This book was a gift from a friend. “From one nerd to another,” she told me. I mentioned it to another friend while I was reading it and he told me there was apparently some controversy around it. I couldn’t find much that was absolutely damning about it. Scholars generally regarded it as a decent read and seemed to criticize only that it didn’t bring new information to the field. Fine. Scholars may not be this book’s audience. Galen Strawson said, “The attractive features of the book are overwhelmed by carelessness, exaggeration, and sensationalism.” Again, perhaps a philosopher isn’t this book’s audience. For the general public to give a shit about science (of any type) a book needs to be at least a touch sensationalist.
I liked the book. I wasn’t looking for groundbreaking research on anthropology or evolution in the first place. And what Strawson viewed as exaggeration I might’ve taken as relating ideas to our modern times in memorable ways. Not as hyperbole or even oversimplifications. Harari was just thought-provoking and engaging. And provocateurs tend to get attention (such as their books being translated into 65 languages, selling 45 million copies, and being lauded by OTHER scholars, captains of industry, former U.S. presidents, and lowly bookworms like me).
There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.
When, in 1860, a majority of American citizens concluded that African slaves are human beings and must therefore enjoy the right of liberty, it took a bloody civil war to make the southern states acquiesce.
Monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe—and He’s evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief.
Get Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A brief History of Humankind.
