This is a history of human consciousness, but even more it’s a history of the dominance of Western civilisation, but even more than that it’s a work of philosophy disguised as a history book. Yuval Noah Harari’s central point is that the ability to mythologise is the source of humanity’s power – that it’s what our intelligence, goals, and ability to co-operate are based around – and after going over the origin of humanity’s ability to mythologise, he tracks the most dominant myths of human history – imperialism, science, and capitalism – with the argument that all three of these make up Western culture. He also dives into myths that these other myths supplanted (or, at least, lord over) with the myth of happiness hanging over the whole thing. Interestingly, despite (because of?) the contentious nature of the ideas and the struggle between them, Harari resolutely refuses to settle on any one of them being Good or Bad; of all things, the book reminds me of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, where just as either book or song seems to be settling into a groove and making a definitive point, they suddenly veer off and move on. The sense is that Harari is willing to look at each and every individual moment in history and say “This moment was Good, this moment was Bad” and thus sees the shades of grey in the whole.

(It was the point where Harari observed that we live in the safest time in human history – not just in that individuals are much less likely to be murdered, but that countries have increasingly locked themselves into a stalemate because everybody’s afraid  of setting off a Dr Strangelove situation – that I really registered this, because he then immediately notes that we are at risk of catastrophic climate change and nuclear war, and then veers off again when he notes that even the most pessimistic climate change scientists believe that while the vast majority of human civilisation will be wiped out, humanity itself will still keep going in some form. It’s happened before and it can happen again.)

His interpretation of the three central ideas is a bit idiosyncratic but makes sense. Imperialism isn’t just the conquering of land (though it is that – he does an extensive study of how the Spanish conquered the Aztecs mainly because they had a greater conception of the concept of conquering in the first place that overwhelmed the relatively naive Aztecs) but the conquering of ideas – he uses the word ‘syncretic’ a lot, observing that it’s a mixture of forcing one’s ideas on the world and absorbing useful ones into the collective consciousness of the empire, the way Christianity absorbed pagan ideas into the morass of beliefs. The scientific revolution is specifically the observation that we do not know everything we need to know; he defines the ‘ancient’ belief as being that, while an individual might not know everything, everything that is of importance has already been defined long ago. Knowing every plant might be fun or useful in a small capacity, but it’s frippery. Conversely, the scientific belief that there are important things out there we don’t know not only fueled exploration, it fueled that same imperial instinct – we are not just conquering for the sake of conquering, we are conquering for the sake of mastery, for the sake of medicine, for better building materials – for a better way of life.

Finally, Harari defines capitalism as valorising the consumer; another word for it would be individualism, which he also often uses. It’s a value system that empowers the individual over the community – by working hard, we can make choices in what we buy and choose items that strengthen us over others and even say things about us. Harari observes that community and family bonds have been shattered over the past two hundred years without falling into any kind of pro- or anti- hysteria; one of the bad things about it is an apparent increased loneliness and isolation* as well as destroying smaller community support structures as the power of the state has grown, while one of the good things about it is that individuals are far more capable of fleeing destructive and poisonous support structures that people of previous generations could not.

*The thing about reading lots of history again is that I have become increasingly skeptical that there really are more lonely people. I think we as a collective just better at noticing them.

One of the points that Harari keeps coming back to is that, from a biological and evolutionary perspective, things are better for human beings than they ever have been. If the point of life is to stay alive as long as possible and replicate as much as possible, human beings have reached mastery; there aren’t just far fewer murders but far fewer wars as states move further and further towards stalemates. Harari observes that the vast system of humanity has been moving towards negentropy. People don’t want to die and don’t want to suffer. The irony is that the individual is often at the mercy of the larger system; Harari makes that observation that agriculture is the source of much human suffering, but with enough depth to explain why – it created enough food to support a system of people while forcing individuals to tolerate both a smaller diet and less comfortable climate compared to the foraging humans before it, who could simply move to warmer climates in the winter. It’s a trite observation that war began when one guy decided he wanted a patch of land from the other guy*; Harari makes it clear that the two guys fighting over a patch of land would be fighting over necessary food.

*Also incorrect. Harari observes that forager humans also engaged in wars, though obviously much smaller and less ambitious ones.

One of the main points that emerges is that human beings are driven to dominion. Imperialism was the first instinct that can be truly attributed to homo sapiens. I’ve spent my whole life with the European extermination of Australian Aboriginals hanging over my head; even after reading this book, I still believe it to be an unforgivable crime against humanity (I recall reading of an incident in my home of Tasmania in which European colonists forced a large group of native people – men, women, and children – to march across the land until they fell dead, one by one). Australia’s Aboriginal people have a culture that’s tied to the spiritual connection between the people and the land, one of symbiosis and reciprocation in which the people understand it so intimately that they and it are one. So you can imagine why I find it so funny that there were tens of thousands of species native to Australia before humans came to it and dozens afterward for exactly the same reason the Amazon rainforest is being cut down: they wanted it and they took it.

(Luckily, I neatly avoid supposed liberal hypocrisy by thinking that any crime the Australian Aboriginal people committed did not warrant violent colonisation)

I will reflect Harari’s habit of veering by noting that this is also an early example of humanity’s dominion-seeking being incredibly brave. He lays out exactly why humans moving across the Mediterranean to Australia is such a counter-intuitive idea that would have taken a long time to achieve for no easily apparent reason beyond curiosity. Sapiens had two advantages: an ability to endure (Harari repeats that famous adage that humans as predators had the advantage not of speed but of maintaining speed for long periods of time), and the fact that none of the native species yet had the sense to fear them. Those same instincts are driving people now, when there aren’t tigers around every corner waiting for us. I think if there’s any original thought I have in response to this book – and I’m still fairly certain he brings it up at some point – it’s that humans are primed to look for the apocalypse, if only to justify the instincts bred into us. I’ve heard part of the work of unpacking trauma is learning to recognise instincts that were vital for survival during the trauma (like hypervigiliance) but are crippling in a safer context, and Harari lays out a convincing argument that we’re all carrying a collective example of that.

Still, it’s nice to see how one fits into the grander scheme of human existence in a context I recognise. I’m sure any regular Solute reader would go through the first couple of chapters thinking “Ah, this must have been catnip to Tristan, seeing scientific confirmation of things he’s talked about for years”. More than that, though, I could recognise myself in various iterations of myths throughout human history. Harari laid out the behaviours of forager sapiens, and I could easily recognise myself, and when he described the introduction of agriculture, I could see what I’m really uncomfortable with in human culture. I’ve seen people pissing and moaning about agriculture before, but now I can see… okay, let me find the best way to phrase this.

I’m in that vast category of people who doesn’t particularly identify with capitalism or the Protestant work ethic or country and small town hard-work-is-its-own-reward values, but I was raised in all three of those environments, so it’s hard not to think that I’m unnatural and fighting a fundamental aspect of what it is to be human. But actually, what I do seems to be not just natural but the original state of human beings. Again, following Harari’s lead, one could say that sapiens who lived and died learning agriculture and imperialism and capitalism and working hard for no personal benefit is why I can enjoy writing this essay on this computer, and I’m spitting in the face of all that hard work by not doing as much of my own, and I can see the benefit of being a little imperialist and capitalist (I have always fundamentally been a scientist). But now I know I’m acting in the spirit of my forager ancestors and nobody can take that away from me.