Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Choose Your Fictions Carefully

There are far too many fascinating assertions in this book to even mention. But for me the most fascinating is Harari’s idea of the Cognitive Revolution which took place about 70,000 years ago. "We might call it the Tree of Knowledge mutation. Why did it occur in Sapiens DNA rather than in that of Neanderthals? It was a matter of pure chance, as far as we can tell. But it’s more important to understand the consequences of the Tree of Knowledge mutation than its causes."

It is this mysterious, and as yet unexplained, change in human genetics that he pinpoints as the primary reason for the ultimate success of the species Homo Sapiens in competition not just with established flora and fauna but with other human forms. Interestingly, Harari’s argument also establishes the anthropological foundations for literary post-modernism.

To over-simplify, but not by much, the Cognitive Revolution of Sapiens is precisely the ability to tell, and eventually read and write, stories, that is, fictional narratives which are interesting, entertaining, and above all convincing. This ability, an evolutionary enigma because it does not give obviously immediate advantage, underlies human ability to organize beyond very small units, to cooperate in matters of survival, and to prevail against competing species which are stronger, quicker, better adapted to the environment, able to speak in a more varied manner, and even more clever.

These narratives, according to the narrative told by Harari, begin in gossip, talk among ourselves about ourselves, which is a behaviour that is now as far as anyone knows unique to Homo Sapiens, and may even have even been unique among others of the genus Homo. Gossip leads to shared tales about common experiences, ancestors, and problems. These tales evolve into myths which are widely shared and identify large groups as ‘us’. "There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings."

Such tales incrementally employ an increasing lexicon of fictional, that is to say abstract, ideas. It is these ideas which allow the ultimate success of Sapiens, not necessarily because of their pragmatic qualities, but because, whatever they are, they are shared:

“Myths, it transpired, are stronger than anyone could have imagined. When the Agricultural Revolution opened opportunities for the creation of crowded cities and mighty empires, people invented stories about great gods, motherlands and joint stock companies to provide the needed social links. While human evolution was crawling at its usual snail’s pace, the human imagination was building astounding networks of mass cooperation, unlike any other ever seen on earth.”

As modern existential and linguistic philosophers have thought for some time, these ideas - scientific, religious, technological, social, legal - are fundamental fictions that become progressively indistinguishable from the ‘natural’ world which is apart from the imagined world of language. As Harari states what is a reiteration of this philosophical conclusion:

“Three main factors prevent people from realising that the order organising their lives exists only in their imagination:... a. The imagined order is embedded in the material world... b. The imagined order shapes our desires... c. The imagined order is inter-subjective.”

It is this invisibility of these linguistic fictions which constitute daily life that is both the greatest strength and greatest flaw of our species. We are able to organise ourselves, because of them, to travel to the Moon. We are also able to believe a half dozen untruths before breakfast. The internet is perhaps the best example of the paradox of our fraught existence since it promotes both cooperation and mass deceit.

For me the implications are clear: 1) literature is the only hope for the world. Fiction - novels, fairy tales, fantasies, and lots of 'em - are the only means to get a grip on reality. Reading lots of fiction developes the aesthetic sense. And it is only through aesthetics that one can decide what is important and how to deal with what is important. 2) It is also clear to me that novels cultivated our species genetically over millennia for this very reason - to get us better at reading them.

Postscript: For a rather plausible opposing view to Harari’s, see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

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