# Sapiens **Covers**:: **Source**:: [[Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari]] **Creator**:: [[Yuval Noah Harari]] # Highlights #### Part One The Cognitive Revolution ### 1 An Animal of No Significance ##### ^294248521 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=216 ###### ^294248521q One of the most common uses of early stone tools was to crack open bones in order to get to the marrow. Some researchers believe this was our original niche. Just as woodpeckers specialise in extracting insects from the trunks of trees, the first humans specialised in extracting marrow from bones. ^294248521 ##### ^294248522 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=228 ###### ^294248522q humankind ascended to the top so quickly that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust. Moreover, humans 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 is 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 us doubly cruel and dangerous. Many historical calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have resulted from this over-hasty jump. ^294248522 ##### ^294248523 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=244 ###### ^294248523q Some scholars believe there is a direct link between the advent of cooking, the shortening of the human intestinal tract, and the growth of the human brain. Since long intestines and large brains are both massive energy consumers, it’s hard to have both. By shortening the intestines and decreasing their energy consumption, cooking inadvertently opened the way to the jumbo brains of Neanderthals and Sapiens. ^294248523 ##### ^294248524 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=333 ###### ^294248524q When Charles Darwin indicated that Homo sapiens was just another kind of animal, people were outraged. Even today many refuse to believe it. Had the Neanderthals survived, would we still imagine ourselves to be a creature apart? Perhaps this is exactly why our ancestors wiped out the Neanderthals. They were too familiar to ignore, but too different to tolerate. ^294248524 #### 2 The Tree of Knowledge ##### ^294248526 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=361 ###### ^294248526q The period from about 70,000 years ago to about 30,000 years ago witnessed the invention of boats, oil lamps, bows and arrows and needles (essential for sewing warm clothing). The first objects that can reliably be called art date from this era (see the Stadel lion-man), as does the first clear evidence for religion, commerce and social stratification. ^294248526 ##### ^294248527 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=368 ###### ^294248527q The appearance of new ways of thinking and communicating, between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago, constitutes the Cognitive Revolution. ^294248527 ##### ^299600337 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=382 ###### ^299600337q What, then, is so special about our language? The most common answer is that our language is amazingly supple. We can connect a limited number of sounds and signs to produce an infinite number of sentences, each with a distinct meaning. We can thereby ingest, store and communicate a prodigious amount of information about the surrounding world. ^299600337 ##### ^294248528 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=390 This is a counter point to language bring our primary means of success ###### ^294248528q Social cooperation is our key for survival and reproduction. It is not enough for individual men and women to know the whereabouts of lions and bison. It’s much more important for them to know who in their band hates whom, who is sleeping with whom, who is honest, and who is a cheat. ^294248528 ##### ^294248529 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=402 It seems like many of the abilities that humans have are not unseen in other species but our specific combination allows for domination ###### ^294248529q Reliable information about who could be trusted meant that small bands could expand into larger bands, and Sapiens could develop tighter and more sophisticated types of cooperation. ^294248529 ##### ^294248530 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=413 ###### ^294248530q Legends, myths, gods and religions appeared for the first time with the Cognitive Revolution. Many animals and human species could previously say, ‘Careful! A lion!’ Thanks to the Cognitive Revolution, Homo sapiens acquired the ability to say, ‘The lion is the guardian spirit of our tribe.’ ^294248530 ##### ^294248531 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=423 ###### ^294248531q myths give Sapiens the unprecedented ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers. ^294248531 ##### The Legend of Peugeot ##### ^294248533 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=452 This is part of why Humans love to group each other ###### ^294248533q Sociological research has shown that the maximum ‘natural’ size of a group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals. Most people can neither intimately know, nor gossip effectively about, more than 150 human beings. ^294248533 ##### ^294248534 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=472 ###### ^294248534q There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings. ^294248534 ##### ^294248535 highlight_tags:: [[pink]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=475 ###### ^294248535q Modern businesspeople and lawyers are, in fact, powerful sorcerers. The principal difference between them and tribal shamans is that modern lawyers tell far stranger tales. ^294248535 ##### ^294248536 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=494 ###### ^294248536q ‘legal fiction’. It can’t be pointed at; it is not a physical object. But it exists as a legal entity. Just like you or me, it is bound by the laws of the countries in which it operates. ^294248536 ##### ^294248537 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=540 ###### ^294248537q an imagined reality is something that everyone believes in, and as long as this communal belief persists, the imagined reality exerts force in the world. ^294248537 ##### ^294248538 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=546 ###### ^294248538q As time went by, the imagined reality became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the United States and Google. ^294248538 ##### Bypassing the Genome ##### ^294248540 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=553 ###### ^294248540q ever since the Cognitive Revolution Homo sapiens has been able to revise its behaviour rapidly in accordance with changing needs. This opened a fast lane of cultural evolution, bypassing the traffic jams of genetic evolution. Speeding down this fast lane, Homo sapiens soon far outstripped all other human and animal species in its ability to cooperate. ^294248540 ##### ^294618333 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=581 ###### ^294618333q This was the key to Sapiens’ success. In a one-on-one brawl, a Neanderthal would probably have beaten a Sapiens. But in a conflict of hundreds, Neanderthals wouldn’t stand a chance. Neanderthals could share information about the whereabouts of lions, but they probably could not tell – and revise – stories about tribal spirits. Without an ability to compose fiction, Neanderthals were unable to cooperate effectively in large numbers, nor could they adapt their social behaviour to rapidly changing challenges. ^294618333 ##### ^294248541 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=583 ###### ^294248541q Without an ability to compose fiction, Neanderthals were unable to cooperate effectively in large numbers, nor could they adapt their social behaviour to rapidly changing challenges. ^294248541 ##### ^294248542 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=616 ###### ^294248542q New ability Wider consequences The ability to transmit larger quantities of information about the world surrounding Homo sapiens Planning and carrying out complex actions, such as avoiding lions and hunting bison The ability to transmit larger quantities of information about Sapiens social relationships Larger and more cohesive groups, numbering up to 150 individuals The ability to transmit information about things that do not really exist, such as tribal spirits, nations, limited liability companies, and human rights a. Cooperation between very large numbers of strangers b. Rapid innovation of social behaviour ^294248542 ##### History and Biology ##### ^297163941 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=651 ###### ^297163941q Biology sets the basic parameters for the behaviour and capacities of Homo sapiens. The whole of history takes place within the bounds of this biological arena. ^297163941 #### 3 A Day in the Life of Adam and Eve ##### ^294931430 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=707 ###### ^294931430q Artefacts made of more perishable materials – such as wood, bamboo or leather – survive only under unique conditions. The common impression that pre-agricultural humans lived in an age of stone is a misconception based on this archaeological bias. The Stone Age should more accurately be called the Wood Age, because most of the tools used by ancient hunter-gatherers were made of wood. ^294931430 ##### ^294931431 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=756 ###### ^294931431q there hasn’t been a single natural way of life for Sapiens. There are only cultural choices, from among a bewildering palette of possibilities. ^294931431 ##### The Original Affluent Society ##### ^294931433 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=763 ###### ^294931433q The dog was the first animal domesticated by Homo sapiens, and this occurred before the Agricultural Revolution. Experts disagree about the exact date, but we have incontrovertible evidence of domesticated dogs from about 15,000 years ago. ^294931433 ##### ^294931434 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=783 ###### ^294931434q The Upper Galilee Museum of Prehistory 7. First pet? A 12,000-year-old tomb found in northern Israel. It contains the skeleton of a fifty-year-old woman next to that of a puppy (bottom left corner). The puppy was buried close to the woman’s head. Her left hand is resting on the dog in a way that might indicate an emotional connection. There are, of course, other possible explanations. Perhaps, for example, the puppy was a gift to the gatekeeper of the next world. ^294931434 ##### ^294931435 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=796 ###### ^294931435q alongside seas and rivers rich in seafood and waterfowl, humans set up permanent fishing villages – the first permanent settlements in history, long predating the Agricultural Revolution. Fishing villages might have appeared on the coasts of Indonesian islands as early as 45,000 years ago. ^294931435 ##### ^297094622 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=802 ###### ^297094622q Sapiens did not forage only for food and materials. They foraged for knowledge as well. To survive, they needed a detailed mental map of their territory. To maximise the efficiency of their daily search for food, they required information about the growth patterns of each plant and the habits of each animal. They needed to know which foods were nourishing, which made you sick, and how to use others as cures. ... Each individual had to understand how to make a stone knife, how to mend a torn cloak, how to lay a rabbit trap, and how to face avalanches, snakebites or hungry lions. Mastery of each of these many skills required