000, wars caused the deaths of
310,000 individuals, and violent crime killed
another 520,000.
Each and every victim is a world destroyed,
a family ruined, friends and relatives scarred
for life.
Yet from a macro perspective these 830,000
victims comprised only 1.5 per cent of the
56 million people who died in 2000.
That year 1.26 million people died in car
accidents (2.25 per cent of total mortality)
and 815,000 people committed suicide (1.45
per cent).
In 1964 a military dictatorship was established
in Brazil.
It ruled the country until 1985.
During these twenty years, several thousand
Brazilians were murdered by the regime.
Thousands more were imprisoned and tortured.
Yet even in the worst years, the average Brazilian
in Rio de Janeiro was far less likely to die
at human hands than the average Waorani,
Arawete or Yanomamo are, indigenous people
who live in the depths of the Amazon forest,
without army, police or prisons.
Anthropological studies have indicated that
between a quarter and a half of their menfolk
die sooner or later in violent conflicts over
property, women or prestige.8
Yet the Soviet elite, and the Communist regimes
through most of eastern Europe (Romania and
Serbia were the exceptions), chose not to
use even a tiny fraction of this military
power.
When its members realised that Communism was
bankrupt, they renounced force, admitted their
failure, packed their suitcases and went home.
Gorbachev and his colleagues gave up without
a struggle not only the Soviet conquests of
World War Two, but also the much older tsarist
conquests in the Baltic, the Ukraine, the
Caucasus and Central Asia.
It is chilling to contemplate what might have
happened if Gorbachev had behaved like the
Serbian leadership – or like the French
in Algeria.
For real peace is not the mere absence of
war.
Real peace is the implausibility of war.
There has never been real peace in the world.
Between 1871 and 1914, a European war remained
a plausible eventuality, and the expectation
of war dominated the thinking of armies, politicians
and ordinary citizens alike.
Today humankind has broken the law of the
jungle.
There is at last real peace, and not just
absence of war.
For most polities, there is no plausible scenario
leading to full-scale conflict within one
year.
What could lead to war between Germany and
France next year?
The Nobel Peace Prize to end all peace prizes
should have been given to Robert Oppenheimer
and his fellow architects of the atomic bomb.
Nuclear weapons have turned war between superpowers
into collective suicide, and made it impossible
to seek world domination by force of arms.
For most of history, polities could enrich
themselves by looting or annexing enemy territories.
Most wealth consisted of material things like
fields, cattle, slaves and gold, so it was
easy to loot it or occupy it.
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.
What would happen if the Chinese were to mount
an armed invasion of California, land a million
soldiers on the beaches of San Francisco and
storm inland?
They would gain little.
There are no silicon mines in Silicon Valley.
The wealth resides in the minds of Google
engineers and Hollywood script doctors, directors
and special-effects wizards,
who would be on the first plane to Bangalore
or Mumbai long before the Chinese tanks rolled
into Sunset Boulevard.
It is not coincidental that the few full-scale
international wars that still take place in
the world, such as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait,
occur in places where wealth is old-fashioned
material wealth.
The Kuwaiti sheikhs could flee abroad, but
the oil fields stayed put and were occupied.
And They Lived Happily Ever After.
though the last few decades have been an unprecedented
golden age for humanity, it is too early to
know whether this represents a fundamental
shift in the currents of history or an ephemeral
eddy of good fortune.
But the most important finding of all is that
happiness does not really depend on objective
conditions of either wealth, health or even
community.
Rather, it depends on the correlation between
objective conditions and subjective expectations.
If you want a bullock-cart and get a bullock-cart,
you are content.
If you want a brand-new Ferrari and get only
a second-hand Fiat you feel deprived.
This is why winning the lottery has, over
time, the same impact on people’s happiness
as a debilitating car accident.
When things improve, expectations balloon,
and consequently even dramatic improvements
in objective conditions can leave us dissatisfied.
After all, our chimpanzee cousins seldom wash
and never change their clothes.
Nor are we disgusted by the fact that our
pet dogs and cats don’t shower or change
their coats daily.
We pat, hug and kiss them all the same.
If happiness is determined by expectations,
then two pillars of our society – mass media
and the advertising industry – may unwittingly
be depleting the globe’s reservoirs of contentment.
Suppose science comes up with cures for all
diseases, effective anti-ageing therapies
and regenerative treatments that keep people
indefinitely young.
In all likelihood, the immediate result will
be an unprecedented epidemic of anger and
anxiety.
Some scholars compare human biochemistry to
an air-conditioning system that keeps the
temperature constant, come heatwave or snowstorm.
