"We moderns have an arsenal of tranquillisers and painkillers at our disposal, but our expectations of ease and pleasure, and our intolerance of inconvenience and discomfort have increased to such an extent that we may well suffer from pain more than our ancestors ever did."

     YUVAL NOAH HARARI

Elements

Mother & Son

“Myths and fictions accustomed people, nearly from the moment of birth, to think in certain ways, to behave in accordance with certain standards, to want certain things, and to observe certain rules. They thereby created artificial instincts that enabled millions of strangers to cooperate effectively. This network of artificial instincts is called ‘culture’.

Excerpt from SAPIENS [A Brief History of Humankind] by YUVAL NOAH HARARI

Thoughts on culture and mythology.

"How can we distinguish what is biologically determined from what people merely try to justify through biological myths? A good rule of thumb is 'Biology enables, culture forbids.' [...] Culture tends to argue that it forbids only which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition natural. A truly unnatural behaviour, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition."

Excerpt from SAPIENS [A Brief History of Humankind] by YUVAL NOAH HARARI

Thoughts on biology, culture and mythology.

“[...] it is an iron rule of history that every imagine hierarchy disavows its fictional origins and claims to be natural and inevitable."

     YUVAL NOAH HARRARI

"Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view. Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid in the first place."

Excerpt from SAPIENS [A Brief History of Humankind] by YUVAL NOAH HARARI

Thoughts on myths and the structure of social and cultural reality.

"Never will man penetrate deeper into error than when he is continuing on a road which has led him to great success."

     FRIEDRICH HAYEK

"One of history's few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations."

     YUVAL NOAH HARARI

"[...] Yet the truly unique feature of our language is [...] the ability to transmit information about things that do not exist at all. As far as we know, only Sapiens can talk about entire kinds of entities that they have never seen, touched or smelled.
Legends, myths, gods, and religions appeared for the first time with the Cognitive Revolution. [...] This ability to speak about fictions is the most unique feature of Sapiens language."

Excerpt from SAPIENS [A Brief History of Humankind] by YUVAL NOAH HARARI

Thoughts on language and the structure of reality.

     "This is a key to understanding our history and psychology. Genus Homo’s position in the food chain was, until quite recently, solidly in the middle. For millions of years, humans hunted smaller creatures and gather what they could, all the while being hunted by larger predators. It was only 400,000 years ago that several species of man began to hunt large game on a regular basis, and only in the last 100,000 years - with the rise of Homo sapiens - that man jumped to the top of the food chain.

     That spectacular leap from the middle to the top had enormous consequences. Other animals at the top of the pyramid, such as lions and sharks, evolved into that position very gradually, over millions of years. This enabled the ecosystem to develop checks and balances that prevent lions and sharks from wrecking too much havoc [...] in contrast, humankind ascended to the top so quickly that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust. Moreover, human themselves failed to adjust. Most top predators of the planet are majestic creatures. Millions of years of dominion have filled them with self-confidence. Sapiens, by contrast, it’s more like a Banana Republic dictator. Having so recently been one of the underdogs of the Savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes it doubly cruel and dangerous. Many historical calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have resulted from this over-hasty jump."

Excerpt from SAPIENS [A Brief History of Humankind] by YUVAL NOAH HARARI

Chiaroscuro