Books: “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari

Riding down the cobbled path to the cafe that faces the quay, where the baristas know to save me the last chocolate croissant, I notice the regulars are already there. The cyclists in spandex with boisterous laughs and clickity-clack shoes. The group of modern day Amazons, post work-out. A semi-retired business man who takes his zoom meetings in the corner, and my fellow reader whom I often share the long table with. My preferred seat looks out onto the boats. Having yet to switch to kindle, my book cover is exposed to passerbys. 

Never has a book inspired so many people to stop for conversation as Sapiens. 

After hearing people opine on the book, I found they loved the first part which explains behaviours of our (primitive) ancestors, but thought the latter half to be less scientifically rigorous and more subjective. I believe that they are missing Harari’s point – that our modern world is rampant with, and runs on man-made ideas.

Our sapient ancestors banded in groups to survive natural phenomena (like droughts and predatory attacks) or to settle territorial disputes. As tribes got larger, sapiens incorporated storytelling to pass on values, such that order was maintained. Stories were what united them, and it is this unique ability to create fiction and believe in something, such as ‘the common good,’ that led to their survival. It follows, that as time went on, less and less of our history is explained as a reaction to natural circumstance; our modern history is explained by our reaction to an imagined reality.  

That is the underlying difference between the first half, and the second half of the book. Our ancestors used to create stories to explain nature. But as humans started catching up to science, our stories shifted to spinning a narrative around an imagined reality.   

Take agriculture. This practice developed across many sapient tribes because it provided relief during winter when food sources were scarce. Stories were built around harvest cycles with many prescribing sacrifices for rain. Mysticism surrounding agriculture became the basis for culture, social structure, and commerce. Now in the 21st century, instead of human sacrifices, commercials prescribe us to eat processed cereals. But as we learn more about wheat products, we are able to re-examine the outdated story of what consists of a healthy diet.  

Harari argues it is our imagination, this make-belief, that allows for human cooperation on a large scale. Countries, ownership, fiat currency, civil rights, intellectual property, incorporation, marriage,religions; these are all man-made ideas bound by our laws, believed and embraced globally. Fiction is the technology that built these concepts.  

Yet we look down on the idea of ‘fiction’ as if it were something we grow out of. ‘Belief’, ‘stories’; these are words that conjure up pumpkin carriages and glass slippers. We reject the idea that we modern-day rational humans are living in a largely imagined, made-up world. 

Out of all the stories we have of our collective time on earth, nothing is more omnipresent than stories of fear and hope. Stories of suppressing a race, a gender, a religion, or a sexual orientation. Stories of change, reacting to injustices to push forward new laws and systems.

Stories are meant to be edited, hopefully in the direction of progress. But stories rooted in falsehood lead to mistrust, which erodes the power of institutions. Jonathan Haidt writes that the systems we put in place to uphold our democratic values (stories) are failing due to disinformation. Conspiracy theories are amplified and sowing doubt, resulting in a breakdown of stories that unite us in our humanity. It is my imagined reality, that our responsibility and reason for being is to spread hope, not fear. Is that based on science? For me, that doesn’t matter.

I brought the book out again to my regular seat at the cafe to look over the quotes I had marked for this entry, when a stranger stopped to talk to me. 

“I haven’t read that book yet. Is it good?”

I told him the whole book is phenomenal. 

People easily understand that ‘primitive’ cement their social order by believing in ghosts and spirits, and gathering each full moon to dance together around the campfire. What we fail to appreciate is that our modern institutions function on exactly the same basis.

Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised. 

We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we imagine.