Events might momentarily change the temperature,
but the air-conditioning system always returns
the temperature to the same set point.
Take the work involved in raising a child.
Kahneman found that when counting moments
of joy and moments of drudgery, bringing up
a child turns out to be a rather unpleasant
affair.
It consists largely of changing nappies, washing
dishes and dealing with temper tantrums, which
nobody likes to do.
Yet most parents declare that their children
are their chief source of happiness.
Does it mean that people don’t really know
what’s good for them?
That’s one option.
Another is that the findings demonstrate that
happiness is not the surplus of pleasant over
unpleasant moments.
Rather, happiness consists in seeing one’s
life in its entirety as meaningful and worthwhile.
The scientist who says her life is meaningful
because she increases the store of human knowledge,
the soldier who declares that his life is
meaningful because he fights to defend his
homeland,
and the entrepreneur who finds meaning in
building a new company are no less delusional
than their medieval counterparts who found
meaning in reading scriptures, going on a
crusade or building a new cathedral.
As long as my personal narrative is in line
with the narratives of the people around me,
I can convince myself that my life is meaningful,
and find happiness in that conviction.
What is so important about obtaining such
ephemeral prizes?
Why struggle so hard to achieve something
that disappears almost as soon as it arises?
According to Buddhism, the root of suffering
is neither the feeling of pain nor of sadness
nor even of meaninglessness.
Rather, the real root of suffering is this
never-ending and pointless pursuit of ephemeral
feelings, which causes us to be in a constant
state of tension, restlessness and dissatisfaction.
The End of Homo Sapiens.
What would happen, for example, if we developed
a cure for Alzheimer’s disease that, as
a side benefit, could dramatically improve
the memories of healthy people?
Would anyone be able to halt the relevant
research?
And when the cure is developed, could any
law enforcement agency limit it to Alzheimer’s
patients and prevent healthy people from using
it to acquire super-memories?
Imagine another possibility – suppose you
could back up your brain to a portable hard
drive and then run it on your laptop.
Would your laptop be able to think and feel
just like a Sapiens?
If so, would it be you or someone else?
What if computer programmers could create
an entirely new but digital mind, composed
of computer code, complete with a sense of
self, consciousness and memory?
If you ran the program on your computer, would
it be a person?
If you deleted it could you be charged with
murder?
When the nuclear age erupted in the 1940s,
many forecasts were made about the future
nuclear world of the year 2000.
When sputnik and Apollo II fired the imagination
of the world, everyone began predicting that
by the end of the century, people would be
living in space colonies on Mars and Pluto.
Few of these forecasts came true.
On the other hand, nobody foresaw the Internet.
The only thing we can try to do is to influence
the direction scientists are taking.
But since we might soon be able to engineer
our desires too, the real question facing
us is not ‘What do we want to become?’,
but ‘What do we want to want?’
Those who are not spooked by this question
probably haven’t given it enough thought.
Summary.
Human cultures began to take shape about 70,000
years ago.
There have been three major revolutions in
human history: the cognitive revolution, the
agricultural revolution, and the scientific
revolution.
Prehistoric humans (2 million years old or
so) were no more important and impressive
than other mammals.
Homo Sapiens means “wise man.”
Humans first evolved in Africa about 2.5 million
years ago.
The author believes it is unlikely Homo sapiens
will survive for another 1,000 years.
From about 2 million years ago until 10,000
years ago, multiple human species roamed the
earth together.
The depiction of man evolving from hunched
over to upright incorrectly displays human
evolution as a linear trajectory.
In fact, the species lived simultaneously.
Humans have huge brains for their body size.
Human brains account for 2-3 percent of body
size, but use 25 percent of energy.
Human kind was very much in the middle of
the food chain until 400,000 years ago and
didn't leap to the top of the food chain until
100,000 years ago.
Most animals at the top of the food chain
made it there gradually over millions of years.
Humans, however, jumped to the top relatively
rapidly.
This means that the rest of the food chain
wasn't ready and neither were we.
Hence we feel anxious and stressed because
we aren't used to being at the top.
The advent of fire and cooking food may have
opened the way for the evolution of a smaller
intestinal track and a larger brain.
There are two theories of how Homo sapiens
evolved: Interbreeding theory and Replacement
theory.
The reality is probably a combination of both
theories.
Perhaps this is why Homo sapiens wiped out
the Neanderthals: “They were too familiar
to ignore, but too different to tolerate.”
The last dwarf species of humans died out
12,000 years ago.
Homo sapiens conquered the world because of
its unique language.
The Cognitive Revolution occurred between
70,000 to 30,000 years ago.
