Part I – Cognitive Revolution

This first part shows how the Homo Sapiens went from an irrelevant primate to the top of the food chain in a matter of around 60 000 years. One factor was that we could use tools and fire giving us advantages over other animals but not in the ways we would initially think. Fire for example, gave us two great benefits besides scaring animals away: the first one is that we could now eat cooked food requiring less time to chew and digest, killing worms and bacteria, and eat food that was previously unavailable such as wheat and rice. Secondly, the fact that at the end of a day Homo sapiens could sit in a fire socializing and most likely gossiping about other members contributed to the strengthening of the group, through tighter relationships and social cooperation. Our ability to work in larger groups is what made us set apart from other Homo species and this was one of the foundations.

This leads to the second factor of the cognitive revolution – language. Language is a powerful tool that greatly contributes to social cooperation. For example, when compared to the Neanderthals (speculated to have a brain larger than ours and in many ways being more intelligent but that lacked our ability to speak), in a group fight of 10 vs 10, the Homo sapiens would probably lose due to the inferior size. However, if we up this number to a 100 they would likely win due to their superior language which allowed them to cooperate and move more effectively as a large group. Still, despite how powerful it was to describe things that existed and relationships, the greatest language potential lied in the fact that now sapiens could communicate things that did NOT existed such as myths, gods or religions. How did this propel the race to the top of the food chain?  The Cognitive Revolution is the first time in History where a species evolves based on its imagined realities and behaviors and not on biology alone. The fact that now we had fake entities and values meant that we could cooperate on an even larger scale. For example, if a tribe follows a god there’s an authority above man that makes them obey not only because the leader said so. In addition, our social behavior gradually became more sophisticated and complex.

Alas, with these revolutions, came one of the biggest mass extinctions that this world has ever seen. Wherever the Homo sapiens followed, biodiversity declined greatly. There’s 3 reasons for that: large animals have long gestation periods and now with human hunting them it only took a few kills a month for the population to decline over a long period of time; with the use of fire to burn forests in order to create greener planes attracting prey, the sapiens altered the ecology wherever they went; climate changes helped speeding up this process meaning that without humans these species would have probably survived but with humans, climate changes became a strong catalyst to accelerate extinction.

Part II – Agricultural Revolution

As the Homo sapiens began to store more and more knowledge, our agricultural skills did so as well. Firstly, there were some isolated villages living off their own farms but as these grew in size, it was a matter of time before this became the dominant type of society in the world. Common sense says this was one the greatest steps for Humanity, however the author argues that the Agricultural Revolution (AR) was, in fact, the greatest fraud in human history. AR increased to total amount of food available for humans but that didn’t translate into a better quality of life. Quite the contrary, our diet become less diverse and our workload much higher. It created demographic explosions and spoiled elites. Now, humans had to constantly worry about the future: what’s the weather going to be like? Will there be any fires? Will my crops be infested? If such things were to happen, not only the farmer would be in jeopardy but the entire village too, therefore we had to work more to ensure survival. Hunter gatherers didn’t have such anxieties. In addition, with more food available, population was growing at the same rate meaning that no matter how much it was produced, it was never enough. Why sapiens didn’t go back to hunter gatherer lifestyle? By the time the consequences were obvious it was too late, the momentum could not be stopped. Villages were getting bigger and powerful and the seeds were planted for the upcoming revolution. History taught us that luxuries soon become expected and in a later stage a necessity. For a contemporary example: we know fossil fuels are bad for the planet, but the costs and inertia of abandoning them greatly hinder a transition to clean energy. Harari leaves us with this provoking thought: we didn’t domesticate wheat and rice, these plants domesticated us – thanks to humans they were able to go from irrelevant plants to worldwide domination while making humans completely dependent on them. This perspective is even more frightening through the genetic prism. It does not care for our quality of life, what it cares is reproduction and survival, and 1000 miserable humans is a better deal than 100 happy humans. The biggest lesson from AR is that evolutionary success and individual wellbeing do not necessarily go hand in hand (for further proof see how cattle and chickens are living despite being more numerous than humans.)

