In Sapiens Harari explores humanity from the Neanderthals to modernity; breaking down evolution into stages essentially. The book is broken up by stages: Cognitive Revolution, Agricultural Revolution, Unification of Humankind, and Scientific Revolution. Integrating hypothesis with theories on evolutional biology Harari has produced a philosophical textbook.
This book is not in my normal lineup, if you’ve been following me you’ll notice how it doesn’t quite line up with “The Selection” or “To All The Boys…” I honestly read it because Chris Evans said it was a good book. I was hesitant to read a suggestion from a celebrity after I read another book suggested by a different celebrity that I didn’t like at all (I’m so sorry). But I picked it up with faith and read. It was interesting. It was written in a very compelling way; and I liked the concepts in it. It was written in language that could be absorbed by someone who is in fact not an evolutionary biologist but it wasn’t put into such layman terms that it was dull.
One of my favorite takeaways from the novel (is actually the quote on Harari’s website) “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.” This stuck with me, more than anything else in the book. Humans are amazing and complex creatures, we can create and imagine and all because our brain says it’s so. We look at the sky and see a blinking light and we say “hey what if that’s a UFO” or we say to each other “this dollar bill means something because I said so”. Honestly the entire section explain how money evolved was one of the best sections. I’ve always been so frustrated by currency (why does a tiny sliver of cotton and linen with a dead president on it mean so much to people?!) and the way Harari broke it down (still makes little sense to me) but it helped so much! Of course a farmer would say “here take these shells instead because you can’t possibly carry 80,000 pounds of rice with you when you leave here but I want this land and that’s what these shells are worth. Promise.” It makes sense that we wouldn’t be able to barter forever (here’s a chicken/thanks here’s those new shoes you needed). We have gotten too big for that at this point. We can express so much love just because we think we should (and conversely of course that can be so much hate because we think we should). It goes back to one of the things I love most about humanity: Free Will. I am a big, big advocate for Free Will (I have a hard time painting Lucifer as a bad guy for example) and I love that sapiens can do that. I love that you can decide to do whatever you want; even if that means that sometimes people chose the negative paths, because you get to choose. That’s the beauty of all of this, on a universal scale yes, but within yourself too. You can make so many choices every day and it’s a miracle to me, Free Will.
As much fact as this book had (and I did literally zero research so maybe it’s all malarky) it also was riddled with philosophy and that’s what stuck with me. I love philosophy. I love humankind and exploring why we do the things we do, who we are, where we came from, what’s going to become of us. I want to be immortal so that I can see our future (and because dying is scary). We have such a capacity for good or evil and there’s no limits to us. It’s empowering and terrifying.
I didn’t realize how much I liked this book honestly until I started writing about it. I kept talking about it to people while I was reading it, mentioning things (like this one breed of monkey who has developed lying. They’ll give off a certain call for if there is a land predator and another one if there is a sky predator, and this one breed has developed the ability to give the wrong call so that they can scare off others and steal their food. It’s amazing, and also tragic), and going on about things I was learning; but writing it all down is making me realize how much I enjoyed it.
Read it and let me know what you think! Let’s chat!
Jah Will Provide 