It allowed Homo sapiens to communicate at
a level never seen before in language.
As far as we know, only Homo sapiens can talk
about things we have never seen, touched,
or smelled.
Think religions, myths, legends, and fantasies.
The telling of myths and stories allow Homo
sapiens to collaborate in large numbers in
extremely flexible ways.
This separates us from all other animals.
Chimps can't form groups of more than 50 or
so.
For humans, the group size is usually 150
or so.
Beyond that, you can't rely on gossip and
personal communication.
You need something more to get large numbers
of people working together.
Large numbers of people can collaborate by
sharing common myths and beliefs.
In academic circles, stories are known as
fictions, social constructs, or imagined realities.
An imagined reality is not a lie because the
entire group believes it.
Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, humans
have been living in a dual reality: the physical
reality and the imagined reality.
The way people cooperate can be changed by
changing the stories as myths we tell.
Because Homo sapiens shared myths were not
genetically based, they could adapt and change
their behavior as soon as they adapted their
new belief.
They didn't have to wait millions of years
for a genetic change.
Homo sapiens are the only animals that conduct
trade.
As far as we know, the humans of 30,000 years
ago had the same physical, emotional, and
intellectual capabilities that we have today.
Evolutionary psychology claims that most of
our psychology was developed during the period
before the Agricultural Revolution about 10,000
years ago.
The instinct to gorge on high calorie food
is wired into our DNA.
Ever since the Agricultural Revolution, there
hasn't been one predominant way of life for
all humans.
There have only been options from a variety
of cultures.
The dog was the first animal domesticated
by humans around 15,000 years ago.
In ancient human groups (over 10,000 years
ago) there was very little privacy, but also
very little loneliness.
Most of our ancient ancestors had much wider
and deeper knowledge of their physical surroundings
than we do.
They were not unintelligent at all.
The human collective today knows far more
overall than the whole population of 15,000
years ago.
However, at the individual level we are much
more specialized today.
Ancient foragers were the most knowledgable
and skillful people in history.
It is far easier to pass “unremarkable”
genes along today than it was 10,000 years
ago.
Our lack of knowledge about prehistoric religions
and beliefs is one of the biggest holes in
our understanding of human history.
Humans traveling across the sea and landing
in Australia was one of the most important
expeditions in history.
It marked the moment humans cemented themselves
at the top of the food chain.
Homo sapiens first made it to America about
16,000 years ago.
The settling of America – across the Siberian
peninsula through Alaska into Canada and
the United States down through Mexico and
Central America into the Andes and
the Amazon and all the way to the tip of South
America – was one of the most rapid and
incredible invasions by a single species the
world had ever seen.
Incredibly, the Agricultural Revolution sprang
up independently in many different parts of
the world.
There is no evidence modern humans have become
more intelligent with time.
The Agricultural Revolution actually didn't
make the life of the average human better
at first.
It did, however, allow humans to collect more
food per unit area and thus the overall population
multiplied exponentially.
Fascinatingly, the first few thousand years
of the Agricultural Revolution actually made
life harder for humans by creating more work,
less leisure, and a ballooning population
that created more mouths to feed.
Each individual generation didn't see how
their life was becoming worse because the
small changes were so tiny.
One of history's few iron laws is that luxuries
tend to become necessities and to spawn new
obligations.
Once people begin to enjoy new luxuries they
tend to become expected and then count on
them.
The evolutionary success of the Agricultural
Revolution (greater population) was actually
cause for much suffering on the individual
level.
Not just for humans, but for domesticated
animals like cows, sheep, and chickens as
well.
The advent of the Agricultural Revolution
marked the time when worries of the future
became prevalent: the weather, the crop yield
this year, etc.
The myths that surround us and make up our
lives dictate so much of what we believe and
what we do.
Like the ancient Egyptians, most people dedicate
their lives to building pyramids.
It's just that the names, shapes, and sizes
of the pyramids change from one culture to
another.
In order to change the imagined order, you
must first find a group that believes in a
current imagined order.
New myths must build upon or evolve from previous
myths.
The main purpose of writing is to record numbers,
which our brains did not evolve to manage
well.
Our brains are much better at remembering
biological, zoological, and social information.
There is an ancient writing system used by
the Incas known as a quipu.
They are not written words at all, but a series
of knots of different colors and strings that
represent words and numbers.
Writing has actually changed the way humans
think.
We can use writing and record keeping to think
far more categorically than ever before.
Numbers are the world's most prevalent language.
Social hierarchies, inequality, and so on
are human inventions.
Most rich people are rich because they were
born into rich families.
