Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari

Sapiens takes a sweeping look at the forces that have shaped human history, going back to the cognitive revolution 70,000 years ago. Harari has an unusual knack for seeing through the details and evidence to what matters. He starts with a basic question - what makes us human - and devotes considerable time to it. He ends with an equally important, but unanswered question - what makes us happy. We are not even sure what happiness is.

A common theme is the powerful role of myths, collective self delusions, culture and intersubjective reality. These are all words for the same thing. Harari lumps religion together with money, human rights, limited liability companies, consumerism and nation states. They are all figments of our collective imagination, yet also powerful forces that change reality. The cognitive revolution marked the transition from a history driven by biology to a history driven by human culture.

He also considers how various forces reinforce each other. He broadens the military-industrial complex to the empire-money-science complex. He attributes the recent rise of Europeans powers to this. All three are underlined by a historically unusual concession of ignorance - about nature, geography, economics etc. An interesting illustration of this is blank spots on maps - a recent phenomena that helped spur European exploration. Europeans did not start out better equipped to do this than other Eurasian peoples. They were merely slightly more motivated and interested. He is more generous with the legacy of military empires than most people, and credits the origins of humanism to monotheism.

Three Humanisms:

http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1534285507

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Some older book reviews:

Why the West Rules ~ For Now
http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1404336014

Why Nations Fail
http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1394832229

Guns, Germs and Steel
http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1198305859

networks vs hierarchies in global power struggles
http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1516488950