It's not often that a book offers readers the possibility to reconsider, well, everything. But that's what Harari does in this sweeping look at the history of humans. Beginning before the beginning ...of Homo sapiens, the book introduces the other members of the genus Homo, who have lived on the planet for millions of years, and shows how sapiens endured while others died out.
In this well-written, fascinating study of the human saga-from the earliest members of the genus Homo until the present day-Harari (Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) discusses the major factors that ...influenced the course of human history. In particular, he considers the importance of the cognitive, agricultural, industrial, and scientific revolutions and ways these pivotal points in history shaped human culture, society, and humans' impact on the world around them.
Harari tells us that all the great achievements of humanity-trade, money, corporations, religion, government, science, philosophy, mathematics, literature, music and art, rights and laws, contracts, ...even relationships-rely on our faculty to create and trust abstractions, a talent that may have first been displayed in religious faith. ...one ought to be wary of a thinker whose theory encompasses everything, and Sapiens explores a vast temporal and geographical territory.
...Harari gives the most weight to language as the factor differentiating humans from other species, a sound if less-than-novel conclusion. The story of Peugeot -- an agreed-upon myth called a ...limited-liability company -- becomes an allegory for human development, all via agreed-upon fictions. Why are most people in the world farmers and herders rather than hunters and gatherers? Because farmers and herders make more babies.
There's a passage in your new book Homo Deus in which you remark that people may soon look back on 'democracy' and 'human rights' as quaint concepts. I wonder whether you really meant this-or was ...it a provocation of sorts?I don't mean to say that democracy or human rights is bad. I think they have done tremendous good to humankind, more than almost any other ideology in history, but what I meant is that they are not eternal. They have been adapted to particular technological and economic conditions. The conditions of the 19th and the 20th century, and it's naive to imagine that the kind of ideology that has been good for 20th century industrial societies will still be able to function and be rele-vant under very different technological and economic conditions. So I am certainly not advocating a return to dictatorships or feudal societies. I am just saying that we shouldn't be complacent and think that the systems we have constructed over the last few generations are now going to be the eternal ideological and political system of humankind.Yes, your book is plainly an expression of fears of a kind of nightmare future. It joins a venerable tradition, including much cautionary fiction: E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops, for example, or even H.G. Wells' The Time Machine or The Matrix. A counter-narrative to 'progress' that has been well expressed for some time now. I guess I want to ask you to be an optimist for a second?No problem. I think what should be very clear about this book is that it's not a book of prophecies; it's really a book that explores different possibilities. Some of them are contradictory-the book maps different possibilities and none of them is deterministic; if there is a possibility you don't like or most people don't like, we can still do something about it. If the book, for example, speaks about new technologies resulting in extreme inequality between classes, this is not a deterministic outcome of information technology and biotechnology. It's just a possibility that we should be aware of, and if we should not like this possibility, we can do something about it. It's like in the 19th and 20th century that the technologies of the industrial revolution could also be used to create very different kinds of societies; you could use electricity and radio and trains to create a Communist dictatorship or a fascist regime or a liberal democracy, and it's really to a large extent up to humans what they want to do with the technology. I think that in my book-and there is a tradition of other books like it before-the focus is usually more on the negative possibilities, because these are the possibilities we should be most aware of and most careful about. If you write a book which only explores the positive possibilities, as some people are doing in Silicon Valley, the danger is that people become complacent and then say, 'Oh wonderful! We will now have all this computer technology and biotechnology and will be healthier and more prosperous and the whole world will be equal and free'-this is very nave. I think it's the responsibility of historians, philosophers and thinkers, above all, to be aware of the more dangerous possibilities and warn us against them, because the dominant forces-at least in the economy, if you think of big corporations like Google and Facebook and so forth that are driving the technological revolution-are very hesitant about discussing the negative possibilities.Yes, it's important to be a canary, of course. But do you see any turn in our contemporary world, particularly in the realm of technology or in social movements, that you find heartening?I think there are many positive developments and I actually start the book on a very positive note by highlighting the immense achievements of humankind over the last few decades.
Yuval Noah Harari's "Sapiens," the most recent crack at what Mr. Christian calls Big History, has already been translated into more than 20 languages and been presented, via online courses, to ...thousands of mind-blown students. Mr. Harari suggests that a yet-undiscovered "Tree of Knowledge mutation" altered the "inner wiring" of our brains, allowing us "to communicate using an altogether new type of language," one that allowed humans to cooperate in groups.