years of apprenticeship and practice. ^297094622 ##### ^296601899 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=857 ###### ^296601899q Ancient foragers also suffered less from infectious diseases. Most of the infectious diseases that have plagued agricultural and industrial societies (such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis) originated in domesticated animals and were transferred to humans only after the Agricultural Revolution. ^296601899 ##### ^296601915 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=869 ###### ^296601915q The Aché people, hunter-gatherers who lived in the jungles of Paraguay until the 1960s, offer a glimpse into the darker side of foraging. When a valued band member died, the Aché customarily killed a little girl and buried the two together. ... When an old Aché woman became a burden to the rest of the band, one of the younger men would sneak behind her and kill her with an axe-blow to the head. ... Babies born without hair, who were considered underdeveloped, were killed immediately. ... Anthropologists who lived with them for years report that violence between adults was very rare. Both women and men were free to change partners at will. They smiled and laughed constantly, had no leadership hierarchy, and generally shunned domineering people. They were extremely generous with their few possessions, and were not obsessed with success or wealth. ... They viewed the killing of children, sick people and the elderly as many people today view abortion and euthanasia. ... The need to evade their enemies probably caused the Aché to adopt an exceptionally harsh attitude towards anyone who might become a liability to the band. ^296601915 ##### Talking Ghosts ##### ^296601907 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=896 ###### ^296601907q Animism (from ‘anima’, ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ in Latin) is the belief that almost every place, every animal, every plant and every natural phenomenon has awareness and feelings, and can communicate directly with humans. ^296601907 ##### ^296601916 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=904 ###### ^296601916q Animists believe that there is no barrier between humans and other beings. They can all communicate directly through speech, song, dance and ceremony. ... What characterises all these acts of communication is that the entities being addressed are local beings. They are not universal gods, but rather a particular deer, a particular tree, a particular stream, a particular ghost. ^296601916 ##### ^296601910 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=932 ###### ^296601910q painting from Lascaux Cave, c.15,000–20,000 years ago. What exactly do we see, and what is the painting’s meaning? Some argue that we see a man with the head of a bird and an erect penis, being killed by a bison. Beneath the man is another bird which might symbolise the soul, released from the body at the moment of death. If so, the picture depicts not a prosaic hunting accident, but rather the passage from this world to the next. But we have no way of knowing whether any of these speculations are true. ^296601910 ##### ^296601917 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=938 ###### ^296601917q In Sungir, Russia, archaeologists discovered in 1955 a 30,000-year-old burial site belonging to a mammoth-hunting culture. In one grave they found the skeleton of a fifty-year-old man, covered with strings of mammoth ivory beads, containing about 3,000 beads in total. On the dead man’s head was a hat decorated with fox teeth, and on his wrists twenty-five ivory bracelets. Other graves from the same site contained far fewer goods. ... Archaeologists then discovered an even more interesting tomb. It contained two skeletons, buried head to head. One belonged to a boy aged about twelve or thirteen, and the other to a girl of about nine or ten. The boy was covered with 5,000 ivory beads. He wore a fox-tooth hat and a belt with 250 fox teeth (at least sixty foxes had to have their teeth pulled to get that many). The girl was adorned with 5,250 ivory beads. Both children were surrounded by statuettes and various ivory objects. ... fashioning the 10,000 ivory beads that covered the two children, not to mention the other objects, required some 7,500 hours of delicate work, well over three years of labour by an experienced artisan! ^296601917 ##### Peace or War? ##### ^297089485 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=970 ###### ^297089485q Both Amerindian and Aboriginal Australian cultures witnessed frequent armed conflicts. It is debatable, however, whether this represents a ‘timeless’ condition or the impact of European imperialism. ^297089485 ##### ^297089486 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=996 ###### ^297089486q Just as foragers exhibited a wide array of religions and social structures, so, too, did they probably demonstrate a variety of violence rates. While some areas and some periods of time may have enjoyed peace and tranquillity, others were riven by ferocious conflicts. ^297089486 ##### The Curtain of Silence #### 4 The Flood ##### ^299600341 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1050 ###### ^299600341q The moment the first hunter-gatherer set foot on an Australian beach was the moment that Homo sapiens climbed to the top rung in the food chain and became the deadliest species ever in the four-billion-year history of life on Earth. ... they encountered a strange universe of unknown creatures that included a 450-pound, six-foot kangaroo, and a marsupial lion, as massive as a modern tiger, that was the continent’s largest predator. Koalas far too big to be cuddly and cute rustled in the trees and flightless birds twice the size of ostriches sprinted on the plains. Dragon-like lizards and snakes seven feet long slithered through the undergrowth. The giant diprotodon, a two-and-a-half-ton wombat, roamed the forests. ^299600341 ##### ^297089489 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1177 ###### ^297089489q If we combine the mass extinctions in Australia and America, and add the smaller-scale extinctions that took place as Homo sapiens spread over Afro-Asia – such as the extinction of all other human species – and the extinctions that occurred when ancient foragers settled remote islands such as Cuba, the inevitable conclusion is that the first wave of Sapiens colonisation was one of the biggest and swiftest ecological disasters to befall the animal kingdom. ^297089489 ### Part Two The Agricultural Revolution ##### ^297301072 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1242 ###### ^297301072q No noteworthy plant or animal has been domesticated in the last 2,000 years. If our minds are those of hunter-gatherers, our cuisine is that of ancient farmers. ^297301072 ##### ^297301073 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1251 ###### ^297301073q Why did agricultural revolutions erupt in the Middle East, China and Central America but not in Australia, Alaska or South Africa? The reason is simple: most species of plants and animals can’t be domesticated. ^297301073 ##### ^297301074 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1264 ###### ^297301074q Foragers knew the secrets of nature long before the Agricultural Revolution, since their survival depended on an intimate knowledge of the animals they hunted and the plants they gathered. ^297301074 ##### ^297301075 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1286 ###### ^297301075q Studies of ancient skeletons indicate that the transition to agriculture brought about a plethora of ailments, such as slipped discs, arthritis and hernias. ^297301075 ##### ^297301076 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1288 ###### ^297301076q the new agricultural tasks demanded so much time that people were forced to settle permanently next to their wheat fields. This completely changed their way of life. We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. ^297301076 ##### ^297301077 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1309 ###### ^297301077q simple agricultural societies with no political frameworks beyond village and tribe, human violence was responsible for about 15 per cent of deaths, ^297301077 ##### ^297301078 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1321 This is confusing ###### ^297301078q What then did wheat offer agriculturists, including that malnourished Chinese girl? It offered nothing for people as individuals. Yet it did bestow something on Homo sapiens as a species. Cultivating wheat provided much more food per unit of territory, and thereby enabled Homo sapiens to multiply exponentially. ^297301078 ##### ^297301079 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1329 ###### ^297301079q If a species boasts many DNA copies, it is a success, and the species flourishes. From such a perspective, 1,000 copies are always better than a hundred copies. This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions. ^297301079 ##### ^297301081 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1342 ###### ^297301081q People tried to space their children three to four years apart. Women did so by nursing their children around the clock and until a late age (around-the-clock suckling significantly decreases the chances of getting pregnant). Other methods included full or partial sexual abstinence (backed perhaps by cultural taboos), abortions and occasionally infanticide. ^297301081 ##### ^297301089 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1346 ###### ^297301089q 18,000 years ago, the last ice age gave way to a period of global warming. As temperatures rose, so did rainfall. The new climate was ideal for Middle Eastern wheat and other cereals, ... People began eating more wheat, and in exchange they inadvertently spread its growth. ... When humans burned down forests and thickets, this also helped wheat. Fire cleared away trees and shrubs, allowing wheat and other grasses to monopolise the sunlight, water and nutrients. Where wheat became particularly abundant, and game and other food sources were also plentiful, human bands could gradually give up their nomadic lifestyle and settle down in seasonal and even permanent camps. ^297301089 ##### ^297301085 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1365 ###### ^297301085q No single step separated the woman gathering wild wheat from the woman farming domesticated wheat, so it’s hard to say exactly when the decisive transition to agriculture took place. But, by 8500 BC, the Middle East was peppered with permanent villages such as Jericho, whose inhabitants spent most of their time cultivating a few domesticated species. ^297301085 ##### ^297301086 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1371 This happened with the Agricultural Revolution ###### ^297301086q As people began living in disease-ridden settlements, as children fed more on cereals and less on mother’s milk, and as each child competed for his or her porridge with more and more siblings, child mortality soared. In most agricultural societies at least one out of every three children died before reaching twenty. ^297301086 ##### ^297301087 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1398 ###### ^297301087q One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. ^297301087 ##### ^297301088 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1412 ###### ^297301088q Since farming created the conditions for swift demographic growth, farmers could usually overcome foragers by sheer weight of numbers. ^297301088 ##### ^297681710 