18: A Permanent Revolution
From Harari — Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
The chapter begins with a discussion about how industrial revolution has driven the evolution of era of Homo sapiens. Thanks to the more efficient conversions of energy and production of goods from natural resources, a series of consequences ranging from extinction of species, to destruction of ecosystems (pp.392), to global warming, to rising oceans (pp.393) in natural aspect; and from fading of the family’s and the community’s roles (pp. 398) in societal aspect to the demand-supply governed free market (pp.390) to the reliance on the state and the market (pp.402) resulted.
To establish the argument of how industrial revolution leads to the collapse of the primary building block of Homo sapiens fabric, the family and the community, the author proposed that the characteristic of industrial society and those of agricultural society are by nature so different that the former required imposing time frames on human behaviors, urbanization, the appearance of industrial proletariat, etc (pp.398). The families and communities nowadays provide emotional support, which the state and the market fails to provide to Homo sapiens (pp.404–405). It appears that the author tried to convince readers that provision of emotional support is the only function today.
The speed of change in our society has become so quick that the author said “every year is revolutionary” (pp.409). This is so true in the internet era nowadays. The speed of information exchange is no longer constraint by the geological separation, compared to the origin of marathon. The author noticed that although there have been wars and violence, from time to time in the last century, we have been in general living in a very peaceful era. “In the mosts of the world, people go to sleep without fearing that in the middle of the night a neighbouring tribe might surround their village and slaughter everyone.” (pp.411), and the author attributed this peaceful ear to the rise of the state.
The price of war has been increasing drastically along with the human development. Besides, the form of war has also changed, from physical conflict to competitions for information, intelligence and technical know-how. As globalization started many years ago, countries have become more and more closely related and inter-dependent, that makes war more unlikely. But, is it true? Could non-armament war between countries lead to traditional war? Would history repeat itself by going back to old fashion war at certain point of human future?
