Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind — a review.

Author´s note: This book deserved its own post. Same rules, reviewed in a five-star scale and still in a very subjective way.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind — Yuval Noah Harari

★★★★★

“Biology enables, Culture forbids.”

“Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?”

“Evolution has made Homo sapiens, like other social mammals, a xenophobic creature. Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into two parts, ‘we’ and ‘they’.”

This is, without a doubt, the best book I have read in the past few months, or in my life for that matter. This is a book that promises to explain a lot, I mean, “A brief history of humankind?”; that is a big promise, and believe me, it delivers.

Before discussing a few of the arguments that I have encountered against this book, let's break it down. Harari is a lecturer in the Department of History in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Oxford in 2002. The scope that his book has is remarkable, and even more, the big questions it tackles—Why is our species in the place it is today? Why We and no other Homo species? What have we done to the earth without being conscious about it? And many more. This is a non-fiction book, one that reads like a thriller written in true philosophical prose.

Harari makes the argument of the importance of th invention of “mythologies”, which are, described way worse than how he does it, beliefs that we all humans agree on, that makes our societies able to work the way they do. As an example Harari uses the company “Renault”: If tomorrow, every employee of renault—from CEO to the mailroom boy—gets fired, its buildings sold, and everything, the existence of the company—under the law and in our minds—will not change. Even without physical proof, Renault still exists; it is collectively agreed upon myth. And this is the way Harari approaches all of the other complex concepts in this book—Money, Capitalism (one of my favorite chapters), the Scientific Revolution, Religion, and much more.

Now to a couple of arguments I have encountered against this brilliant book. First of all, I do not have the interest, the will, nor the energy to argue with these people—mostly because if they think highly enough of themselves to critic and argue, stupidly arbitrary points, with the author of this book, well, I do not have any way to match that, in their view, I do not have the knowledge nor the position to argue with them, which makes this a lot easier.

So, this book does take a hard and, at times, very judgemental look at humanity, its creeds, beliefs, systems, and impact. Now, in my case I have found this to be the essential property of the book, I love a really good, cold, and hard look at my species. I understand that this is not for everyone. Sapiens is a book where the protagonist is humankind, us, but in a plurality of the times, it is also the antagonist. And, if you do not want to hear this—as Harari explains how many scientists do not want to condemn our species and admit our fault of, in essence, making 9/10 of the big mammals on earth go extinct—then you will be very conflicted if you read this book. Harari argues that the Agricultural Revolution is “Humanity's biggest ripoff”, and I find this argument to be extremely clever, compelling, hilarious, and yes, very true.

In relation to the arguments themselves, I only have to say two things: If you are not able to describe the world better than Harari does it here, if you strip down all the meaning and you are compelled to oversimplify the arguments, taking only that “Harari obviously hates human beings and society” (A quote from an actual review I found on Goodreads), shut the fuck up. And consequently, if you do not agree with his conclusions, that does not mean that this book is bad, au contraire, I would argue that this book greatness is the fact that reading it makes you realize how and why our systems and societies work. If you do not like the way they do, live in denial, but again, do not blame the book.

I cannot recommend this book enough. It is probably in my top 3 by this point. I do have to say that it is a particularly long book, and it is packed with informtion and deep discussions, so take it easy if you need to. Even taking in a couple of chapters a week will be amazing for you, I guarantee it.

At the time of writing, I am 75% done with the sequel and it is just as, perhaps even more, interesting. Check out its review in the next post, probably published by early or mid-March.

If you are kinda interested in the book, but you are not that sure about it contents, or the prose, check out this TED talk by Harari himself—it is kind of a preview of the first chapter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzj7Wg4DAbs

I give this book five stars, yes, five.