2. Introduction
• Human beings (members of the genus Homo) have existed for about 2.4m years. Homo sapiens, our own
wildly egregious species of great apes, has only existed for 6% of that time – about 150,000 years. So a book
whose main title is Sapiens shouldn’t be subtitled “A Brief History of Humankind”. It’s easy to see why
Yuval Noah Harari devotes 95% of his book to us as a species: self-ignorant as we are, we still know far
more about ourselves than about other species of human beings, including several that have become extinct
since we first walked the Earth. The fact remains that the history of sapiens – Harari’s name for us – is only
a very small part of the history of humanind.
• Can its full sweep be conveyed in one fell swoop – 400 pages? Not really; it’s easier to write a brief history
of time – all 14bn years – and Harari also spends many pages on our present and possible future rather than
our past. But the deep lines of the story of sapiens are fairly uncontentious, and he sets them out with verve.
3. Crux of the book
• For the firsthalf of our existence wepotter along
unremarkably; then we undergo a series of revolutions.
First, the "cognitive" revolution: about 70,000 years ago,
we startto behave in far moreingenious ways than before,
for reasons thatare still obscure, and wespread rapidly
across theplanet. About 11,000 yearsago weenter on the
agriculturalrevolution, converting in increasing numbers
fromforaging (hunting and gathering) to farming. The
"scientific revolution" begins about 500 years ago. It
triggers the industrialrevolution, 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. Hararisuspects thatthe
biotechnological revolution signals the end of sapiens: we
will be replaced by bioengineered post-humans, "amortal"
cyborgs, capableof living forever.
• This is one way to lay things out. 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.
4. Review
• 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-industrialenvironment,with its
mega-cities, airplanes,telephones and computers …
Todaywe may be living in high-rise apartments with
over-stuffed refrigerators, but our DNA still thinks we
are in the savannah." Hegives a familiarillustration –
our powerful desires for sugar and fat haveled to the
widespread availabilityof foods that are primary
causes of unhealthinessand ugliness. The
consumptionof pornographyis another good
example. It's just like overeating:if the minds of
pornographyaddictscould be seen as bodies, they
would look just like the grossly obese.
Harari swashbucklesthroughthesevastandintricate matters
ina waythat is – at itsbest– engagingandinformative.It'sa
neatthoughtthat"we didnot domesticate wheat.It
domesticatedus."There was,Harari says,"a Faustianbargain
betweenhumansandgrains"inwhichourspecies"castoff its
intimate symbiosiswithnature andsprintedtowardsgreed
and alienation".Itwasabad bargain:"the agricultural
revolutionwashistory'sbiggestfraud".More oftenthannotit
broughta worse diet, longerhoursof work, greaterriskof
starvation,crowdedlivingconditions,greatlyincreased
susceptibilitytodisease,newformsof insecurityanduglier
formsof hierarchy.Harari thinkswe mayhave beenbetteroff
inthe stone age,and he has powerful thingstosayaboutthe
wickednessof factory farming, concludingwithone of his
manysuperlatives:"modernindustrial agriculturemightwell
be the greatestcrime inhistory".
6. Amortality over immortality
Gilgamesh project
• 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. As amortals, we may become hysterically and
disablingly cautious (Larry Niven develops the point nicely in his
description of the "Puppeteers" in the Ringworld science fiction
novels). The deaths of those we love may become farmore terrible.
We may grow weary of all things under the sun – even in heaven
(see the last chapter of Julian Barnes's A History of the World in 10½
Chapters). We may come to agree with JRR Tolkien's elves, who saw
mortality as a gift to human beings that they themselves lacked. We
may come to feel what Philip Larkin felt: "Beneath it all, desire of
oblivion runs."
Happyometer
• Even if weput all these points aside, there's no guarantee
that amortality will bring greater happiness. Hararidraws
on well-known research thatshows thata person's
happiness fromday 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 averageeveryday happiness reverts to its old
level. If we had an infallible "happyometer", and toured
OrangeCounty and the streets of Kolkata, it's not clear
that we would get consistently higher readings in the first
place than in the second.
7. Happiness
• This point about happiness is a persistent theme in Sapiens. When Arthur
Brooks (head of the conservative American Enterprise Institute) made a
related point in the New York Times in July, he was criticised for trying to
favour the rich and justify income inequality. The criticism was confused,
for although current inequalities of income are repellent, and harmful to
all, the happiness research is well confirmed. This doesn't, however,
prevent Harari from suggesting that the lives lived by sapiens today may
be worse overall than the lives they lived 15,000 years ago.
8. Organization and language
• 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 rarecases test and confirmthe rule, because the
rule turns out to apply even in those cases). There's a kind of vandalismin Harari's sweeping judgments, his recklessness
about causalconnections, his hyper-Procrustean stretchings and loppings of the data. Take his accountof the battle of
Navarino. Starting fromthe fact that British investors stood to lose money if the Greeks losttheir war of independence, Harari
moves fast: "the bond holders'interest was the national interest, so the British organised an international fleet that, in 1827,
sank the main Ottoman flotilla in the battle of Navarino. After centuries of subjugation, Greecewas finally free." This is wildly
distorted – and Greece was notthen free. To see how bad it is, it's enough to look at the wikipedia entry on Navarino.
• Hararihates "modern liberal culture", but his attack is a caricatureand it boomerangs back athim. Liberal humanism, he says,
"is a religion". It"does not deny the existence of God"; "all humanists worship humanity"; "a hugegulf is opening between the
tenets of liberal humanismand 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, Harariis probably rightthat "only a criminal buys a house… by handing
over a suitcaseof banknotes" – a point that acquires piquancy when one considers that about 35% of all purchases atthe high
end of the London housing market arecurrently being paid in cash.
•
9. Created by
1. Sakshi Kothari (17bcl091)
2. Shalini (17bcl098)
3. Pinak Kubawat(17bcl039)
4. Rishabh Singhi (17bcl088)
