Sapiens Is Smart, But Is It Wise?

Yuval Noah Harari discusses when, where, and what made our (Homo Sapiens) transition from holding a banana to holding Nuclear missile controllers.

Even though the author discusses our achievements chronologically as a race, his main argument relies on the fact that we still don't know "What do we want to want?" Amidst all the revolutions (Cognitive, Agricultural, and Scientific), we made progress, but do they augment the well-being and happiness of Sapiens?

What the Book Does

The author drifts through the timeline of human evolution that gained momentum ~70,000 years ago. The genus Homo comprised many members who got wiped out either by us or nature got them. 'Neanderthals' were the most popular next to 'Sapiens' due to their higher brain and brawn. However, nature favored us over them, and here begins the 'Cognitive revolution.'

This gift of Imagination helped us conjure the imagined orders; it is always 'us vs them,' and we united for a single cause making Sapiens colonies packing hundreds of individuals, crushing any other animal with numbers out there. We gave rise to inter-subjective phenomena like money, religions, and empires, considered the greatest unifiers in Sapiens history.

Following came the 'Agricultural Revolution' (~12,000 years ago), now due to high food cultivation, our societies proliferated from hundreds to hundreds of thousands, giving rise to villages, empires, and cultures. But it trapped humans into lower subjective well-being by trading Mobility with Surplus of Grains.

Finally, the 'Scientific Revolution' (~500 years ago), where politicians funded Research & Development for obtaining new powers. It started in all domains, philosophy, biology, psychology, sociology, nuclear physics, economics, etc. The early adopters reaped the most growth in this era.

However, do these all result in a happier individual?

Where I Got the Most Value

Somewhere deep down in our psyche (Indians), we subconsciously think that the Caucasian Race (The whites) was dominant because they have a history of ruling over many other races, thanks to their stronger genes.

However, Harari demystifies these hegemonic events as random rather than biological or genetic causes. Many stronger dynasties in India, China, the Ottoman, etc were far more technologically and militarily advanced than European nations, yet they focused on maintaining their static boundaries. Europeans started the research & exploration of unknown lands. As a result, they got hold of more resources, and gradually they got better at colonization.

If back then Indian dynasties or the Ottoman Empire had expanded, then the history would have been completely different.

Moreover, the importance of human Imagination is validated with many great examples. The single most important validation is religion, which was an imagined doctrine with the sole purpose of enabling large cooperation among Sapiens, not bestowed upon us by some Super-Human entity.

Where the Book Fell Short

Earlier, I discussed the trap of the Agricultural Revolution, where we traded our mobility for food surplus. However, our forager ancestors were freer and happier than farmers.

Sapiens was published in 2014, before the surge of social media tech and AI developments. The book needs revision because it leaves out another irreversible shift in human well-being, meant to connect people; these technologies now confine humans to screens, trading physical exploration for cheap instant dopamine hits.

Moreover, the author asked, "What do we want to want?" In my opinion, sheer materialistic discoveries can never suffice humans, because our desires follow the human imagination, which is endless. There will always be a guy who will conjure things in his lab that were mere imagination in the past.

Therefore, Harari should emphasize the need for ~~religions~~ (a way of living life) because the practices in Buddhism and Hinduism offer a pragmatic approach to true well-being, making us happier. Maybe the clever originators already answered the question, and hence gifted us the spiritual abstraction of a highly biological & psychological relevance which will soon be fully correlated with science in the future.

Because modern Sapiens heavily rely on a scientific lens to critique practices, but the lens is still so rudimentary (~500 years old) compared to the Cognitive Revolution (~70,000 years old).

Verdict

In a nutshell, you should read Sapiens because it unravels many notions that were more necessary in our evolution than the latest one — Science. You will be amazed at how culture, religion, empires, and money helped us break the chain of natural evolution. The main aim of the reader should be to notice dominant paradigms and the consequences of each era, from the historical dots connected by Yuval Noah Harari.