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1421 ###### ^297681710q Maybe it wasn’t the search for an easier life that brought about the transformation. Maybe Sapiens had other aspirations, and were consciously willing to make their lives harder in order to achieve them. ^297681710 ##### ^297681711 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1434 ###### ^297681711q The structures at Göbekli Tepe are dated to about 9500 BC, and all available evidence indicates that they were built by hunter-gatherers. ^297681711 ##### ^297681712 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1444 ###### ^297681712q The only way to build Göbekli Tepe was for thousands of foragers belonging to different bands and tribes to cooperate over an extended period of time. Only a sophisticated religious or ideological system could sustain such efforts. ^297681712 ##### ^297681713 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1445 ###### ^297681713q Göbekli Tepe held another sensational secret. For many years, geneticists have been tracing the origins of domesticated wheat. Recent discoveries indicate that at least one domesticated variant, einkorn wheat, originated in the Karaçadag Hills – less than twenty miles from Göbekli Tepe. ^297681713 ##### Victims of the Revolution ##### ^297681715 highlight_tags:: [[qa]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1455 How did selective hunting lead to domeatication of animals? First they killed older sheep and spared fertile young sheep, then they defended the herd against other predatoes. This lead them to coral the animals into defensible areas. Finally they started killing off the most aggressive and skinny animals, and allowed the docile and fat animals to reproduce. ###### ^297681715q Nomadic bands that stalked wild sheep gradually altered the constitutions of the herds on which they preyed. ^297681715 ##### ^297681716 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1464 ###### ^297681716q Alternatively, hunters may have caught and ‘adopted’ a lamb, fattening it during the months of plenty and slaughtering it in the leaner season. At some stage they began keeping a greater number of such lambs. ^297681716 ##### ^297681717 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1487 ###### ^297681717q In order for humans to turn bulls, horses, donkeys and camels into obedient draught animals, their natural instincts and social ties had to be broken, their aggression and sexuality contained, and their freedom of movement curtailed. ^297681717 ##### ^297681718 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1534 ###### ^297681718q The numerical success of the calf’s species is little consolation for the suffering the individual endures. This discrepancy between evolutionary success and individual suffering is perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from the Agricultural Revolution. ^297681718 #### 6 Building Pyramids ##### ^297681720 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1546 ###### ^297681720q Around 10,000 BC, before the transition to agriculture, earth was home to about 5–8 million nomadic foragers. By the first century AD, only 1–2 million foragers remained (mainly in Australia, America and Africa), but their numbers were dwarfed by the world’s 250 million farmers. ^297681720 ##### ^297681721 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1554 ###### ^297681721q attachment to ‘my house’ and separation from the neighbours became the psychological hallmark of a much more self-centred creature. ^297681721 ##### The Coming of the Future ##### ^297681723 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1572 ###### ^297681723q While agricultural space shrank, agricultural time expanded. Foragers usually didn’t waste much time thinking about next month or next summer. Farmers sailed in their imagination years and decades into the future. ^297681723 ##### ^297681724 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1579 ###### ^297681724q The Agricultural Revolution made the future far more important than it had ever been before. ^297681724 ##### ^297681725 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1583 ###### ^297681725q Concern about the future was rooted not only in seasonal cycles of production, but also in the fundamental uncertainty of agriculture. Since most villages lived by cultivating a very limited variety of domesticated plants and animals, they were at the mercy of droughts, floods and pestilence. Peasants were obliged to produce more than they consumed so that they could build up reserves. ^297681725 ##### ^297681726 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1598 ###### ^297681726q The stress of farming had far-reaching consequences. It was the foundation of large-scale political and social systems. Sadly, the diligent peasants almost never achieved the future economic security they so craved through their hard work in the present. Everywhere, rulers and elites sprang up, living off the peasants’ surplus food and leaving them with only a bare subsistence. ^297681726 ##### ^297681727 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1602 ###### ^297681727q Until the late modern era, more than 90 per cent of humans were peasants who rose each morning to till the land by the sweat of their brows. ^297681727 ##### ^297681728 highlight_tags:: [[pink]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1604 ###### ^297681728q History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets. ^297681728 ##### An Imagined Order ##### ^297681730 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1617 ###### ^297681730q The handful of millennia separating the Agricultural Revolution from the appearance of cities, kingdoms and empires was not enough time to allow an instinct for mass cooperation to evolve. ^297681730 ##### ^297681731 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1623 ###### ^297681731q Mythology, the ancient sociologist would have thought, could not possibly enable millions of strangers to cooperate on a daily basis. But that turned out to be wrong. ^297681731 ##### ^297681732 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1645 ###### ^297681732q ‘Cooperation’ sounds very altruistic, but is not always voluntary and seldom egalitarian. Most human cooperation networks have been geared towards oppression and exploitation. ^297681732 ##### ^297681757 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1656 ###### ^297681757q How can myths sustain entire empires? ... let’s examine two of the best-known myths of history: the Code of Hammurabi of c.1776 BC, which served as a cooperation manual for hundreds of thousands of ancient Babylonians; and the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 AD, which today still serves as a cooperation manual for hundreds of millions of modern Americans. ^297681757 ##### ^297681735 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1663 What was the code of Hammurabi? ###### ^297681735q a collection of laws and judicial decisions whose aim was to present Hammurabi as a role model of a just king, serve as a basis for a more uniform legal system across the Babylonian Empire, and teach future generations what justice is and how a just king acts. ^297681735 ##### ^297681736 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1666 ###### ^297681736q Hammurabi’s Code is therefore a good source for understanding the ancient Mesopotamians’ ideal of social order. ^297681736 ##### ^297681737 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1667 What is in the code of Hammurabi? ###### ^297681737q The text begins by saying that the gods Anu, Enlil and Marduk – the leading deities of the Mesopotamian pantheon – appointed Hammurabi ‘to make justice prevail in the land, to abolish the wicked and the evil, to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak’.4 It then lists about 300 judgements, given in the set formula ‘If such and such a thing happens, such is the judgment.’ ^297681737 ##### ^297681738 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1693 ###### ^297681738q Hammurabi’s Code asserts that Babylonian social order is rooted in universal and eternal principles of justice, dictated by the gods. The principle of hierarchy is of paramount importance. ^297681738 ##### ^297681739 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1717 ###### ^297681739q Hammurabi and the American Founding Fathers alike imagined a reality governed by universal and immutable principles of justice, such as equality or hierarchy. Yet the only place where such universal principles exist is in the fertile imagination of Sapiens, and in the myths they invent and tell one another. ^297681739 ##### ^297681740 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1721 ###### ^297681740q idea that all humans are equal is also a myth. In what sense do all humans equal one another? ^297681740 ##### ^297681741 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1747 ###### ^297681741q ‘We know that people are not equal biologically! But if we believe that we are all equal in essence, it will enable us to create a stable and prosperous society.’ I have no argument with that. This is exactly what I mean by ‘imagined order’. We believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society. Imagined ^297681741 ##### True Believers ##### ^297681743 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1756 ###### ^297681743q Voltaire said about God that ‘there is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night’. Hammurabi would have said the same about his principle of hierarchy, and Thomas Jefferson about human rights. ^297681743 ##### ^297681744 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1760 ###### ^297681744q an imagined order is always in danger of collapse, because it depends upon myths, and myths vanish once people stop believing in them. ^297681744 ##### ^297681745 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1771 ###### ^297681745q Of all human collective activities, the one most difficult to organise is violence. To say that a social order is maintained by military force immediately raises the question: what maintains the military order? ^297681745 ##### ^297681746 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1782 I don't think he earned this conclusion. ###### ^297681746q This is why cynics don’t build empires and why an imagined order can be maintained only if large segments of the population – and in particular large segments of the elite and the security forces – truly believe in it. ^297681746 ##### The Prison Walls ##### ^297681748 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1798 a. The imagined order is embedded in the material world. b. The imagined order shapes our desires. c. The imagined order is inter-subjective. ###### ^297681748q Three main factors prevent people from realising that the order organising their lives exists only in their imagination: ^297681748 ##### ^297681749 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1818 ###### ^297681749q Most people do not wish to accept that the order governing their lives is imaginary, but in fact every person is born into a pre-existing imagined order, and his or her desires are shaped from birth by its dominant myths. Our personal desires thereby become the imagined order’s most important defences. ^297681749 ##### ^297681750 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1838 ###### ^297681750q Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism. Their marriage has given birth to the infinite ‘market of experiences’, on which the modern tourism industry is founded. ^297681750 ##### ^297681751 