       Welcome to Luna Pan's NEVERLAND Hurrah! I finished the last page of Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind. The book, published in 2014, written by Yuval Noah Harari, is followed by his another two amazing masterpieces: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. I really thought it was a long reading journey, because I started reading the book in 2021, now it’s 2022. The book was with me at countless cafes, and at those precious “me” moments. In total, it took me around 4 months to finish reading this book. But I wasn’t being lazy! Like anyone else, I’m just busy. Second, it’s really a heavy book. That’s why I also decided to take a break before I embark on Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. A novel will just be fine. Again, Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, is really informative and enlightening. I strongly believe that it’s another book that has got me smarter. 12 Rules for Life | An Antidote to Chaos Beyond Order | 12 More Rules for Life Simply speaking, I see more things now, and also see them in a different way. Here’re some quotes from the book. They hit me greatly in a good way, and I want to share with you. Now, let’s get started if you’re ready. 1. Tolerance is not a Sapiens trademark. In modern times, a small difference in skin colour, dialect or religion has been enough to prompt one group of Sapiens to set about exterminating another group. 2. Perhaps that’s exactly why our ancestors wiped out the Neanderthals. They were too familiar to ignore, but too different to tolerate. 3. But fiction has enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively. 4. There is some evidence that the size of the average Sapiens brain has actually decreased since the age of foraging … When agriculture and industry came along people could increasingly rely on the skills of others for survival, and new “niches for imbeciles” were opened up. 5. We should be careful, though, not to judge the Aché too quickly … They viewed the killing of children, sick people and the elderly as many people today view abortion and euthanasia. 6. If we know how many species we’ve already eradicated, we might be more motivated to protect those that still survive. 7. We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. 8. This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions. 9. Why did people make such a fateful miscalculation? For the same reason that people throughout history have miscalculated. People were unable to fathom the full consequences of their decisions. 10. There was no going back. The trap snapped shut. The pursuit of an easier life resulted in much hardship, and not for the last time. It happens to us today. 11. Unfortunately, the evolutionary perspective is an incomplete measure of success. It judges everything by the criteria of survival and reproduction, with no regard for individual suffering and happiness. 12. Peasants were worried about the future not just because they had more cause for worry, but also because they could do something about it. 13. “Yes, there is something you can do for me. Please move a little to the side. You are blocking the sunlight.” 14. Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshed perfectly with consumerism. Their marriage has given birth to the infinite “market of experiences”, on which the modern tourism industry is founded. 15. If you want to keep any human group isolated—women, Jews, Roma, gays, blacks—the best way to do it is convince everyone that these people are a source of pollution. 16. Those once victimised by history are likely to be victimised yet again. And those whom history has privileged are more likely to be privileged again. 17. In truth, our concepts “natural” and “unnatural” are taken not from biology, but from Christian theology. 18. Most of the laws, norms, rights and obligations that define manhood and womanhood reflect human imagination more than biological reality. 19. Success is not guaranteed. Males in particular live in constant dread of losing their claim to manhood. Throughout history, males have been willing to risk and even sacrifice their lives, just so that people will say, “He’s a real man!” 20. The inter-subjective is something that exists within the communication network linking the subjective consciousness of many individuals. 21. Over the millennia, small, simple cultures gradually coalesce into bigger and more complex civilisations, so that the world contains fewer and fewer mega-cultures, each of which is bigger and more complex. 22. Homo sapiens evolved to think of people as divided into “us” and “them”. “Us” was the group immediately around you, whoever you were, and “them” was everyone else. In fact, no social animal is ever guided by the interests of the entire species to which it belongs. 23. What happens if the shoemaker doesn’t like apples and, if at the moment in question, what he really wants is a divorce? 24. Money is thus a universal medium of exchange that enables people to convert almost everything into almost anything else. 25. Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised. 26. We either fear that the pleasure might disappear, or we hope that it will intensify. People dream for years about finding love but are rarely satisfied when they find it. Some become anxious that their partner will leave; others feel that they have settled cheaply, and could have found someone better. And we all know people who manage to do both. 27. Gautama found that there was a way to exit this vicious circle. If, when the mind experiences something pleasant or unpleasant, it simply understands things as they are, then there is no suffering. 28. Not everything is possible. Geographical, biological and economic forces create constraints. Yet these constraints leave ample room for surprising developments, which do not seem bound by any deterministic laws. 29. We cannot explain the choices that history makes, but we can say something very important about them: history’s choices are not made for the benefits of humans. There’s absolutely no proof that human well-being inevitably improves as history rolls along. There is no proof that cultures that are beneficial to humans must inexorably succeed and spread, while less beneficial cultures disappear. 30. “Don’t believe a single word these people are telling you. They have come to steal your lands.” 31. Imperialists claimed that their empires were not vast enterprises of exploitation but rather altruist projects conducted for the sake of the non-European races—in Rudyard Kipling’s words, “the white man’s burden” … 32.They created the world as we know it, including the ideologies we use in order to judge them. 33. But in its extreme form, belief in the free market is as naïve as belief in Santa Claus. There simply is no such thing as a market free of all political bias. 34. Capitalism has killed millions out of cold indifference coupled with greed. 35. The tragedy of industrial agriculture is that it takes great care of the objective needs of animals, while neglecting their subjective needs. 36. Consumerism sees the consumption of ever more products and services as a positive thing. It encourages people to treat themselves, spoil themselves, and even kill themselves slowly by overconsumption. 37. It has succeeded. We are all good consumers. We buy countless products that we don’t really need, and that until yesterday we didn’t know existed. Manufacturers deliberately design short-term goods and invent new and unnecessary models of perfectly satisfactory products that we must purchase in order to stay “in”. See you. |
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