Sapiens: Yuval Noah Harari
4.5 Billions years of earth formation, 2 billion years of any kind of life formation on this planet and just 70,000 years of Homo Sapiens (humans species) presence. Worth taking a pause and realizing how infinite our history has been and how drastically things have changed for this planet in the last few thousand years. The author of this book, Yuval Harari, a Jewish gay guy and a Vipassana meditation practitioner has written three books so far (on past, present and the future). This version traces the evolution of our species by analyzing key turning points in our history (development of cognitive abilities, evolution of storytelling, adoption of farming, advancement through modern scientific age et al).
Everyone is talking about this book lately. Funny how intellectual content with decent depth go viral these days. Intelligence seems to be in scarcity these days and people attach to it as soon as it surfaces. Ironically, even though we as human species are growing intelligent analytically, emotionally we are becoming dumb and dumber. Probably driven by the superficiality in our lifestyle. Most of the time we are aware of this hollowness but feel trapped lacking courage and clarity on the path forward to fix it.
Going back in history and getting an objective view on how things evolved can be quite thought provoking especially in our times when so much of debate happens on social media around proving superiority of our own ideas vs other fellow beings. So much fragmentation, pride and arrogance in what we think and how we act. Every conversation seems to be split in extreme dualities. If you put it in the perspective of history and see it holistically, you realize how stupid and hypocritical it is to fight over proving superiority of our own cultures, beliefs and religious values over others. Most things that got created in the past were the realities of those times and will not even take the same form and shape in future. We as the human species are all interconnected in this evolution journey one way or the other. What we claim to be ours is not actually even ours. Reality is way more complex and intermixed. But we just want to constantly live in an illusion to feed our dumb imagined reality.
After reading the book you almost start disliking humans as a race. Our species has become way too powerful, manipulative and selfish for our own good. We are single handedly responsible for destroying this planet that nourishes us, wiping out millions of other fellow beautiful species and even causing irreversible damage to our own species almost to a point of no return. But then it also pushes you to think philosophically. The path that got exhibited is probably the law of nature and baked in the flow of evolution. What is the overall meaning of evolution? Where did it all come from? Do we even have any control on anything? Is everything possibly pre-decided? If we are just mute spectators in this dance of evolution then what is the meaning of our existence.