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1853 ###### ^297681751q the imagined order is not a subjective order existing in my own imagination – it is rather an inter-subjective order, existing in the shared imagination of thousands and millions of people. ^297681751 ##### ^297681752 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1855 ###### ^297681752q An objective phenomenon exists independently of human consciousness and human beliefs. ^297681752 ##### ^297681753 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1859 ###### ^297681753q The subjective is something that exists depending on the consciousness and beliefs of a single individual. ^297681753 ##### ^297681754 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1863 ###### ^297681754q The inter-subjective is something that exists within the communication network linking the subjective consciousness of many individuals. ^297681754 ##### ^297681755 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1878 ###### ^297681755q in order to change an existing imagined order, we must first believe in an alternative imagined order. ^297681755 #### 7 Memory Overload ##### ^298648741 highlight_tags:: [[favorite]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1902 ###### ^298648741q Because the Sapiens social order is imagined, humans cannot preserve the critical information for running it simply by making copies of their DNA and passing these on to their progeny. ^298648741 ##### ^298648742 highlight_tags:: [[favorite]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1909 ###### ^298648742q Empires generate huge amounts of information. Beyond laws, empires have to keep accounts of transactions and taxes, inventories of military supplies and merchant vessels, and calendars of festivals and victories. ^298648742 ##### ^298648743 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1923 ###### ^298648743q evolutionary pressures have adapted the human brain to store immense quantities of botanical, zoological, topographical and social information. But when particularly complex societies began to appear in the wake of the Agricultural Revolution, a completely new type of information became vital – numbers. Foragers ^298648743 ##### ^298648744 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1937 ###### ^298648744q Between the years 3500 BC and 3000 BC, some unknown Sumerian geniuses invented a system for storing and processing information outside their brains, one that was custom-built to handle large amounts of mathematical data. The Sumerians thereby released their social order from the limitations of the human brain, opening the way for the appearance of cities, kingdoms and empires. The data-processing system invented by the Sumerians is called ‘writing’. ^298648744 ##### ^298648745 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1944 ###### ^298648745q (The Sumerians used a combination of base-6 and base-10 numeral systems. Their base-6 system bestowed on us several important legacies, such as the division of the day into twenty-four hours and of the circle into 360 degrees.) ^298648745 ##### ^298648751 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1948 ###### ^298648751q A clay tablet with an administrative text from the city of Uruk, c.3400–3000 BC. ‘Kushim’ may be the generic title of an officeholder, or the name of a particular individual. If Kushim was indeed a person, he may be the first individual in history whose name is known to us! ... When Kushim’s neighbours called out to him, they might really have shouted ‘Kushim!’ It is telling that the first recorded name in history belongs to an accountant, rather than a prophet, a poet or a great conqueror. ^298648751 ##### ^298648748 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1961 ###### ^298648748q Alas, the first texts of history contain no philosophical insights, no poetry, legends, laws, or even royal triumphs. They are humdrum economic documents, recording the payment of taxes, the accumulation of debts and the ownership of property. ^298648748 ##### ^298648752 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1969 ###### ^298648752q Full script is a system of material signs that can represent spoken language more or less completely. ... Partial script, on the other hand, is a system of material signs that can represent only particular types of information, belonging to a limited field of activity. ^298648752 ##### ^298672195 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1979 ###### ^298672195q There were some cultures, such as those of the pre-Columbian Andes, which used only partial scripts throughout their entire histories, unfazed by their scripts’ limitations and feeling no need for a full version. ... it was written by tying knots on colourful cords called quipus. Each quipu consisted of many cords of different colours, made of wool or cotton. On each cord, several knots were tied in different places. A single quipu could contain hundreds of cords and thousands of knots. By combining different knots on different cords with different colours, it was possible to record large amounts of mathematical data relating to, for example, tax collection and property ownership. ... quipus were essential to the business of cities, kingdoms and empires.3 They reached their full potential under the Inca Empire, which ruled 10–12 million people and covered today’s Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, as well as chunks of Chile, Argentina and Colombia. ^298672195 ##### ^299600342 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1990 ###### ^299600342q quipus were so effective and accurate that in the early years following the Spanish conquest of South America, the Spaniards themselves employed quipus in the work of administering their new empire. ... The continent’s new rulers realised that this placed them in a tenuous position – the native quipu experts could easily mislead and cheat their overlords. So once Spain’s dominion was more firmly established, quipus were phased out and the new empire’s records were kept entirely in Latin script and numerals. Very few quipus survived the Spanish occupation, and most of those remaining are undecipherable, since, unfortunately, the art of reading quipus has been lost. ^299600342 ##### ^299110280 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=1997 ###### ^299110280q The Mesopotamians eventually started to want to write down things other than monotonous mathematical data. Between 3000 BC and 2500 BC more and more signs were added to the Sumerian system, gradually transforming it into a full script that we today call cuneiform. ^299110280 ##### ^299110281 highlight_tags:: [[pink]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2007 ###### ^299110281q tax registries and complex bureaucracies were born together ^299110281 ##### ^299110282 highlight_tags:: [[favorite]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2012 ###### ^299110282q Exactly how the brain does it remains a mystery, but we all know that the brain’s retrieval system is amazingly efficient, except when you are trying to remember where you put your car keys. ^299110282 ##### ^299110283 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2031 ###### ^299110283q What set apart Sumer, as well as pharaonic Egypt, ancient China and the Inca Empire, is that these cultures developed good techniques of archiving, cataloguing and retrieving written records. ^299110283 ##### ^299110284 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2054 ###### ^299110284q As everyone from ancient times till today knows, clerks and accountants think in a non-human fashion. They think like filing cabinets. This is not their fault. If they don’t think that way their drawers will all get mixed up and they won’t be able to provide the services their government, company or organisation requires. ^299110284 ##### ^299110285 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2056 ###### ^299110285q The most important impact of script on human history is precisely this: it has gradually changed the way humans think and view the world. ^299110285 ##### ^299110286 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2061 ###### ^299110286q This partial script was composed of ten signs, representing the numbers from 0 to 9. Confusingly, these signs are known as Arabic numerals even though they were first invented by the Hindus ^299110286 ##### ^299110287 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2077 ###### ^299110287q Experts do their best to translate even ideas such as ‘poverty’, ‘happiness’ and ‘honesty’ into numbers (‘the poverty line’, ‘subjective well-being levels’, ‘credit rating’). ^299110287 #### 8 There is No Justice in History ##### ^299110289 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2101 ###### ^299110289q Many of those who signed the Declaration of Independence were slaveholders. They did not release their slaves upon signing the Declaration, nor did they consider themselves hypocrites. In their view, the rights of men had little to do with Negroes. ^299110289 ##### ^299110290 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2106 ###### ^299110290q Liberty, too, carried very different connotations than it does today. In 1776, it did not mean that the disempowered (certainly not blacks or Indians or, God forbid, women) could gain and exercise power. It meant simply that the state could not, except in unusual circumstances, confiscate a citizen’s private property or tell him what to do with it. ^299110290 ##### ^299110291 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2108 ###### ^299110291q The American order thereby upheld the hierarchy of wealth, which some thought was mandated by God and others viewed as representing the immutable laws of nature. ^299110291 ##### ^299110292 highlight_tags:: [[pink]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2110 Big decision to address woman later ###### ^299110292q All the above-mentioned distinctions – between free persons and slaves, between whites and blacks, between rich and poor – are rooted in fictions. (The hierarchy of men and women will be discussed later.) ^299110292 ##### ^299110293 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2112 ###### ^299110293q many people who have viewed the hierarchy of free persons and slaves as natural and correct have argued that slavery is not a human invention. Hammurabi saw it as ordained by the gods. Aristotle argued that slaves have a ‘slavish nature’ whereas free people have a ‘free nature’. ^299110293 ##### ^299110294 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2125 ###### ^299110294q Hindus who adhere to the caste system believe that cosmic forces have made one caste superior to another. According to a famous Hindu creation myth, the gods fashioned the world out of the body of a primeval being, the Purusa. The sun was created from the Purusa’s eye, the moon from the Purusa’s brain, the Brahmins (priests) from its mouth, the Kshatriyas (warriors) from its arms, the Vaishyas (peasants and merchants) from its thighs, and the Shudras (servants) from its legs. ^299110294 ##### ^299110295 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2130 ###### ^299110295q The ancient Chinese believed that when the goddess Nü Wa created humans from earth, she kneaded aristocrats from fine yellow soil, whereas commoners were formed from brown mud. ^299110295 ##### ^299110296 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2137 ###### ^299110296q Most people claim that their social hierarchy is natural and just, while those of other societies are based on false and ridiculous