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”Despite the astonishing things that humans are capable of doing, we remain unsure of our goals and we seem to be as discontented as ever. We have advanced from canoes to galleys to steamships to space shuttles �� but nobody knows where we’re going. We are more powerful than ever before, but have very little idea what to do with all that power. Worse still, humans seem to be more irresponsible than ever. Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one. We are consequently wreaking havoc on our fellow animals and on the surrounding ecosystem, seeking little more than our own comfort and amusement, yet never finding satisfaction.��


Cave of the Hands. Cueva de las manos in Argentina. The art in this cave dates from 13,000 to 9,000 years ago. I find this photograph to be very emotional to think about because this band of Humans are saying...we were here.

The pursuit of happiness is one of the many big themes that Yuval Noah Harari covers in this remarkable book about the history of Homo Sapiens. He brings us from the beginning of our known history to the present and offers his interpretations and evaluations of our conduct along the way. There are many points in the book where he crystallized my thinking about a subject, and there are several other points where he encouraged me to think about what I know in different ways. Since taking myself out of the rat race, I’ve had a lot of time to ponder exactly what I was trying to accomplish for the 30+ years I pursued money and career advancement. Now, I want to make sure with what time I have left to spend it pursuing something much more meaningful and satisfying than the pursuit of more and more money.

This book will make you uncomfortable. You may disagree with some of his conclusions, but do not use that as an excuse to not read the book. He will also enlighten you on other points that very well may help shape your personal philosophy. I have been thinking about reading the book for some time, but what convinced me was all the one star reviews for the book on Amazon. It was quickly apparent to me that most of those reviews were written by religious people who never read the book but were told they should be offended by it because of his opinions on religion. He doesn’t just believe that Christianity is a fabricated construct, but also thinks that nationalism and a whole host of other -isms are as well.

”How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism?��

Or how about this one?

”It may well be that we’d all be better off if Christianity and Islam had been forgotten or defeated.��

Why did Constantine the Great pick Christianity as the religion of the empire? We really don’t know. It was far from a dominant religion at the time. Harari compares it to a POTUS waking up one morning and deciding that the Hare Krishnas are the national religion. It is hard to fathom that it was a moment of altruism. He was an intelligent man and must have felt that Christianity offered the best way to better control his people and unite them under one concept, instead of the host of gods that polytheism offered.

I come away from this book realizing how deeply brainwashed I’ve been about a whole host of issues, and I have been remiss in not questioning more of the foundations of thought or intent behind most of my long held beliefs.

The big revelatory moment for me was when he talked about individualism.

”The state and the market approached people with an offer that could not be refused. ‘Become individuals,�� they said. ‘Marry whomever you desire, without asking permission from your parents. Take up whatever job suits you, even if community elders frown. Live wherever you wish, even if you cannot make it every week to the family dinner. You are no longer dependent on your family or your community. We, the state and the market, will take care of you instead. We will provide food, shelter, education, health, welfare and employment. We will provide pensions, insurance and protection.�� Romantic literature often presents the individual as somebody caught in a struggle against the state and the market. Nothing could be further from the truth. The state and the market are the mother and father of the individual, and the individual can survive only thanks to them.��

How often do we hear the term “stand on your own two feet?�� Or “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps?�� Looking for help from others in current culture is seen as a sign of weakness. Standing as individuals has made us weaker, not stronger. We are accused of a form of co-dependency if we are too attached to our extended family or our friends. I’d never really thought about how being individualistic was actually helping the powers-that-be to exert more control us. We are experiencing a great divide in politics, and many of my friends have already decided they won’t be going home for the holidays. We used to be able to set disagreements aside and focus on what we do agree on, like...baseball or reading books or the weather, but now politics has become such a defining part of our lives that we feel like those who disagree with us are actually immoral.

Have all these technological advances made us happier? To a degree yes, but also very unhappy in other aspects. The demands on our attention are more immediate and all consuming. Even when we relax, we are not really relaxed. Faster and more efficient doesn’t necessarily equate to making anyone, but the people making the enormous amounts of money at the top, any happier.

”Nothing in the comfortable lives of the urban middle class can approach the wild excitement and sheer joy experienced by a forager band on a successful mammoth hunt. Every new invention just puts another mile between us and the Garden of Eden.��

I made 62 highlights reading this book, which is an all-time record for me. I could have had even more! Harari gave me so much to ponder and consider that I’ve already decided that in a few years I’m going to reread the book. I borrowed the book from the library, but I already know I will need to own this one because a book like this needs to be readily available to help me better explain my own thoughts. I could have written a review as long as the book itself because there are so many assertions in this book that cause the mind to expand and make new connections across a myriad of subject matters. It is the most important book I’ve read in a long time. I hope it will be for many of you as well.

We are gods on this planet, and we need to change our view of how we see ourselves in the context of the planet and the future.

”Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?��

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