8: There is No Justice in History

From Harari — Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Previous chapter, the author asked the question of how the Sapiens have been able to collaborate with one another in a large group to accomplish a mission even they did not know each other. The author proposed the concept of “imagined orders”, which needs imagination, of course. This imagination is also what other living creatures do not possess (really? They may be able to imagine, just we don’t know).

This chapter is mainly about imagined orders in human societies and the title of the chapter suggests the imagined orders in human societies are not just, not fair and more importantly not biologically based. What is the biological difference between slaves and free people? How can human norms and laws have turned some people into slaves and others into masters? Who decide that?

On one hand, the author pointed out that imagined hierarchies were the conspiracy of the rulers, not something natural or biological; on the other hand, the author appears to support that the existence of the imagined hierarchies are necessary for people to know how to treat each others and what role they play in the societies.

The imagined order, or the imagined hierarchies, are different in different places. Several examples of imagined hierarchies were given in the chapter, caste system in Hindu (The Vicious Circle); racial discrimination in American (Purity in America). Before the chapter concluded, the author analyzed the gender and sex issue (He and She). The imagined order based on sex seems natural, and biological based to many readers, if not all. The author put some effort in clarifying the conceptual difference between gender and sex. The chapter then argues that human societies have been patriarchal because of superiority of men oven women established in the society and such system is again questionable regarding its biological base.

Several questions come up after reading this chapter.

1. The chapter title has the word “Justice”, however what do we mean by “Justice” or what is the definition of “Justice” that the author is referring to? I think the author implicitly prefers a hierarchy or imagined order in the society to be biologically based in order to be “Justice”, and otherwise, it is no “Justice”. There is an important argument here, who create the concept of “Justice”? Does the world need to be justice by itself? Of course, the author did not state so.
2. Undoubtedly, no one would argue that women have been having more opportunities in climbing up the social ladder, being more influential in the their own arena, be it the family, the school, the office, the government and even international institution. However, nowadays, as we can see, men still hold many key positions in many sectors around the world. The last section of the chapters provides some theories explaining why almost all cultures favour manhood over womanhood, and states honestly, not any existing theory is convincing at all. First we need to continue to seek the reason or the driving force that shape such patriarchal world nowadays. Then we could find ways to avoid gender discrimination and create an equal opportunity environment for both genders, hmmm… sounds very correct. But what is optimal situation? Until what situation, then we would say there is not a patriarchal world? Could we achieve such situation? Or we end up the opposite? We have two genders and two sex, is it by nature that the world is always in an asymmetric situation or biased to either sides?