Sapiens, “Imagined Realities,” Meaning and Yuval Noah Harari’s Values

Harari’s “Sapiens — A Brief History of Humankind,” is one of the most interesting and thought-provoking histories I’ve read in recent years, touching on numerous topics that fill other books and articles to which Harari cites. One of the book’s topics is the “complex network of stories [or fictions]” without which Homo sapiens could not have attained the ability to collectively cooperate, flexibly, in large numbers (more than 150 or so). This “complex network or stories [or fictions],” Harari explains, is how Homo sapiens, as a species, came to achieve unchallenged dominion over the planet’s other animals. These “stories,” “fictions,” “social constructs” or “imagined realities” (my favorite), as they are referred to in the academic circles Harari runs in, are things like language, money and currencies, myths, legends, religions, political and legal systems (e.g. constitutions, autocracies), economic systems (e.g. capitalism), sovereign nations, inalienable human rights (e.g. “all men are created equal”), and legal fictions or constructs (e.g. corporations and other limited liability companies). These social constructs or imagined realities are human inventions, Harari emphasizes, not human discoveries of the nature of human society. When enough sapiens believe in, recognize and/or are governed by an imagined reality, it supports a fictive language and organization of humans that gives humans “immense power by enabling millions of strangers to cooperate and work towards common goals” (pp. 25–32).

Harari’s cultural relativism is not controversial, but I think that Harari’s discussion of cultural phenomenon and the distinction between reality or “nature,” and the humanly imagined or invented fictions creating large groupings and societies, could be misunderstood. Harari does not differentiate between fictions that are believed by many to be as real and true as any tree we might be standing under and those fictions that, while recognized as inventions of the human imagination, are still valued for their social utility and benefit relative to the available alternatives. Humans may not be able to flexibly organize themselves in large numbers without stories or fictions, but this does not mean that all humans believe the fictions or stories are “true” or “real” the way a lion is real when it comes after you.

In other words, there is an important difference between a Christian’s belief in the imagined reality of an all-knowing and all-powerful god who has spoken to humans through a book written by divinely inspired men, and a humanist’s belief that democracy, the rule of law and certain “human rights” are exceptionally helpful fictions or ideas that we should be grateful for and supportive of even though they are mere fictions or ideas. While there are people who genuinely believe that “humanism” or “socialism,” for example, are essential realities or truths as woven into the fabric of “nature” as any tree or lion, most thoughtful individuals who identify as “humanists” or “socialists” do so to describe their values and to distinguish themselves, “culturally, from “Christians” or “capitalists.” They are not claiming to possess essential truths or realities about human nature, believing in the imagined realities of “humanism” or “socialism” in the same sense as most Christians “believe in” Christ or Christian doctrine. Rather, these are “believers” with a lower case “b” who readily acknowledge that their stories have no claim on Truth with a capital T. For such “believers,” “belief” means an admiration for an idea or story, an admiration sometimes so intense that they want the rest of society to adopt the story as a guiding principle over alternative stories; not because it is True, but because it seems to them a better and more beneficial story than competing stories. Christians, Muslims or Communists who are “True Believers” (and not all are) have no such intellectual humility, claiming nothing less than a privileged possession of the “Absolute Truth.” I do not believe Harari intended to collapse these two types of “believers,” and I suspect he does not explicitly distinguish them because he is too busy making his principal point that much of what humans take to be True is is an imagined reality or cultural artifact. Nevertheless, I think the distinction is noteworthy and leads to another issue raised by the book.

The burning question raised by Harari’s observation regarding humans’ imagined realities is that, if much of what human societies have taken to be Truths are no more than imagined realities or fictions battling with other imagined realities and fictions in the arena of public opinion and politics (think Islam vs. secular humanism, Catholics vs. feminists, neoliberals vs. progressives, capitalism vs. democratic socialism, Bitcoin vs. national currencies), by what imagined reality or fictional measure can or should we judge and choose among competing fictions. Neither “True Believers” nor nihilists need lose sleep over this question — the “True Believer” goes to bed confident that she is Right and her Truth is the measure of all things, and the nihilist goes to bed confident that there is no measure that is not, itself, fictive and, thus, meaningless. However, the rest of us, those who believe that fictions and stories are not meaningless just because they are not True, the question of what fictive measure we should use to judge and choose among competing fictions matters, and can make for a restless night’s sleep.

From an evolutionary biological perspective or measure, we could judge a fiction on the basis of its success in organizing and creating a fictive inter-subjective “language” for the most humans. As Harari observes, when enough sapiens believe in an imagined reality, it supports a fictive language and organization of humans that gives them “immense power, because it enables millions of strangers to cooperate and work towards common goals” (pp. 25–32). If certain fictions gave sapiens immense power because of their organizing power, arguably the best fictions are the ones that are most influential, the fictions that have the most adherents and create the most common fictive language. While there is antagonism among these dominant fictions, they nevertheless remain dominant (in significant part because they place a high value on converting or coercing unbelievers).

If these dominant fictions are our “best fictions,” however, why is so much criticism leveled at them? Clearly, the fact that these dominant fictions have had great organizing power which, in turn, has given our species immense power over other species and even the planet, has not persuaded everyone that they are our best fictions or that they have reached their full potential. Harari implicitly identifies two reasons for this criticism.

