This process has accelerated over the millennia, so that today nearly all of the things we need for survival are provided by complete strangers. But at the same time it has made us dependent for our very survival on vast networks of cooperation. The Sapiens secret of success is large-scale flexible cooperation. We’ve evolved into incredibly social beings.
Yet we somehow live with this contradiction.įrom a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution-a #1 international bestseller-that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” Buy
Our medical system and our legal system are built on contradictory assumptions. Or our ability to believe from the standpoint of law that humans are equal and have free will and from biology that humans are just organic machines. For example, to believe in an omnipotent and benevolent God, but somehow excuse Him from all the suffering in the world. Humans have an amazing capacity to believe in contradictory things. The crucial importance of cognitive dissonance. What’s the most misunderstood fact about the history of our species? Dollar bills have absolutely no value except in our collective imagination, but everybody believes in the dollar bill. Of course not all fictions are shared by all humans, but at least one has become universal in our world, and this is money. We use our communication system to create new realities. All other animals use their communication system to describe reality. The truly unique trait of Sapiens is our ability to create and believe fiction. Is there a unique trait linking all human beings?
We traded emails about human contradiction, techno-religions, and our need to tell stories to each other and ourselves. A lecturer in history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Harari is the author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, out in the U.S. Yuval Noah Harari has a few unconventional theories about humankind: religion is our greatest invention, and our species itself will evolve into something new within a couple hundred years.
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