Cities began to develop and grow through the surplus of food and better transportation but that alone wasn’t enough to create empires and larger societies. It was only through the creation of myths and imaginary orders that this was attained. As mentioned before, a superior order and some kind of hierarchy is required for cooperation in large numbers, and if before we’re talking in the hundreds, now there’s thousands or even millions during the Roman Empire. How could a myth sustain such large empires? It is hard to see at first, but every rule and value is based on imaginary ideas. Capitalism, Christianity, Communism and so on are based on fictional ideas that when enough people believe or follow become the norm and then it becomes reality. For example, Americans believe in human rights and equality so much that the nation is based around those values even in today’s America. When an American thinks about himself, he most likely believes in human freedom and that every person deserves such right. However, equality and freedom are human ideas and not facts, they are all a product of our imagination, unlike the laws of physics that exist whether we believe in them or not (objective truths). It’s these shared beliefs that allow such a large number of people to cooperate and even fight together. To make people believe these myths we must never admit to ourselves that these are imaginary and argue instead that they are a result of a superior order or godlike entity making sure they’re above any doubt. Secondly, we educate and in some cases brainwash younger generations to follow what the rulers and elites believe at the time. Thirdly, there needs to be true believers in these myths as violence is not enough to sustain such orders in the long run. Christianism wouldn’t exist today if priest didn’t firmly believe in their message and existence. Cynicism doesn’t build empires, only takes advantages of them.

At the same time, cities faced another constraint on their growth. As resources became more abundant it was increasingly harder to keep track of who owes what or how much tax a person needed to pay. The human brain wasn’t enough to handle this complexity but a new system was: writing – a method to store information through symbols. Eventually, writing and writers continue to evolve giving birth to bureaucracy. It was important to keep things catalogued and organized to make sure the system worked. Perhaps, the most important legacy of writing is that it changed human’s holistic thinking and free association to catalogue and bureaucracy thought. Through the centuries this discrepancy became wider and wider through algebraic numeric language culminating in computer language and coding. It’s unsettling how much depends on this type of language and storage and how few know how to handle and manipulate it. Writing was invented to serve human consciousness but it became its master. Computers cannot speak our language so we teach humans how to speak, feel and dream in computer’s language. As usual, we shape our tools and then our tools shape us.

The AR revolution is concluded with an explanation of why every noteworthy society has hierarchies deeply built into it. Specifically, why are some races so dominant over others or why are men so dominant in a society compared to women. The argument is that all of these result from historical accidents that were absorbed into the culture of a society leading to some kind of hierarchy. This would then lead to laws and prejudice that perpetuated itself. The main point is that there are no biological or logical reasons for most of these hierarchies but an historical accident, hence the usefulness of studying history.

I strongly disagree with the author here and believe he needs to further explain himself to justify so many hierarchies on accidents alone. Ironically, I do believe Yuval can fall into the equality trap as a value invented by humans. For example, he mentions how colonialism made Europeans so dominant over the black race and that by starting the global expansion it put them in an advantage that it’s still perpetuated to this day despite any significant differences between the races. I do think the hierarchies that exist today are no mere accidents and there’s more to just coincidences. Later in the book, the author actually says that what made the Europeans so successful was their unrelenting ambition and desire to explore. How is that an accident? We are quick to acknowledge that we have slight physical differences (skin color, hair, etc.) but we seem incapable of conceiving that we also might think a little different that result from physiological processes as well. And that is not to say that whites are better than blacks but simply different, and that those differences, and not accidents, shaped our history.