Most poor people are poor because they were
born into poor families.
Unjust discrimination often gets worse, not
better, with time.
As of 2006, there were still 53 countries
where a husband could not be legally prosecuted
for raping his wife.
When it comes to gender inequality: biology
enables, culture forbids.
The idea of “unnatural” behaviors is actually
a result of Christian theology, not biology.
If it is possible biologically, then it is
natural.
From a scientific perspective, two men having
sex is natural.
Traveling at the speed of light is not natural.
Why are men valued in many cultures more than
women?
All human cultures are filled with inconsistencies.
For example, America currently values individual
freedom and equality.
But these two ideals don't always play nicely.
It is part of the human experience to reconcile
them.
These inconsistencies aren't necessarily bad.
They force us to think critically.
Consistency is the playground of dull minds.
History is moving relentlessly toward unity.
The whole planet is moving toward one world
culture.
The creation of money was purely an intellectual
revolution.
It doesn't exist except in our minds.
More than 90 percent of all money is just
electronic data, not physical money.
Everyone always wants money precisely because
everyone else always wants money.
Empires have been the world's most common
form of political organization for the last
2,500 years.
In general, empires do not fall because of
uprisings.
They almost always succumb to outside invasion
or splits from within the empower class.
Most of what we firmly believe is part of
“our culture” was actually forced upon
us by other empires who conquered our ancestors.
Despite the obvious negatives of empires taking
over a culture, there are many benefits too.
Art, music, governance, and more are the result
of empires forming.
Often, they blended new together with the
conquered people to create a new culture.
It seems obvious that we are moving fast toward
a singe global empire.
Global markets, global warming, and commonly
accepted concepts like human rights make it
clear we all need one collective entity, not
man states and countries.
Religion is the third great unifier of humankind,
alongside money and empires.
The Agricultural Revolution was accompanied
by a Religious Revolution.
Interestingly, polytheism is more open and
accepting of multiple beliefs even though
we often look at it as more barbarian and
uneducated than our current beliefs.
Monotheism seems to push away polytheism,
but actually is very similar to polytheistic
gods with the use of patron saints.
P
raying to the patron saints of farmers isn't
much different than praying to the god of
rain.
The central tension with monotheism is how
to deal with the fact that there is evil in
the world while the omnipoten God is believed
to be good and caring.
If God is good why would he allow evil things
to happen?
Even the rich and famous are rarely satisfied.
According to Buddhist tradition: the mind
naturally craves more in all situations.
And all suffering arrives from craving.
There are a variety of “natural law religions”
that are popular today like communism, capitalism,
and liberalism.
Over the last 200 years, science has increasingly
revealed that human behavior is determined
by hormones, genes, and neurological synapses.
If this is true, then for how much longer
will we ignore that biology does not agree
with the concept of free will?
To describe how something happened means to
reconstruct the series of specific events
that led from one point to another.
To describe why something happened means to
find causal connections that led to this particular
series of events to the exclusion of all others.
The deeper your knowledge of a particular
area of history, the harder it becomes to
explain why one particular outcome occurred
and not another.
It is an inevitable rule of history that what
seems obvious in hindsight is impossible to
predict beforehand.
The are level one and level two Chaotic Systems.
Level one does not respond to predictions
about it, like the weather and weather forecasts.
Level two does respond to predictions about
it, like the stock market and analyst reports
about rising oil prices.
There is no proof that history is working
for the benefit of humans or that human well
being increases overtime.
It's good for the victors, but is it good
for us all?
The Scientific Revolution started in Europe
around 500 years ago.
The last 500 years have witnessed an unprecedented
growth of human impact.
One difference between religion and science
is that science assumes humankind does not
know the answers to many of life's biggest
questions.
Religion, however, assumes that the important
stuff is already known.
Science assumes human ignorance.
Modern culture has been able to admit ignorance
more than any previous culture.
Previous cultures and belief systems compiled
their theories using stories.
Science compiles its theories using mathematics.
The story of how Scottish Widows was founded
is an awesome example of the power of probability.
Scientists generally agree that no theory
is 100 percent correct.
Thus, the real test of knowledge is not truth,
but utility.
Science gives us power.
The more useful that power, the better the
science.
The military arms race drives science forward
in rapid fashion.
The truth is war prompts many scientific discoveries.
In the past, the best minds of the day worked
on finding ways to give meaning to death.
Today, our best minds work on preventing death
through biological, hormonal, and genetic
means.
Science does not take death as an inevitability.
The economic, religious, and political interests
that impact the flow of money into scientific
and technological research have a huge impact
on the output of science.
It is not enough to consider science in a
vacuum.
