Review On “Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind” By Yuval Noah Harari

Sapiens started off in a fantastic way. I think this book is a classic. It is written brilliantly by an inquisitive scientist who wants to share his thoughts without boring the reader with his theory. It was fascinating how the author spoke and provided information about humankind’s ancient past. The author’s voice and information about the ancient days of humankind was fascinating. I didn’t have any knowledge on non-fiction. I also did not know anything about the origins. I felt a need to better understand our history. The author’s condescending and ironic humor soon became tiresome. I was annoyed by the author’s confidence, which came through in all of his words.

These are the things I don’t agree with.

Harari states in chapter 10 “There is no Justice in History”, page 152, that while poverty is the natural state of mankind, it also takes collaboration and insight to overcome this condition. Harari poses the question: Why do we suffer from poverty? In this article, he writes about how most people born into poor households are likely to remain poor throughout their lives. This could be true. Why is there so much wealth? That’s the real question. Harari does not seem to be able to justify the existence of such a culture and completely ignores economic mobility.

Harari’s “rewriting” of The Declaration of Independence, in Chapter 6, is pure sophistry.

“We believe these truths are self-evident: that men are different, they have different characteristics and are born with them. Among these, life and pleasure are included.”

Analyzing the difference in the Declaration of Truth and the biological facts, we can see that Haari is wrong. People do not believe human equality because they think it’s objective. A fallacy is that he transcribed a statement of ideas into biological terms. Harari’s use of ‘pleasure’ as an alternative to happiness, which is difficult to quantify, was a logical choice. He could just have claimed an increase in endorphins.

Harari uses a lot of immature, cliched and unoriginal arguments to deny God’s existence and the reality of the soul of man. According to him, scientists aren’t able to find these immaterial and abstract theories in a tangible and material universe. Paradoxically, he claims that scientists are unable to determine where the mind of man resides despite there being scientific evidence that this is true.

Harari states in a brilliant way that the catholic belief “the life of a human begins at conception” does not represent a scientific fact but is a doctrine imposed by the Catholic Church. If this is so, and human beings are not radically different, why don’t we take into account the suffering of domesticated animals but not of human embryos during abortion.

Harari believes human superiority is due to our capacity for flexible co-operation, which is in stark contrast with the rigidity that prevails in the animal kingdom. It is impossible to analyze the hidden reasons for this peculiar ability that allows one to defeat instincts or the cruel laws of nature.