Part III – Humanity’s Unification

Since the French Revolution people began, gradually, to see equality and freedom as fundamental values, however, they are contradictory. If anyone can do as they please it will affect a society’s equality. Just think about rich vs the poor: if there were no Government regulations, inevitably the rich elite would appropriate 99% of the existing capital. On the other hand, if we were all equal, the system wouldn’t reward talent or hard work and most likely everyone would end up being poor as it happened during the Soviet Union era. In fact, this type of contradictions has a name – cognitive dissonance but it is not necessarily a bad thing as this phenomena moves cultures forward sparking our imagination and dynamism in relentlessly trying to fix it.

If we were to look at history through a space satellite analyzing millennia instead of centuries it would be clear that despite all wars, rise and fall of empires, and revolution we would see that Humanity inexorably moves towards unity. Biologically, we tend to look at others as US vs THEM and ancient civilizations saw each other as if they were worlds apart. But through history, empires became larger and larger bringing the same values and beliefs to more people and certain religions became so popular that today there’s only a few of them compared to thousands a few millennia ago. For the first time, around 1000 BC, it was possible to imagine humanity united following a single set of rules and eliminating US vs THEM. Now, everyone could be US. Why is this trend so prevalent? There’s 3 factors to this: money, empires, and religion.

The most basic quality of money is that everybody wants it because everybody wants it, meaning that we can trade money for whatever we need or want. Money has 2 universal principles:

1. Universal conversion: thanks to money’s transmutability we can transform land into loyalty, justice into health and violence into knowledge.
2. Universal trust: with its intermediary property, any two people can cooperate on any project.

Alas, these principles have a dark side: when everything is convertible and trust depends on coins we witness a corruption of local traditions, intimate relationships, and human values being replaced by the cold laws of supply and demand. An even more pervasive side effect of money is that this new founded trust between strangers is not invested in humans or the community but in money itself and the system that supports it.

The second factor towards humanity’s unifications are empires. What exactly are empires? Firstly, they need to dominate different peoples with different cultures and separate lands. Secondly, their borders are flexible and possess an insatiable appetite for expansion. And it’s thanks to this diversity and flexibility that grant empires the ability to unite different ethnic groups under one banner with each new empire encompassing more land than the last one (the British empire had 23.84% of the world’s territory at one point). Ideas, people and technology are much easier to expand and develop within an empire than in a politically divided region. In fact, empires often encouraged the spreading of new institutions and traditions to make life easier for themselves since standardization of society makes it simpler to rule. Another reason for this dissemination is that it gave leaders legitimacy to conquer and spread their values since they genuinely believe that their way was the right one. Even if it was forced through brutal methods, in the end it was a favor to those conquered. Today, the same is happening, although in a much subtler way. Human rights, equality of race and gender, climate change are all challenges that humanity face as a whole and from that perspective wouldn’t it be simpler and more effective to form one global government ensuring these problems are addressed? In fact, although there are more nation states than at the time of the British Empire, each nation is more dependent upon others than ever before. Governments cannot make decisions thinking that these will affect their state only, and it many cases they can’t make decisions because they don’t have the political power within their own borders.

Religion is the third factor behind humanity’s unification since it provides legitimacy to human’s social and political imaginary orders. Religion can be defined as a system of human values and rules based on a supernatural foundation. There’s two criteria for this:

1. Religions defend the existence of a supernatural order immune to human whims or deals
2. Based on its supernatural rules, religion establishes values and norms that are considered binding.

In order to unite a vast territory inhabited by different folks, religion must possess two more qualities:

• It must embrace an universal supernatural order that is true anywhere and everywhere
• It must insist on its dissemination being universal and missionary

