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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

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I read Sapiens last year, and I still think about it sometimes. Especially these lines...

The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths.

The pursuit of an easier life resulted in much hardship, and not for the last time. It happens to us today. How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad. What are they supposed to do, go back to digging up roots? No, they double their efforts and keep slaving away.

History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets.

Some religions, such as Christianity and Nazism, have killed millions out of burning hatred. Capitalism has killed millions out of cold indifference coupled with greed.

Around the time that Homo sapiens was elevated to divine status by humanist religions, farm animals stopped being viewed as living creatures that could feel pain and distress, and instead came to be treated as machines.

Just as the Atlantic slave trade did not stem from hatred towards Africans, so the modern animal industry is not motivated by animosity. Again, it is fuelled by indifference.

A lot of evidence indicates that we are destroying the foundations of human prosperity in an orgy of reckless consumption.

immense improvement in material conditions over the last two centuries was offset by the collapse of the family and the community.

So perhaps happiness is synchronising one's personal delusions of meaning with the prevailing collective delusions.


Have you read the book? O.O

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