The History Book That Made Me Question Every Institution
Sapiens does not tell the story of history. It tells the story underneath history: why human beings can cooperate at a scale that no other animal can, and what the cost of that cooperation has been. Harari's central argument, that money and religion and nations are all shared fictions we choose to believe in, felt unsettling the first time I read it. Three readings later it feels like the most accurate thing I have encountered about how human society actually works.
Harari is most convincing in the first half and most provocative in the second.
"Large-scale human cooperation is based on myths only humans can create and believe.
"Yuval Noah Harari
Reading Sapiens
Impact
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Section
Ideas From Sapiens That Changed How I Think
That money is a shared fiction that works because everyone agrees it does
The agricultural revolution may have been bad for individuals and good for species
That the Scientific Revolution began with admitting we do not know everything
That happiness may not have increased with the size of human societies