Homo sapiens: who are we and what do we want?

My youngest daughter gave me a book for Christmas. Non-fiction. About five hundred pages long!
"I think you'll like it," she informed me. Of course I accepted the gift, partly because I like surprises and partly, and probably most engagingly, because I was curious. What had my daughter given me?

After I had read the first chapter titled "An Animal of No Significance", I texted her.

You were right. The book you gave me is really interesting

Thanks :)

I'm about to begin Chapter Five and looking forward to the challenge of getting my head around the ideas, information and sometimes provocative conclusions the author draws from his own wide research and serious thinking.

Yuval Noah Harari has written a "bold, wide-ranging and provocative [work, which] challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power ... and our future." - from the blurb

The Shinkanzen (Bullet Train). Is faster always better? Do we want this?

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind outlines many of the facts we already know about our history in an engaging style that invites us to seriously consider what he is asking. Are we innately violent? Was there more than one species of human? Why have so many species completely disappeared from the earth? Can climate change explain everything? Why do humans (Sapiens, as he calls us) continue to destroy the very habitat we need for our survival? It is clear that the rest of the natural world (what's left of it) doesn't behave like this. 

Harari tells us that, wherever humans went, disaster and extinction followed:

"Don't believe tree-huggers (yep, his use of language is often journalistically provocative) who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology." (p.82)

As I read, I continue to tell myself to keep an open mind because I am a product of a religious, social and intellectual upbringing that balks at some of his assertions, yet wonders if he isn't more prophet than doomsayer.

Harari suggests that Humankind doesn't know what it wants and much of his writing goes to supporting that belief. We are certainly far better off than when we were living in caves, foraging for food and hunting mammoths and giant wombats. But are we happier? Are we content? Do we see our real place in the world? Do we really want to live forever?

Like all humans who try to make sense of humanity's place in the universe, Harari uses what he has at his disposal - undisputed facts, well-supported theories, reasonable predictions, educated guesses and his own view of the world and humanity. He regularly pulls himself back from pulling too long a bow but doesn't shy away from breaking long-held taboos and attacking deeply seated patterns of thinking.

The Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) was probably the first trans-national corporation as we know them today. It was founded in 1602 and it was both a commercial enterprise and an instrument of war and the Dutch government colluded with it to make it the trading and world powerhouse it was at that time. It was responsible for shaping what we know of the world today through its exploration, conquest and the information it gathered as a result.  Wikipedia calls it a "proto-conglomerate company". I can't help but think that its activities bear astonishing similarities to Google, Facebook, Microsoft, the CIA, JP Morgan Chase, The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (a state-owned entity with a market capitalisation of $305US billion in 2019), Amazon, Disney, Westpac and more. Interestingly, Royal Dutch Shell is in the top-10 largest companies in the world.

Harari posits that it is not governments who are making the decisions about where humankind is headed but these conglomerates. We only need to see what Elon Musk (Tesla), Boeing and Richard Branson are doing about space travel to know that there lies the actual power. I ask, what is the point of that huge market capitalisation (profit) when it is merely used to make more profit? And at what cost? Harari suggests that it has always been thus except under a different guise.

A Catholic church in Italy (my image)
What does this image tell us about the myths and stories created by humans and why millions of people adhere to their belief in them?

"...the real question facing us is not 'What do we want to become?', but 'What do we want to want?' Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven't given it enough thought." (p.464)