Originally published in Hebrew in Israel in 2011 and 2013, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (HaperCollins, 2015) and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (HaperCollins, 2017) by Oxford-trained historian Yuval Noah Harari (b. 1976) have since publication received global attention and praises.
Continuing a personal quest after the birth of universe and living beings, I too picked these tomes up and journeyed through the evolution of humankind, which historian Harari explains case by case in a familiar and accessible style.
In Sapiens, the twenty-chapter narrative is a journey into the past and tells how human evolves from ape to several human species and to the emergence Homo Sapiens as the winner. Three revolutions were covered in the process:
Cognitive Revolution (70,000-30,000 years ago, when new ways of thinking and communicating appeared): language, for example, helps Homo Sapiens to communicate with each other and thus distinguishes themselves from other apes. Nevertheless, "Imagined orders" (p. 110) such as money and nation, especially after the invention of writing, allow human beings to cooperate on a larger scale than ever.
Agriculture Revolution (10,000-2,000 years ago, when animals and plants were domesticated and humankind changed from foragers to farmers): A trap and a hoax, instead of leading humankind to betterment, the Agriculture Revolution instead "keep[s] more people alive under worse conditions" (p. 83). One gets an impression that despite of all challenges, hunter-gathers have a better lifestyle than farmers.
Scientific Revolution (16th century-present, when humankind acknowledged their ignorance and started to understand the world particularly through observation and mathematics): Referred as Anthropocene, reverence for humankind stands in the center. All developments are designed to make humankind better, stronger and live longer. There lies the perfect seed to breed super-human, which ushers humankind into a god-making period.
Therefore in the following Homo Deus, the whole logic of how humankind attempts to deify itself is laid out in eleven chapters.
Regardless of what Humanist Revolution (since 18th century) said about humankind being "the ultimate source of meaning" and human free will being "the highest authority of all" (p. 225), post-Humanist life sciences confirm that humankind is composed only of "genes, hormones and neurons that obey the same physical and chemical laws governing the rest of reality" (p. 284). There is no self, nor free will.
Instead, algorithm - "a methodical set of steps that can be used to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions" (p. 83) - is all that there is. "Organisms are algorithms" (p. 395). As long as scientists can figure out the algorithms inside the human body, they can apply the same rules of calculation into other non-living entity.
Now, welcome to the future of superhuman, which can be created via biological engineering, cyborg engineering and the engineering of non-organic beings depending very much on data and information flow.
What is this future going to be for Homo Sapiens? Downfall; lose control; outperformed by IBM's Watson and more software that are currently being developed by Google, Facebook and other companies under the euphemism of combating diseases and saving lives. How do you feel about this Tomorrow? Is there any other species more self-deluding than Homo Sapiens?
Honestly, that's why I prefer Sapiens to Homo Deus. I don't second the Tomorrow in which humans are replaced by superb computer programs. It's a little depressing and utterly boring. Like the capitalist faith in growth, I find the second book of Harari also follows a same same logic that "to be better is everything", better in performance and productivity. I strongly doubt that is all in life. Okay, life is also imagined like meaning. I get it, yet I prefer possibilities outside the books.
On the whole, I still appreciate the books. First, they cite examples from many different societies including Chinese, Islamic, African and Native Americans. Second, there are very interesting cases that I first learned here. Third, Harari being a young historian professor also demonstrates excellent craftsmanship by combining classics with online sources like Youtube and news. There is a new way of doing history. And fourth, I also agree with his take on history:
"We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we imagine" (Sapiens, p. 241);
"the study of history aims above all to make us aware of possibilities we don't normally consider. Historians study the past not in order to repeat it, but in order to be liberated from it" (Homo Deus, p. 59).
As for me myself, I will choose to write a sweeping tale of humankind with stories of individuals peppered here and there, so I won't sound like a pedant repeating myself over and over in a messianic fashion. Such narrative is exhausting.
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