Sapiens is a fascinating history of humanity from 70,000
Sapiens was a sometimes interesting but ultimately disappointing read. As a Reader, I found the experience a forced and missionary posturing over the course of the book.
Harari takes the position that our great strength as a species, the thing that sets us apart from all other living beings, is our ability to make up stories about things that are only to be found in our imaginations, and then treat them as though they were real; by this process, they become real. As he points out, empires and religions and money don't actually exist, but now they rule our lives. He's particularly interesting on the subject of money. Again, I can see some readers who dislike what they call his cheerleading for modern Western society. I don't think Harari is a fan of the West, and the book is in my humble opinion not Eurocentric at all; for example, Harari seems to like Buddhism rather more than Christianity. He's just pointing out the indisputable fact that Western society has taken over the world, and he ascribes that, more than anything else, to the West's ability to make up a better story about money, which we call capitalism. If this is where you're coming from, talking about the power of myth to transform human existence, you don't go overboard with the footnotes. There are no footnotes in the Bible. You do your best to tell a great story, and you hope that it will transform our existence.
Sapiens relies on the ability to create “shared fictions.” Shared fictions are commonly held beliefs in fictional entities. For example, belief in the power of money is a “shared fiction”: dollar bills themselves are meaningless pieces of paper without the financial institution’s promise. In early history, these shared fictions were centered on polytheistic gods, but in modern-day society, they include companies, morals, and political systems. These systems allow our species to operate more efficiently and collaboratively.
Happiness’s relationship to meaningfulness
Harari covers several theories of happiness. One such tenable theory is that happiness is closely tied to meaningfulness
“The scientist who says her life is meaningful because she increases the store of human knowledge, the soldier who declares that his life is meaningful because he fights to defend his homeland, and the entrepreneur who finds meaning in building a new company is no less delusional than their medieval counterparts who found meaning in reading scriptures, going on a crusade or building a new cathedral.”
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