But how did we go from animist (local) religions to the juggernaut that are monotheistic religions today? It all started during the Agricultural Revolution where men up to this point saw himself as equal to other living beings. With the domestication of plants and cattle, these beings started to be seen as objects and belongings, therefore, reducing their status in our eyes. What we now needed were Gods that gave sapiens dominion over plants and animals in exchange for our devotion to them. The biggest revolution with polytheism was that we now saw the world as a reflex of the relationship between Men and Gods putting us a step above everything else except the gods themselves. Eventually, some polytheists became so adept of their own deity that they started believing their god was the supreme power of the universe, abandoning the polytheistic most basic principle. These initial monotheist religions were few and irrelevant but Christianity changed everything with its missionary mentality. The polytheistic point of view inherently leads to a tolerant religious culture, however, monotheists tend to be way more fanatic because their knowledge of the one true God automatically discredits other religions even if it means violence or war to the unfaithful. (See Taleb or Popper as to why the intolerant minority usually dominates the tolerant majority for a more detailed explanation of monotheism success)

During the last 300 years, it is widely believed society has been distancing itself from religion, but according to the author’s definition of religion this is not the case. We have been shying away from Gods and supernatural entities towards more humanistic values, but these values are still a form of religion since they are based on supranatural rules (supranatural being that it follows some kind of norms that were not created by humans such as the laws of nature; supernatural usually being associated to a god or demonic force). And from this perspective, liberal humanism is just another religion, and it is in fact based on monotheistic beliefs. In the absence of eternal souls and a supreme God, it becomes embarrassingly painful to explain what is so special about sapiens. The idea that all human beings are equal it’s a rejuvenated version that all souls are equal before God. In recent times, this view is being challenged by new scientific discoveries and the promise of creation of super humans. Science has failed to find an indivisible soul and it became too good at explaining why we behave the way we do. If we are all just slaves of hormones, genes and synapses what does that say about the idea of free will or that we are all equal before one true God?

This part of the book is concluded by the author asking himself the question: if we could go back in time around 100.000 years ago, would the sapiens invariably follow the path of monotheism? It’s impossible to answer that question but there are two conclusions we can take from it. Firstly, there’s the knowledge fallacy in which those who have a superficial knowledge of an era tend to overly focus on the possibilities that end up materializing. Those who lived in a certain period are more aware of the paths that were not taken and, contrary to common sense, they were the ones who least understood what was going on at the time. A contemporary example would be how will we solve climate change? What are going be the dominant technologies in the next decades? We don’t know. But our descendants, when looking 100 years back will probably think the answer was obvious. Secondly, history is not deterministic and it’s a level 2 chaotic system, meaning that predictions about itself will change the outcome (example: markets). In addition, there is no basis to believe that history’s dynamic serves Humanity’s wellbeing or that the most successful cultures are necessarily the best for us. Just like evolution, history doesn’t care about our individual happiness. Academia is starting to see culture more as mental infection or more widely knowns as memetic. This theory says that just like genes, cultural evolution is based on units of information called “memes” that replicate themselves. Successful cultures are the ones that reproduce the best regardless of their host wellbeing. (This follows the argument of Agricultural Revolution: 100 starving farmers are better than 10 happy hunter-gatherers). This is a fantastic part of the book, especially Humanity’s Unification, something I will write more extensively in the future. No matter, which industry, culture, religion, political system or even nature itself, slowly but surely we are going towards unification and standardization. Diversity is suffering and inequality is rising because of this since the winners of the system now get larger rewards than before. For example, look at sports and its dying romanticism: money buys skill and every year the richest get richer and better widening the gap. Eventually, only a few clubs are left and the recent creation of the Superleague, replacing the Champion’s league, is proof of that.  This phenomenon is happening everywhere.

Part IV – Scientific Revolution

The Scientific Revolution (SR) began around 500 years ago through a virtuous circle between Power (political), Resources and Research. Power provides resources that makes research possible which in turn gives new powers (inventions, efficiency, etc). But research didn’t start 500 years ago, for example, mathematics is a discipline older than many civilizations. The core of the SR was not a revolution of knowledge but rather a revolution of ignorance – the discovery that humans don’t know the answers to the most important questions. Secondly, modern science uses new data and mathematics to create new theories. And lastly, not happy with just theories, modern science applies that knowledge creating new technologies (engineering). But all this new knowledge and power is a dangerous weapon if not used wisely, for science, while helping us to execute what we want, does not tell us what to do or which direction we should go with our newfound powers. Science is incapable of establishing its own priorities. That is why scientific research can only flourish when backed up by an ideology or religion because they are able to justify the research costs. In exchange, ideology influences the scientific agenda and what to do with its discoveries.