criteria. ^299110296 ##### ^299110297 highlight_tags:: [[pink]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2144 ###### ^299110297q Of course not all hierarchies are morally identical, and some societies suffered from more extreme types of discrimination than others, ^299110297 ##### ^299110298 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2145 ###### ^299110298q yet scholars know of no large society that has been able to dispense with discrimination altogether. ^299110298 ##### ^299110299 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2148 ###### ^299110299q Hierarchies serve an important function. They enable complete strangers to know how to treat one another without wasting the time and energy needed to become personally acquainted. ^299110299 ##### ^299110300 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2155 ###### ^299110300q most abilities have to be nurtured and developed. Even if somebody is born with a particular talent, that talent will usually remain latent if it is not fostered, honed and exercised. Not all people get the same chance to cultivate and refine their abilities. ^299110300 ##### ^299110301 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2169 ###### ^299110301q In most cases the hierarchy originated as the result of a set of accidental historical circumstances and was then perpetuated and refined over many generations as different groups developed vested interests in it. ^299110301 ##### ^299110307 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2171 ###### ^299110307q many scholars surmise that the Hindu caste system took shape when Indo-Aryan people invaded the Indian subcontinent about 3,000 years ago, subjugating the local population. ... they divided the population into castes, each of which was required to pursue a specific occupation or perform a specific role in society. Each had different legal status, privileges and duties. Mixing of castes – social interaction, marriage, even the sharing of meals – was prohibited. And the distinctions were not just legal – they became an inherent part of religious mythology and practice. The rulers argued that the caste system reflected an eternal cosmic reality rather than a chance historical development. ^299110307 ##### ^299110304 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2187 ###### ^299110304q Castes were not immune to change. In fact, as time went by, large castes were divided into sub-castes. Eventually the original four castes turned into 3,000 different groupings called jati (literally ‘birth’). ^299110304 ##### ^299110305 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2213 ###### ^299110305q Theologians argued that Africans descend from Ham, son of Noah, saddled by his father with a curse that his offspring would be slaves. ^299110305 ##### ^299523047 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2217 ###### ^299523047q In the early nineteenth century imperial Britain outlawed slavery and stopped the Atlantic slave trade, and in the decades that followed slavery was gradually outlawed throughout the American continent. Notably, this was the first and only time in history that a large number of slaveholding societies voluntarily abolished slavery. But, even though the slaves were freed, the racist myths that justified slavery persisted. Separation of the races was maintained by racist legislation and social custom. ^299523047 ##### ^299110306 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2219 ###### ^299110306q Notably, this was the first and only time in history that a large number of slaveholding societies voluntarily abolished slavery. But, even though the slaves were freed, the racist myths that justified slavery persisted. Separation of the races was maintained by racist legislation and social custom. ^299110306 ##### ^299523048 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2249 ###### ^299523048q Clennon King, a black student who applied to the University of Mississippi in 1958, was forcefully committed to a mental asylum. The presiding judge ruled that a black person must surely be insane to think that he could be admitted to the University of Mississippi. ^299523048 ##### ^299523056 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2332 ###### ^299523056q According to one theory, insect wings evolved millions of years ago from body protrusions on flightless bugs. Bugs with bumps had a larger surface area than those without bumps, and this enabled them to absorb more sunlight and thus stay warmer. ... Some insects started using the things to glide, and from there it was a small step to wings that could actually propel the bug through the air. ^299523056 ##### ^299523051 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2398 ###### ^299523051q even though the precise definition of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ varies between cultures, there is some universal biological reason why almost all cultures valued manhood over womanhood. We do not know what this reason is. There are plenty of theories, none of them convincing. ^299523051 ##### ^299523052 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2404 ###### ^299523052q ‘men are stronger than women’ is true only on average, and only with regard to certain types of strength. Women are generally more resistant to hunger, disease and fatigue than men. There are also many women who can run faster and lift heavier weights than many men. ^299523052 ##### ^299523053 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2406 ###### ^299523053q women have, throughout history, been excluded mainly from jobs that require little physical effort (such as the priesthood, law and politics), while engaging in hard manual labour in the fields, in crafts and in the household. If social power were divided in direct relation to physical strength or stamina, women should have got far more of it. ^299523053 ##### ^299523054 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2409 ###### ^299523054q there simply is no direct relation between physical strength and social power among humans. ^299523054 ##### ^299523055 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2416 ###### ^299523055q Even among chimpanzees, the alpha male wins his position by building a stable coalition with other males and females, not through mindless violence. ^299523055 ##### ^299572961 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2451 ###### ^299572961q The militarily incompetent Augustus succeeded in establishing a stable imperial regime, achieving something that eluded both Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, who were much better generals. Both his admiring contemporaries and modern historians often attribute this feat to his virtue of clementia – mildness and clemency. ^299572961 ##### ^299572962 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2475 ###### ^299572962q Bonobo and elephant societies are controlled by strong networks of cooperative females, while the self-centred and uncooperative males are pushed to the sidelines. Though bonobo females are weaker on average than the males, the females often gang up to beat males who overstep their limits. ^299572962 ##### ^299572963 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2492 ###### ^299572963q These dramatic changes are precisely what makes the history of gender so bewildering. If, as is being demonstrated today so clearly, the patriarchal system has been based on unfounded myths rather than on biological facts, what accounts for the universality and stability of this system? ^299572963 ### Part Three The Unification of Humankind #### 9 The Arrow of History ##### ^299572966 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2504 ###### ^299572966q 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’. ^299572966 ##### ^299572967 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2515 ###### ^299572967q every man-made order is packed with internal contradictions. Cultures are constantly trying to reconcile these contradictions, and this process fuels change. ^299572967 ##### ^299572968 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2529 ###### ^299572968q Ever since the French Revolution, people throughout the world have gradually come to see both social equality and individual freedom as fundamental values. ^299572968 ##### ^299572969 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2530 ###### ^299572969q Equality can be ensured only by curtailing the freedoms of those who are better off. Guaranteeing that every individual will be free to do as he wishes inevitably short-changes equality. ^299572969 ##### ^299573071 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2544 ###### ^299573071q If tensions, conflicts and irresolvable dilemmas are the spice of every culture, a human being who belongs to any particular culture must hold contradictory beliefs and be riven by incompatible values. ... Cognitive dissonance is often considered a failure of the human psyche. In fact, it is a vital asset. Had people been unable to hold contradictory beliefs and values, it would probably have been impossible to establish and maintain any human culture. ^299573071 ##### ^299572972 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2560 ###### ^299572972q Perceiving the direction of history is really a question of vantage point. When we adopt the proverbial bird’s-eye view of history, which examines developments in terms of decades or centuries, it’s hard to say whether history moves in the direction of unity or of diversity. However, to understand long-term processes the bird’s-eye view is too myopic. We would do better to adopt instead the viewpoint of a cosmic spy satellite, which scans millennia rather than centuries. From such a vantage point it becomes crystal clear that history is moving relentlessly towards unity. ^299572972 ##### ^300574924 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2570 ###### ^300574924q For 12,000 years, nobody else knew the Tasmanians were there, and they didn’t know that there was anyone else in the world. ^300574924 ##### ^300574925 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2574 ###### ^300574925q In AD 378, the Roman emperor Valence was defeated and killed by the Goths at the battle of Adrianople. In the same year, King Chak Tok Ich’aak of Tikal was defeated and killed by the army of Teotihuacan. (Tikal was an important Mayan city state, while Teotihuacan was then the largest city in America, with almost 250,000 inhabitants – of the same order of magnitude as its contemporary, Rome.) ^300574925 ##### ^300574926 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2616 ###### ^300574926q Tomatoes, chilli peppers and cocoa are all Mexican in origin; they reached Europe and Asia only after the Spaniards conquered Mexico. Julius Caesar and Dante Alighieri never twirled tomato-drenched spaghetti on their forks (even forks hadn’t been invented yet), William Tell never tasted chocolate, and Buddha never spiced up his food with chilli. ^300574926 ##### ^300574927 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2620 ###### ^300574927q Native American horsemen were not the defenders of some ancient, authentic culture. Instead, they were the product of a major military and political revolution that swept the plains of western North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a consequence of the arrival of European horses. In 1492 there were no horses in America. ^300574927 ##### ^300574928 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2633 ###### ^300574928q Homo sapiens evolved to think of people as divided into us and them. ‘Us’ was the group immediately around you, whoever you were, and ‘them’ was everyone else. ^300574928 ##### ^300574943 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2643 ###### ^300574943q The first millennium BC witnessed the appearance of three potentially universal orders, whose devotees could for the first time imagine the entire world and the entire human race as a single unit governed by a single set of laws. ... The first universal order to appear was economic: the monetary order. The second universal order was political: the imperial order. The third universal order was religious: ^300574943 ##### ^300574931 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2648 ###### ^300574931q Merchants, conquerors and prophets were the first people who managed to transcend the binary evolutionary division, ‘us vs them’, ^300574931 ##### ^300585573 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2664 ###### ^300585573q when an Aztec wanted to buy something, he generally paid in cocoa beans or bolts of cloth. ^300585573 ##### ^300585574 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2665 ###### ^300585574q When the natives questioned Cortés as to why the Spaniards had such a passion for gold, the conquistador answered, ‘Because I and my companions suffer from a disease of the heart which can be cured only with gold.’ ^300585574 ##### ^308153757 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2700 ###### ^308153757q barter is effective only when exchanging a limited range of products. It cannot form the basis for a complex economy. ^308153757 ##### ^308153758 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2713 ###### ^308153758q In a barter economy, every day the shoemaker and the apple grower will have to learn anew the relative prices of dozens of commodities. If one hundred different commodities are traded in the market, then buyers and sellers will have to know 4,950 different exchange rates. And if 1,000 different commodities are traded, buyers and sellers must juggle 499,500 different exchange rates! ^308153758 ##### ^308153759 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2725 ###### ^308153759q Money was created many times in many places. Its development required no technological breakthroughs – it was a purely mental revolution. It involved the creation of a new inter-subjective reality that exists solely in people’s shared imagination. ^308153759 ##### ^308153760 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2727 ###### ^308153760q Money is anything that people are willing to use in order to represent systematically the value of other things for the purpose of exchanging goods and services. ^308153760 ##### ^308153761 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2744 ###### ^308153761q the sum total of coins and banknotes is less than $6 trillion.7 More than 90 per cent of all money – more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts – exists only on computer servers. ^308153761 ##### ^308153762 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2754 ###### ^308153762q Money is thus a universal medium of exchange that enables people to convert almost everything into almost anything else. ^308153762 ##### ^308153763 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2780 ###### ^308153763q money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised. What created this trust was a very complex and long-term network of political, social and economic relations. ^308153763 ##### ^308153776 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2809 ###### ^308153776q Unlike the barley sila, the silver shekel had no inherent value. ... When they are used for anything, silver and gold are made into jewellery, crowns and other status symbols – luxury goods that members of a particular culture identify with high social status. Their value is purely cultural. ^308153776 ##### ^308153766 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2823 ###### ^308153766q counterfeiting money has always been considered a much more serious crime than other acts of deception. Counterfeiting is not just cheating – it’s a breach of sovereignty, an act of subversion against the power, privileges and person of the king. The legal term is lese-majesty (violating majesty), and was typically punished by torture and death. ^308153766 ##### ^308153767 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2839 ###### ^308153767q The Indians had such a strong confidence in the denarius and the image of the emperor that when local rulers struck coins of their own they closely imitated the denarius, down to the portrait of the Roman emperor! The name ‘denarius’ became a generic name for coins. Muslim caliphs Arabicised this name and issued ‘dinars’. The dinar is still the official name of the currency in Jordan, Iraq, Serbia, Macedonia, Tunisia and several other countries. ^308153767 ##### ^308153768 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2848 ###### ^308153768q People continued to speak mutually incomprehensible languages, obey different rulers and worship distinct gods, but all believed in gold and silver and in gold and silver coins. ^308153768 ##### ^308153769 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2860 ###### ^308153769q Merchants travelling between India and the Mediterranean would notice the difference in the value of gold. In order to make a profit, they would buy gold cheaply in India and sell it dearly in the Mediterranean. Consequently, the demand for gold in India would skyrocket, as would its value. At the same time the Mediterranean would experience an influx of gold, whose value would consequently drop. Within a short time the value of gold in India and the Mediterranean would be quite similar. The mere fact that Mediterranean people believed in gold would cause Indians to start believing in it as well. Even if Indians still had no real use for gold, the fact that Mediterranean people wanted it would be enough to make the Indians value it. ^308153769 ##### ^308153770 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2874 ###### ^308153770q Money is based on two universal principles: a. Universal convertibility: with money as an alchemist, you can turn land into loyalty, justice into health, and violence into knowledge. b. Universal trust: with money as a go-between, any two people can cooperate on any project. ^308153770 ##### ^308153771 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2878 ###### ^308153771q When everything is convertible, and when trust depends on anonymous coins and cowry shells, it corrodes local traditions, intimate relations and human values, replacing them with the cold laws of supply and demand. ^308153771 ##### ^308153772 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2888 ###### ^308153772q although money builds universal trust between strangers, this trust is invested not in humans, communities or sacred values, but in money itself and in the impersonal systems that back it. We do not trust the stranger, or the next-door neighbour – we trust the coin they hold. If they run out of coins, we run out of trust. As money brings down the dams of community, religion and state, the world is in danger of becoming one big and rather heartless marketplace. ^308153772 ##### ^308153777 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2905 ###### ^308153777q A small, insignificant mountain town called Numantia, inhabited by the peninsula’s native Celts, had dared to throw off the Roman yoke. ... in 134 BC, Roman patience snapped. The Senate decided to send Scipio Aemilianus, Rome’s foremost general and the man who had levelled Carthage, to take care of the Numantians. ... he encircled Numantia with a line of fortifications, blocking the town’s contact with the outside world. Hunger did his work for him. After more than a year, the food supply ran out. When the Numantians realised that all hope was lost, they burned down their town; according to Roman accounts, most of them killed themselves so as not to become Roman slaves. ^308153777 ##### ^308475511 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2942 ###### ^308475511q An empire need not emerge from military conquest. The Athenian Empire began its life as a voluntary league, and the Habsburg Empire was born in wedlock, cobbled together by a string of shrewd marriage alliances. Nor must an empire be ruled by an autocratic emperor. The British Empire, the largest empire in history, was ruled by a democracy. ^308475511 ##### ^308475512 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2949 ###### ^308475512q the Aztec Empire, if we can trust its taxation records, ruled 371 different tribes and peoples. ^308475512 ##### ^308475513 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2987 ###### ^308475513q When the Romans invaded Scotland in AD 83, they were met by fierce resistance from local Caledonian tribes, and reacted by laying waste to the country. In reply to Roman peace offers, the chieftain Calgacus called the Romans ‘the ruffians of the world’, and said that ‘to plunder, slaughter and robbery they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert and call it peace’. ^308475513 ##### ^308475514 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=2993 ###### ^308475514q A significant proportion of humanity’s cultural achievements owe their existence to the exploitation of conquered populations. The profits and prosperity brought by Roman imperialism provided Cicero, Seneca and St Augustine with the leisure and wherewithal to think and write; the Taj Mahal could not have been built without the wealth accumulated by Mughal exploitation of their Indian subjects; and the Habsburg Empire’s profits from its rule over its Slavic, Hungarian and Romanian-speaking provinces paid Haydn’s salaries and Mozart’s commissions. ^308475514 ##### ^308475515 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3018 ###### ^308475515q The kings of Assyria always remained the kings of Assyria. Even when they claimed to rule the entire world, it was obvious that they were doing it for the greater glory of Assyria, and they were not apologetic about it. Cyrus, on the other hand, claimed not merely to rule the whole world, but to do so for the sake of all people. ‘We are conquering you for your own benefit,’ said the Persians. Cyrus wanted the peoples he subjected to love him and to count themselves lucky to be Persian vassals. The most famous example of Cyrus’ innovative efforts to gain the approbation of a nation living under the thumb of his empire was his command that the Jewish exiles in Babylonia be allowed to return to their Judaean homeland and rebuild their temple. He even offered them financial assistance. Cyrus did not see himself as a Persian king ruling over Jews – he was also the king of the Jews, and thus responsible for their welfare. ^308475515 ##### ^308475516 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3029 ###### ^308475516q In the language of the Dinka people of the Sudan, ‘Dinka’ simply means ‘people’. People who are not Dinka are not people. The Dinka’s bitter enemies are the Nuer. What does the word Nuer mean in Nuer language? It means ‘original people’. Thousands of miles from the Sudan deserts, in the frozen ice-lands of Alaska and north-eastern Siberia, live the Yupiks. What does Yupik mean in Yupik language? It means ‘real people’. ^308475516 ##### ^308475517 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3041 ###### ^308475517q According to traditional Chinese political theory, Heaven (Tian) is the source of all legitimate authority on earth. Heaven chooses the most worthy person or family