Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari 10 out of 10

 Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

10 out of 10

 

 

Sapiens is a mesmerizing, inspirational, potentially life changing, magnificent magnum opus, that has sold more than 10 million copies by 2018, inspired and comprehensive to the point where there are chapters that would need pausing and thinking about, it is also challenging in that predictions are made about the future – so there is not only History of Humankind, but also a Brief Prophecy – which might have us replaced by another species, seeing as cyborgs, ‘people’ that have strong arms and supplementing power that ‘would make heavy boxers seem as children’, with minds that can connect to ‘interbrains’ – or what was the term used by the author – a singularity wherein they can have access to whole volumes of information as if they will have read them, they would be attached to or become part of their memory…

 

There are quite a few examples from a present where humans have had limbs attached to them and their brains can send the signals and arms or legs move, there is the case of the monkeys that can move much heavier arms and steal bananas, and not just having them attached to their bodies, but moving them from America, while the attachments are in Japan, the world miracle is appropriate and such massive improvements would continue, to the point where cures would be discovered for Alzheimer and the benefits of having a memory that is multiple times better would be enjoyed by multitudes – for how can one prevent that, though the question of ethical and more issue would be raised, as in the case of the animals massacred in their billions…’ the treatment of animals in modern agriculture is probably the worst crime in history…’

Yuval Hariri considers the horror that mankind inflicts on animals in quite a few places, exemplifying with the mutilations that animals suffer – pigs in parts of the world have their noses cut, or their eyes pulled out and they are the most intelligent animals after the primates, cows are used as milking and meat machines, just as chickens are made to stay in cages that are too small for them to even raise their heads and they have to share them with three other birds or more, cattle eat, stay, sleep in their own urine and feces and probably one hope would be for their meat to be replaced by artificially created replacement.

 

The question of happiness is raised, the problem of being satisfied when all that animal genocide is taking place – can humankind be happy, when such horrid, gruesome genocide is taking place – and there is the question of whether ‘even though we are far more powerful than our ancient ancestors, we aren’t much happier…’ and the brilliant thinker is looking at the past, the fact that if one wants a cart, the he is happy to get one, while if the goal is to acquire a Ferrari, then getting a second hand Fiat is not exactly satisfying – there is also the issue of satisfizer versus maximizer – and he refers to the myth that is analyzed perfectly in Stumbling Upon Happiness by Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert, which explains how we think we will be happy if, when we will have moved to California or a Caribbean, Pacific Island – and there are other scenarios connected with major wins of favorite teams, political candidate, getting the latest model car and so on – and once we will have moved there, we are upset by the effects of draught or hurricanes, exorbitant energy prices and power failures and get used to the advantages, the palm trees, the beautiful ocean…a phenomenon called Hedonic Adaptation

 

Yuval Hariri states that there are histories of clothes, food and almost anything, but historians have not looked at the history of happiness, he refers to serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin as the key elements of the pleasure which is maybe the definition of happiness – we are happy not because we have won a trophy, we do not have the virus, but because of the biochemistry in our brain associated with those chemicals – and the classic Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which portrays a future where humans use soma, a chemical that would keep them happy and the discoveries of the present and future might get us closer to that…indeed, humans might be bioengineered into becoming something else entirely, the end of Sapiens, which ironically means wise – though they are thinking of bringing past species back, including the Neanderthal man, for experiments, study that could throw light on evolution.

This being a phenomenal History, we have chapters that deal with episodes from the past of mankind, from the notion that the discovery of fire might have shortened the intestines of Sapiens – which are so much shorter than in chimpanzees – and then the size of the brain has benefited, the idea that the leaders get their positions with social and other skills, having to cooperate with others and not mainly because of their sheer physical strength – after all, godfathers and other men in control are older and have younger people do the work for them, this is used in the meditation on why women have been placed in inferior positions for so long, it was not just strength and seems to make no sense, beyond being so terrible…

 

A brilliant author would offer new perspectives and Hariri has a complex view of empires, who have done so much in the territories they have occupied that we can find a multitude of horrors, coupled with many elements of progress they have introduced – take the example of India, where the British have laid tens of thousands of miles of railroad tracks, brought administrative, democratic and other institutions and they have been crucial, along with Gandhi, in having a peaceful transition, more or less and with the exception of the India Pakistan war that killed so many – and the names of Mozart and Haydn are given, as outstanding musicians who got their dividends and paychecks from empires…

On happiness, there is a good sized passage dedicated to Buddhism, which gets more attention from sciences and psychology – which is also a science so we have a redundancy here, but let us put it at repetition as means to highlight its importance – as it has given so many centuries in studying what makes people happy or unhappy, with the result that they see cravings as the motive for our misery and the solution is to meditate and let it pass, avoid the position where we act as if we were at the edge of the ocean, trying to get in the good waves and pushing away the bad waves, with the result that all the effort is vain…

We need to just let thoughts as they are and avoid the usual desire for more pleasure, if we are in a good mood, we still add anxiety to it because we want more, or are worried that this might not last and when there is pain or negative feelings appear to dominate, we crave for a change and that is not the answer…for Nirvana, we need to be happy with what we have and desire for nothing else, eliminate cravings…

 

‘Homo sapiens rules the world because it is the only animal that can believe in things that exist purely in its own imagination, such as gods, states, money and human rights…’