This is why it is impossible to separate SR and modern imperialism. But why did it all started in Europe and not in India for example? After all, Chinese and Persians didn’t lack their own technological inventions like the steam machine. What they lacked were the values, myths, legal institutions and the social/political structures which took centuries to build and mature in the West that couldn’t be quickly copied. European empires knew their ignorance which was the opposite of previous empires that limited their conquests to find new riches and lands, not knowledge. For example, when Napoleon invaded Egypt, he took 165 academics with him. What made the Europeans exceptional was their ambition, unparalleled and unquenched, to continue to explore and conquer. When shoring on a beach, these sailors wouldn’t hesitate declaring “I now claim these territories in my King’s name!” Scientists provided the imperial project practical knowledge, ideological justifications and technology that made it possible to conquer the world. In return, conquerors repaid the favor by protecting scientists and bringing the scientific method to every continent, making tremendous scientific progress possible. But behind these two forces there’s another power at play that made all these endeavors a reality: Capitalism.

We’ve already seen that money is remarkable since it can represent many objects and convert anything into everything. However, in the modern era, money could only represent things that only existed in the present which severely limited growth because it made it very difficult to fund new companies (when an investor funds a startup, he’s thinking long-term about wealth that does not yet exist.) The way to escape this trap was discovered in the modern era with a system that based on future confidence where people agree to represent imaginary assets that do not exist in the present through a special type of money called “credit”. Through these last 500 years, with the advent of progress and SR, people started to have hope in the future creating credit which in turn brought real economic growth. That is why capitalism is behind the success of science and imperialism – it was this trust in the future that gave these projects the necessary resources. At the time, this mindset was revolutionary. Its founding father, Adam Smith, claimed that greed is in fact good and that by becoming richer, it would be benefic not just for the individual but to everybody because now those profits could be reinvested into the economy creating more jobs and wealth. Hence, the capitalist creed: “production profits must be reinvested in being able to produce even more.” Eventually, capitalism became much more than an economic doctrine, it is now a religion telling us how to act and think. In its most extreme version, faith in a free market is as foolish as Santa Claus. A market free from political influence does not exist. The most important economic resource is trust in the future and this resource is constantly under threat by thieves and charlatans and the political power’s function is to guarantee trust in the future. A more insidious reason to not believe in a truly free market is the fact that being greedy does not in fact benefit everyone. If producers and business owners have too much power (monopolies, lobbies, etc) workers will be worse off by being subject to lower salaries and worse working conditions since there is no competition to move to. This market force is responsible for the widespread adoption of slavery: with the discovery of the sugar cane, Europe acquired a voracious appetite for sweets. However, being a very work-intensive resource, entrepreneurs had to use cheap slaves to keep up with Europe’s demand. This dynamic was only possible due to a pure free market where the only law that exists is the one of supply and demand. Lastly, in order to survive, a capitalist economy needs to constantly increase its production, however, it is not enough to just produce. Someone needs to buy the products and so a new ethic appeared: consumerism. For example, obesity is a double victory for consumerism, instead of eating less (which leads to an economic contractions) people eat too much and then buy products to lose weight – doubly contributing to economic growth. Can we keep up with this growth indefinitely? Won’t we starve our planet from all its resources?