First, the fact that these dominant fictions may have been successful organizing fictions giving Homo sapiens unprecedented power over other species and the planet has never meant they are beneficial for all the individual humans subject to these fictions. Social ranking based on ethnic identity, race or wealth, the gruesome history of torture, genocide and wars religiously or ideologically motivated, and the harm religions and ideologies have caused individuals, materially and emotionally, make clear that fictions that have arguably been “good” for the species have harmed many individual humans subject to them. Harari reminds us: “Like evolution, history disregards the happiness of individual organisms.” So does this mean that some of the criticism of the dominant fiction is just “sour grapes” from those individuals who have suffered rather than thrived under them? Is the suffering of these individuals merely necessary”collateral damage,” a sacrifice for the greater good, or does such individual suffering point to a fundamental flaw in the fiction?

A second reason for criticism of the dominant fictions is that, while having given sapiens undeniable power over other animals and the planet, in the words of Harari, “history’s choices are not made for the benefit of humans. . . .[t]here is no proof that history is working for the benefit of humans . . . .” (p. 241). “There is no basis for thinking that the most successful cultures [i.e. dominant social fictions] in history are necessarily the best ones for Homo sapiens” (p. 243). Accordingly, Harari rejects the idea that the dominant fictions (or cultures) of our day are “good” even for the majority of humans because they are successful in organizing large numbers of humans. The “arms race,” for example, is a successful fiction of our day, but, along with other scientific and technological advances made in the service of nationalistic empire-building, holds the potential for destroying Homo sapiens, perhaps, by destroying the environment necessary to support human life. Based on this observation, the dominant fictions cannot claim that their success in organizing large numbers of humans is necessarily proof of their preeminent benefits for the species or, at least, not proof of their continuing or future benefits for the species.

Harari does not, however, here argue that the basis for judging the dominant fictions of our day is to ask whether a fiction is beneficial (or still beneficial, based on what we know today) for most humans or living organisms. Instead, he states there is no “objective scale on which to judge such benefit. Different cultures define the good differently, and we have no objective yardstick by which to judge between them” (p. 242). In fact, with admirable consistency, Harari states (unremarkably for a person who believes in the scientific method) that “from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose.” (p. 391). While I have no problem with Harari’s radical relativism, he puzzles me by not then lapsing into nihilism or a radically subjective outlook, i.e. the “good” is whatever is good for me, my kin and my “tribe.” Instead, he criticizes dominant fictions for not just their arrogance and naive belief in their historical inevitability, but for what he evidently believes is their harmful effects. However, by what fictive measure of benefit and harm is Harari judging the dominant fictions?

Harari never just comes out and tells us, stating only that the theories of evolutionary biology and plate tectonics are the closest we have come to absolute truths. By implication, Harari believes in the scientific method, valuing its intellectual humility and honesty. He believes in logic, without which his book would not make sense or have persuasive value. Harari has other values, though, manifested by his judgments and criticisms throughout his book.

For example, Harari judges certain of Homo sapiens’ “decisions,” declaring that the agricultural revolution was history’s biggest fraud and that unfettered capitalism, consumerism and industrialism causes untold human suffering (“Capitalism has killed millions out of cold indifference coupled with greed”), all while acknowledging the manifest benefits of achieving food surpluses, applying science to the development of productive technologies, and the use of credit to foster productivity and improve standards of living. He takes American democracy to task for decrying the evil of racism while consecrating “the hierarchy between rich and poor.” He is also critical of any notion of a biological basis for racism, sexism and gender discrimination, debunking notions of “natural” and “unnatural” gender or sexual orientation derived from religion and mythology. He finds fault with humans’ indifference to other animals, an indifference he compares to the indifference of Westerners to the Atlantic slave trade in the 19th century: “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 fueled by indifference.” While optimistic about the future of energy sources and materials to feed production, he is concerned about ecological degradation, noting that “the future might . . . see a spiraling race between human power and human-induced natural disasters.” Seemingly critical of industrial time’s replacement of local time and sunrise-to-sunset cycles, his paramount criticism of the Industrial Revolution is the “collapse of the family and the local community and their replacement by the state and the market….” observing that individualism and its freedom from the constraints of family and local community come at the price of shifting ever greater power to the state and the market.

These science-based and/or value judgments are just examples, but clearly Harari has values beyond his own individual, familial and tribal survival and prosperity. Because he does not believe that history’s “choices” are determined he is free to criticize those “choices” and free to criticize where they have brought the species. While he has no absolute moral authority to judge the imagined realities of racial and gender injustice, capitalist greed and the increasing power of the state and markets at the expense of family and community bonds, he judges them anyway, mostly because they reveal, in his opinion, such a lack of self-reflection, ending his book with the admonition: “Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?” I posit that Harari knows what he thinks humans should want or value. He does not come out and say it, but he does not believe that humans should exploit or mistreat other humans or other animals, inflicting pain and suffering on them or denying them a fair opportunity to meet their basic biological needs and fulfill their productive potential. Yet he does not devote a chapter to promote or justify his imagined values, empirically or theoretically, because his book is ultimately more of a descriptive than a prescriptive exercise. He does, however, end his book (before the Afterword) with a foreboding observation about human reengineering: “What do we want to want?” This is a good place to start the conversation about what fictive measure we have for judging and making corrections to the prevailing imagined realities or values. Nevertheless, if Harari is persuaded that human history (cultural evolution) is arbitrary, he should present at least a theoretical if not arguably empirical (or factual) basis for his own imagined fictive measure by which he judges the dominant social constructs of our time. Alternatively, he should have the intellectual honesty to concede that human history is just the outcome of socio-political power struggles (including war and repression of minorities), and that individuals and societies have no coherent or principled basis for judging the warring fictions of our time other than personal, familial and tribal material or psychological/emotional gain.