Lamp-Lit Thoughts: “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”
“It’s relatively easy to agree that only Homo sapiens can speak about things that don’t really exist, and believe six impossible things before breakfast. You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.” — an excerpt from the book
I first heard about Professor Harari on a YouTube video featuring him and Natalie Portman discussing the issues we face as a society. YouTube algorithm picked up my interest and suggested another video, his Ted Talk, which I also watched. Consequently, that led me to read one of the best books I’ve read this year: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
Every page of the book unfolds the story of humankind — a story of rise peak and trough, life and death, and the ever-unquenchable human desire to leap forward. It’s fascinating how far we’ve come as a species from hunter-gatherers to office workers, foragers to online shoppers. How come this piece of computer I’m using to write this blog is made of parts that are designed and created by people from across the world whom I’ve never met? It’s mesmerizing to look back on our traces and look from above at how we’ve been operating under this worldview. This book did its job at creating visualizations, but also some ruminations. There are things I realized while and after reading this book. Of course, these are inspired by this book but also the other literature on the subject.
The world is becoming increasingly complex; adaptability, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence are modern-day survival skills
It seems the world has changed drastically while our biological tendencies haven’t yet kept up. Our ancestors had their stress levels shot up in the presence of a predator while here we are standing in the presence of innocuous spectators in a Zoom meeting on the verge of a non-existent life-and-death situation. The contemporary infrastructure and social construct are built under human connections, which means understanding ourselves and fellow human beings is crucial to thrive and become resilient in this modern environment. We are more emotional than rational beings; we attach meaning and context to what we do. As we navigate our emotions and acknowledge them, we make more sense of what we do and peek into what others might be experiencing.
In the movie Hidden Figures, people were literally called “computers” whom NASA heavily relied on computations. In the latter part of the film (spoiler alert), the same people adapted IBM Mainframe and used FORTRAN, a programming language. This isn’t new. It has been happening since the Agricultural Revolution. People adapt to the circumstances and adopt skills to succeed and thrive. Today, the AI revolution is sweeping across industries, and as we learned in the past, change is necessary. This is why adaptability is crucial. How flexible you are amid economic crises and job market instability is the name of the game.
Drawing the line between fiction and nonfiction; open-mindedness amidst the uncertainties
In the book, Professor Harari described that fictional stories or myths helped humankind glue together to create this working society we know today. As long as we believe in the stories of legalities, religions, human rights, and financial systems, we are able to uphold our social and economic constructs. But living in these stories oblivious to the realities may hurt people in the long run. Just like Dolores Abernathy in the TV show Westworld, you can continue your normal lives in the same story over and over again until you realize your own version of existential crisis. People are naturally afraid in the face of unknown or foreign concepts; however, it’s the reality that will unfetter our minds from the rigid set of beliefs. With open-mindedness comes another revolution — a revolution in the way we see the world. It doesn’t mean we need to abandon our fictional stories; we just need to see the fine line between them and what’s tangible and real in the physical world. It’s easy to be trapped in the maelstrom of sticking to one side of the story. Keeping an open mind allows us to pose questions and maybe answer them.
Reading this book made my nights filled with wonder, questions, awe, and inspiration. I believe looking back to how far we’ve come not only gives us this hope knowing that our ancestors had lived through the hard times and paved the way for us but also endows us with insights on how we can face our modern-day problems for today and posterity’s sake.