Our modern society owes much to capitalism and the credit system but this is not enough by itself, we also need energy and raw materials which are not illimitable. The Industrial Revolution (IR) made humanity’s productivity rise into levels never seen before through more efficient methods of manipulating energy. The steam engine and electricity are the most relevant ones from that era facilitating transportation, heating, lighting, or making unusable materials into new sources of energy. What the IR really accomplished was liberating Humanity from its dependency on the surrounding ecosystems, but in turn making us very susceptible to industry and governments dictates. One example is the worldwide adoption of the 9-5 timetable replacing the agricultural season work. This had massive implication on our society for a factory worker could not be behind schedule because that meant the entire factory would be behind schedule too (if the assembly line responsible for wheels stopped working, no car would be complete). This spread out quickly to other areas such as schools, hospitals or public institutions. This made us more efficient but more vulnerable to risk as well. Disaster nowadays are much larger in scale than before. However, the biggest social revolution that came with the IR was the collapse of family and local communities in favor of the State and Market. Before the IR, all of our needs were fulfilled either by our families or in larger causes by the local community and there was simply no one else an individual would rely on. And this bargain with the Governments as in “you take care of yourselves as long as you keep paying taxes” lasted since the AR. With the development of communication and transportation, the State and the Market gained new powers that slowly start to creep in on family affairs. The final blow was delivered when the State offered us the chance to become “individuals”. “Marry who you want, choose the job you want, live where you wish” was how we became so dependent on the State. If we lose our jobs, the State will gives us money or a new job and care for us. The price we paid for this new deal was that instead of relying on intimate relationships and local communities, these factors were replaced by the cold and impersonal forces completely alienated from our day to day lives. As a result, the void left by this replacement was filled emotionally through imaginary communities, most notably the sense of nationality (being Portuguese or American) or consumerism (rich, super rich or Madonna fans for example).

All these changes beg the question: are we happier human beings? During the last decades, scientists decided to tackle this questions seriously and provide a scientific answer. Some interesting studies show that money does indeed bring happiness but only to a certain point before diminishing returns start to kick in; or that illness also decreases happiness but only on the short-term before we become accustomed or perhaps even happier if the person finds a deeper meaning in life (obviously severe and painful diseases don’t apply to this criteria as much). Perhaps the biggest discovery (or rediscovery) is that happiness does not depend on material possessions, health or relationships but on the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations. In other words, when things get better our expectations also get higher and vice-versa, hence the same long term effect of winning the lottery or contracting a debilitating illness. Our happiness levels tend to stabilize no matter the external conditions. Liberalism, the dominant religion of today, sanctifies our feelings as a supreme source of authority. What is beautiful, ugly, worthy or unworthy is decided by what each one of us feels. This might seem obvious to us but it’s exclusive of liberalism. If we look at medieval ages, their quality of life was much worse than today’s but perhaps they were happier since they relied on an external authority (religion) that grant them meaning. Crusaders firmly believed that they would end up in heaven if they lived an honorable life serving their God and their fulfilment cannot be questioned. We don’t have the same luxury since we depend so much on the fickleness of our feelings. Buddha provide us with the most enlightened answer: he agrees with modern science that external conditions are not necessary for our happiness but he also adds that the seeking of positive feelings also leads to unhappiness and true happiness is not identifying with neither of these.

The last chapter of the book is called the end of the Homo sapiens. There’s 3 ways we can substitute natural selection through intelligent design. Firstly, there’s biological engineering – manipulating genes and organic beings in order to achieve predesigned attributes or even new creatures. An example would be changing a gene responsible for a disease or to change the color of a person’s hair. The second method is cyborg engineering – combining organic components with inorganic materials such as bionic hands (one could argue that smartphones are an example of cyborg engineering too). Lastly, there’s the possibility of creating completely inorganic beings: artificial intelligence and singularity (the point where machines become smarter than humans) are some of the most concerning issues that Humans face that threaten our own existence. It’s scary to think that a super intelligent being might treat us the same way we treat animals today. These are all possible scenarios which one should entertain, not necessarily because they will happens, but thinking about them gives us the option to try to influence the direction we choose to take. The questions is not so much “what do we want to become?” but rather “what do we want to want?”