Economic and capitalistic interests, for example,
determine what we research and what to do
with the research findings.
Why did Europeans discover and conquer the
Americas?
Why not the Chinese or those from India or
the Middle East who possessed just as much
knowledge and technology as the Europeans?
The European ideology to explore the world
was the primary difference.
For most of human history, per capita production
remained the same.
Since the launch of capitalism, however, per
capita production has skyrocketed.
Modern capitalism has exploded the growth
of humankind thanks to the creation of credit,
which allows you to borrow money now because
we collectively trust that the future will
be better than the present.
Adam Smith's brilliant insight about capitalism
in The Wealth of Nations was that increasing
private profits is the basis for increasing
collective wealth and prosperity.
In other words, by becoming richer you benefit
everyone, not just yourself.
Both parties get a bigger slice of pie.
For capitalism to work, profits must be reinvested
in new production.
The “religion” of capitalism says economic
growth is the supreme because justice, freedom,
and happiness requires economic growth.
All credit is based on the idea that science
and technology will advance.
Scientists ultimately foot the bill of capitalism.
The annual sugar intake of the average Englishman
rose from nearly zero in the early 17th century
to 18 pounds in the early 19th century.
The life expectancy, child mortality, and
calorie intake are significantly improved
for the average person in 2014 compared to
1914, despite exponential population growth.
Until the industrial revolution, human behavior
was largely dictated by solar energy and plant
growth.
Day and night.
Summer and winter.
Everything was determined by man power and
animal power, which were determined by food,
which is determined by photosynthesis.
“This is the basic lesson of evolutionary
psychology: a need shaped in the wild continues
to be felt subjectively even if it is no longer
really necessary for survival and reproduction.”
Harlow's infant monkey studies from the 1950s
(and a variety of followup studies) have shown
that animals have strong psychological needs
as well as purgative physical needs.
Note to self: never disregard your psychological
needs.
Each year the United States population spends
more money on diets than the amount needed
to feed all the hungry in the rest of the
world.
Most people don't realize just how peaceful
of the times are we live in.
In recent years, more people die from suicide
each year than from war and violent crime.
T
he same can said for car accidents.
Live a safe community, drive as little as
possible, and love yourself.
Violent local crime, car accidents, and suicide
are some of the biggest killers of humans.
War is at an all time low because the costs
of war have increased because of nuclear weapons,
the benefits of war have decreased because
physical resources drive less of the economy
and international trade is more lucrative
than conquest, and the tightening of international
connections because
a worldwide culture is less likely to battle
itself.
Our view of the past is heavily influenced
by recent events.
Researchers have investigated nearly all aspects
of history, but have rarely have asked whether
historical changes have made humans happier.
Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live can
bear almost any how.”
If happiness is based on pleasurable feelings,
then increasing our happiness is a matter
of increases biochemical release.
If happiness is based on meaning, then increasing
our happiness is a matter of deluding ourselves
about the meaning of our lives.
One uncommonly cited benefit of religion:
belief in the afterlife gives meaning to your
life in the present.
Buddhism has studied happiness for over 2,000
years.
Interestingly, Buddhism shares many viewpoints
on happiness with science.
Most notably, that happiness results from
processes within the body and not from the
outside world.
The Buddhist philosophy of happiness centers
around the idea that you are not the events
that happen to you, but you are also not the
feelings you have.
You are not your feelings.
They are just feelings.
Thus, if you understand this, you can release
the needs to keep chasing the need to feel
happy or to not feel angry or to not feel
sad.
In other words, you have to understand yourself.
For close to 4 billion years, every organism
developed according to evolution.
But in recent decades, humans have begun to
evolve according to intelligent design.
In other words, there are people who would
have been selected out of the gene pool millennia
ago, but not today.
Genetic engineering is allowing humans to
break the laws of natural selection.
The next stage of human history will not only
involve biological and technological changes,
but also changes in human consciousness and
identity.
Changes that are this fundamental will call
the very term “human” into question.
Many people think the question we should ask
to guide our scientific pursuits is, “What
do we want to become?”
However, because we seem to be on the path
to genetically engineering and programming
nearly every facets of our wants, desires,
and consciousness, the real question we should
ask is, “What do we want to want?”
In the past 1000 years, humans have evolved
to take over the world and are on the verge
of overcoming natural selection and becoming
gods.
Yet, we still seem unhappy in many ways and
we are unsure of what we want.
Is there anything more dangerous that dissatisfied
and irresponsible gods who don’t know what
they want?
Thank you for listening, Keep growing & keep
supporting.
we will meet you with an another book soon.