and gives them the Mandate of Heaven. This person or family then rules over All Under Heaven (Tianxia) for the benefit of all its inhabitants. Thus, a legitimate authority is – by definition – universal. ^308475517 ##### ^308475518 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3051 ###### ^308475518q In contradiction to the modern Western view that a just world is composed of separate nation states, in China periods of political fragmentation were seen as dark ages of chaos and injustice. ^308475518 ##### ^308475519 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3060 ###### ^308475519q empires have justified their actions – whether road-building or bloodshed – as necessary to spread a superior culture from which the conquered benefit even more than the conquerors. ^308475519 ##### ^308475520 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3065 ###### ^308475520q The Mandate of Heaven was bestowed upon the emperor not in order to exploit the world, but in order to educate humanity. The Romans, too, justified their dominion by arguing that they were endowing the barbarians with peace, justice and refinement. ^308475520 ##### ^308475521 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3112 ###### ^308475521q The empire’s new citizens adopted Roman imperial culture with such zest that, for centuries and even millennia after the empire itself collapsed, they continued to speak the empire’s language, to live by the empire’s laws and to believe in the Christian God that the empire had adopted from one of its Levantine provinces. ^308475521 ##### ^308475522 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3126 ###### ^308475522q The ultimate achievement of the Chinese Empire is that it is still alive and kicking, yet it is hard to see it as an empire except in outlying areas such as Tibet and Xinjiang. More than 90 per cent of the population of China are seen by themselves and by others as Han. ^308475522 ##### ^308475523 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3132 When a successful empire falls in name it doesnt truly fall, as its culture lives on in the people who are now "free" but choose to continue the culture of the empire ###### ^308475523q The Imperial Cycle ^308475523 ##### ^308475524 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3146 ###### ^308475524q All human cultures are at least in part the legacy of empires and imperial civilisations, and no academic or political surgery can cut out the imperial legacies without killing the patient. ^308475524 ##### ^308475525 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3150 ###### ^308475525q many Indians adopted, with the zest of converts, Western ideas such as self-determination and human rights, and were dismayed when the British refused to live up to their own declared values by granting native Indians either equal rights as British subjects or independence. ^308475525 ### 12 #### The Law of Religion ##### ^308475527 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3215 ###### ^308475527q Since all social orders and hierarchies are imagined, they are all fragile, and the larger the society, the more fragile it is. The crucial historical role of religion has been to give superhuman legitimacy to these fragile structures. ^308475527 ##### ^308475624 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3219 ###### ^308475624q Religion can thus be defined as a system of human norms and values that is founded on a belief in a superhuman order. This involves two distinct criteria: 1. Religion is an entire system of norms and values, rather than an isolated custom or belief. Knocking on wood for good luck isn’t a religion. Even a belief in reincarnation does not constitute a religion, as long as it does not validate certain behavioral standards. 2. To be considered a religion, the system of norms and values must claim to be based on superhuman laws rather than on human decisions. ... In order to unite under its aegis a large expanse of territory inhabited by disparate groups of human beings, a religion must possess two further qualities. First, it must espouse a universal superhuman order that is true always and everywhere. Second, it must insist on spreading this belief to everyone. ^308475624 ##### ^308475530 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3230 ###### ^308475530q the majority of ancient religions were local and exclusive. Their followers believed in local deities and spirits, and had no interest in converting the entire human race. ^308475530 ##### ^308475531 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3244 ###### ^308475531q The fact that man hunted sheep did not make sheep inferior to man, just as the fact that tigers hunted man did not make man inferior to tigers. Beings communicated with one another directly and negotiated the rules governing their shared habitat. In contrast, farmers owned and manipulated plants and animals, and could hardly degrade themselves by negotiating with their possessions. ^308475531 ##### ^308475532 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3254 ###### ^308475532q Much of ancient mythology is in fact a legal contract in which humans promise everlasting devotion to the gods in exchange for mastery over plants and animals ^308475532 ##### ^308475533 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3265 ###### ^308475533q Animism did not entirely disappear at the advent of polytheism. Demons, fairies, ghosts, holy rocks, holy springs and holy trees remained an integral part of almost all polytheist religions. ^308475533 ##### ^308819695 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3269 ###### ^308819695q Animists thought that humans were just one of many creatures inhabiting the world. Polytheists, on the other hand, increasingly saw the world as a reflection of the relationship between gods and humans. Our prayers, our sacrifices, our sins and our good deeds determined the fate of the entire ecosystem. ^308819695 ##### ^308819698 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3284 ###### ^308819698q The fundamental insight of polytheism, which distinguishes it from monotheism, is that the supreme power governing the world is devoid of interests and biases, and therefore it is unconcerned with the mundane desires, cares and worries of humans. ^308819698 ##### ^308819699 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3290 ###### ^308819699q some Hindus, known as Sadhus or Sannyasis, devote their lives to uniting with Atman, thereby achieving enlightenment. ^308819699 ##### ^308819700 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3294 ###### ^308819700q Precisely because their powers are partial rather than all-encompassing, gods such as Ganesha, Lakshmi and Saraswati have interests and biases. Humans can therefore make deals with these partial powers and rely on their help in order to win wars and recuperate from illness. ^308819700 ##### ^308819701 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3298 ###### ^308819701q Since polytheists believe, on the one hand, in one supreme and completely disinterested power, and on the other hand in many partial and biased powers, there is no difficulty for the devotees of one god to accept the existence and efficacy of other gods. Polytheism is inherently open-minded, and rarely persecutes ‘heretics’ and ‘infidels’. ^308819701 ##### ^308819702 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3308 ###### ^308819702q The Roman Empire did not require the Christians to give up their beliefs and rituals, but it did expect them to pay respect to the empire’s protector gods and to the divinity of the emperor. This was seen as a declaration of political loyalty. ^308819702 ##### ^308819747 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3311 ###### ^308819747q In the 300 years from the crucifixion of Christ to the conversion of Emperor Constantine, polytheistic Roman emperors initiated no more than four general persecutions of Christians. ... in these three centuries, the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians. ^308819747 ##### ^308819705 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3324 ###### ^308819705q On 23 August 1572, French Catholics who stressed the importance of good deeds attacked communities of French Protestants who highlighted God’s love for humankind. In this attack, the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered in less than twenty-four hours. When the pope in Rome heard the news from France, he was so overcome by joy that he organised festive prayers to celebrate the occasion and commissioned Giorgio Vasari to decorate one of the Vatican’s rooms with a fresco of the massacre ^308819705 ##### ^308819706 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3340 ###### ^308819706q Judaism, for example, argued that the supreme power of the universe has interests and biases, yet His chief interest is in the tiny Jewish nation and in the obscure land of Israel. ^308819706 ##### ^308819707 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3361 ###### ^308819707q Today most people outside East Asia adhere to one monotheist religion or another, and the global political order is built on monotheistic foundations. ^308819707 ##### ^308819708 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3363 ###### ^308819708q In theory, once a person believes that the supreme power of the universe has interests and biases, what’s the point in worshipping partial powers? Who would want to approach a lowly bureaucrat when the president’s office is open to you? ^308819708 ##### ^308819709 highlight_tags:: [[favorite]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3378 ###### ^308819709q The Christian saints did not merely resemble the old polytheistic gods. Often they were these very same gods in disguise. For example, the chief goddess of Celtic Ireland prior to the coming of Christianity was Brigid. When Ireland was Christianised, Brigid too was baptised. She became St Brigit, who to this day is the most revered saint in Catholic Ireland. ^308819709 ##### ^308819710 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3382 ###### ^308819710q Dualistic religions espouse the existence of two opposing powers: good and evil. ^308819710 ##### ^308819711 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3383 ###### ^308819711q Unlike monotheism, dualism believes that evil is an independent power, neither created by the good God, nor subordinate to it. Dualism explains that the entire universe is a battleground between these two forces, and that everything that happens in the world is part of the struggle. ^308819711 ##### ^308819712 highlight_tags:: [[qa]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3386 What is the problem of evil? ###### ^308819712q ‘Why is there evil in the world? Why is there suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people?’ Monotheists ^308819712 ##### ^308819713 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3394 ###### ^308819713q For dualists, it’s easy to explain evil. Bad things happen even to good people because the world is not governed single-handedly by a good God. There is an independent evil power loose in the world. The evil power does bad things. ^308819713 ##### ^308819714 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3396 ###### ^308819714q Dualism has its own drawbacks. While solving the Problem of Evil, it is unnerved by the Problem of Order. If the world was created by a single God, it’s clear why it is such an orderly place, where everything obeys the same laws. But if Good and Evil battle for control of the world, who enforces the laws governing this cosmic war? ^308819714 ##### ^308819715 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3400 ###### ^308819715q monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe – and He’s evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief. ^308819715 ##### ^308819716 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3405 ###### ^308819716q Zoroastrians saw the world as a cosmic battle between the good god Ahura Mazda and the evil god Angra Mainyu. Humans had to help the good god in this battle. Zoroastrianism was an important religion during the Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–330 BC) and later became the official religion of the Sassanid Persian Empire (AD 224–651). ^308819716 ##### ^308819717 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3413 ###### ^308819717q Nevertheless, the rising tide of monotheism did not really wipe out dualism. Jewish, Christian and Muslim monotheism absorbed numerous dualist beliefs and practices, and some of the most basic ideas of what we call ‘monotheism’ are, in fact, dualist in origin and spirit. ^308819717 ##### ^308819718 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3418 ###### ^308819718q humans have a wonderful capacity to believe in contradictions. ^308819718 ##### ^308819719 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3421 ###### ^308819719q Another key dualistic concept, particularly in Gnosticism and Manichaeanism, was the sharp distinction between body and soul, between matter and spirit. Gnostics and Manichaeans argued that the good god created the spirit and the soul, whereas matter and bodies are the creation of the evil god. Man, according to this view, serves as a battleground between the good soul and the evil body. ^308819719 ##### ^308819720 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3427 ###### ^308819720q Belief in heaven (the realm of the good god) and hell (the realm of the evil god) was also dualist in origin. ^308819720 ##### ^308819721 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3430 ###### ^308819721q The average Christian believes in the monotheist God, but also in the dualist Devil, in polytheist saints, and in animist ghosts. ^308819721 ##### ^308819722 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3433 ###### ^308819722q Syncretism might, in fact, be the single great world religion. ^308819722 ##### ^308819723 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3436 ###### ^308819723q During the first millennium BC, religions of an altogether new kind began to spread through Afro-Asia. The newcomers, such as Jainism and Buddhism in India, Daoism and Confucianism in China, and Stoicism, Cynicism and Epicureanism in the Mediterranean basin, were characterised by their disregard of gods. ^308819723 ##### ^308819724 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3440 ###### ^308819724q Some of these natural-law religions continued to espouse the existence of gods, but their gods were subject to the laws of nature no less than humans, animals and plants were. ^308819724 ##### ^308819748 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3443 ###### ^308819748q The central figure of Buddhism is not a god but a human being, Siddhartha Gautama. ... Gautama’s insight was that no matter what the mind experiences, it usually reacts with craving, and craving always involves dissatisfaction. When the mind experiences something distasteful it craves to be rid of the irritation. When the mind experiences something pleasant, it craves that the pleasure will remain and will intensify. Therefore, the mind is always dissatisfied and restless. ^308819748 ##### ^308819727 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3469 ###### ^308819727q If, when the mind experiences something pleasant or unpleasant, it simply understands things as they are, then there is no suffering. If you experience sadness without craving that the sadness go away, you continue to feel sadness but you do not suffer from it. There can actually be richness in the sadness. If you experience joy without craving that the joy linger and intensify, you continue to feel joy without losing your peace of mind. ^308819727 ##### ^308819728 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3478 ###### ^308819728q state of perfect contentment and serenity, known as nirvana (the literal meaning of which is ‘extinguishing the fire’). ^308819728 ##### ^308819729 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3482 ###### ^308819729q Gautama himself attained nirvana and was fully liberated from suffering. Henceforth he was known as ‘Buddha’, which means ‘The Enlightened One’. ^308819729 ##### ^308819730 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3483 ###### ^308819730q Buddha spent the rest of his life explaining his discoveries to others so that everyone could be freed from suffering. He encapsulated his teachings in a single law: suffering arises from craving; the only way to be fully liberated from suffering is to be fully liberated from craving; and the only way to be liberated from craving is to train the mind to experience reality as it is. This law, known as dharma or dhamma, is seen by Buddhists as a universal law of nature. ^308819730 ##### ^308819731 highlight_tags:: [[favorite]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3489 ###### ^308819731q The first principle of monotheist religions is ‘God exists. What does He want from me?’ The first principle of Buddhism is ‘Suffering exists. How do I escape it?’ ^308819731 ##### ^308819732 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3490 ###### ^308819732q Buddhism does not deny the existence of gods – they are described as powerful beings who can bring rains and victories – but they have no influence on the law that suffering arises from craving. If the mind of a person is free of all craving, no god can make him miserable. Conversely, once craving arises in a person’s mind, all the gods in the universe cannot save him from suffering. ^308819732 ##### ^308819733 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3495 ###### ^308819733q 99 per cent of Buddhists did not attain nirvana, and even if they hoped to do so in some future lifetime, they devoted most of their present lives to the pursuit of mundane achievements. So they continued to worship various gods, such as the Hindu gods in India, the Bon gods in Tibet, and the Shinto gods in Japan. ^308819733 ##### ^308819734 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3507 ###### ^308819734q the rise of a number of new natural-law religions, such as liberalism, Communism, capitalism, nationalism and Nazism. ^308819734 ##### ^308819735 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3512 ###### ^308819735q Whereas Buddhists believe that the law of nature was discovered by Siddhartha Gautama, Communists believed that the law of nature was discovered by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. ^308819735 ##### ^308819736 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3523 ###### ^308819736q Note the difference between ‘superhuman’ and ‘supernatural’. The Buddhist law of nature and the Marxist laws of history are superhuman, since they were not legislated by humans. Yet they are not supernatural.) ^308819736 ##### ^308819737 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3538 ###### ^308819737q Theist religions sanctify the gods. Humanist religions sanctify humanity, ^308819737 ##### ^308819738 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3544 ###### ^308819738q Today, the most important humanist sect is liberal humanism, which believes that ‘humanity’ is a quality of individual humans, and that the liberty of individuals is therefore sacrosanct. ^308819738 ##### ^308819739 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3551 ###### ^308819739q Attending gruesome executions was a favourite pastime for Londoners and Parisians in the era of Shakespeare and Molière. In today’s Europe, murder is seen as a violation of the sacred nature of humanity. ^308819739 ##### ^308819740 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3558 ###### ^308819740q Without recourse to eternal souls and a Creator God, it becomes embarrassingly difficult for liberals to explain what is so special about individual Sapiens. ^308819740 ##### ^308819741 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3559 ###### ^308819741q socialist humanism. Socialists believe that ‘humanity’ is collective rather than individualistic. ^308819741 ##### ^308819742 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3565 ###### ^308819742q The idea that all humans are equal is a revamped version of the monotheist conviction that all souls are equal before God. ^308819742 ##### ^308819749 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3566 ###### ^308819749q The only humanist sect that has actually broken loose from traditional monotheism is evolutionary humanism, whose most famous representatives were the Nazis. ... In contrast to other humanists, the Nazis believed that humankind is not something universal and eternal, but rather a mutable species that can evolve or degenerate. Man can evolve into superman, or degenerate into a subhuman. ^308819749 ### 13 The Secret of Success ##### ^310352567 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3658 ###### ^310352567q This is one of the distinguishing marks of history as an academic discipline – the better you know a particular historical period, the harder it becomes to explain why things happened one way and not another. ^310352567 ##### ^310352568 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3679 ###### ^310352568q Determinism is appealing because it implies that our world and our beliefs are a natural and inevitable product of history. ^310352568 ##### ^310352569 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3684 ###### ^310352569q Chaotic systems come in two shapes. Level one chaos is chaos that does not react to predictions about it. The weather, for example, is a level one chaotic system. Though it is influenced by myriad factors, we can build computer models that take more and more of them into consideration, and produce better and better weather forecasts. Level two chaos is chaos that reacts to predictions about it, and therefore can never be predicted accurately. Markets, for example, are a level two chaotic system. What will happen if we develop a computer program that forecasts with 100 per cent accuracy the price of oil tomorrow? The price of oil will immediately react to the forecast, which would consequently fail to materialise. ^310352569 ##### ^310352570 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3703 ###### ^310352570q So why study history? Unlike physics or economics, history is not a means for making accurate predictions. We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we imagine. ^310352570 ##### ^310352571 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3726 ###### ^310352571q organic evolution is based on the replication of organic information units called ‘genes’, so cultural evolution is based on the replication of cultural information units called ‘memes’.1 Successful cultures are those that excel in reproducing their memes, irrespective of the costs and benefits to their human hosts. ^310352571 ##### ^310352572 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3731 ###### ^310352572q Postmodernist thinkers speak about discourses rather than memes as the building blocks of culture. Yet they too see cultures as propagating themselves with little regard for the benefit of humankind. ^310352572 ##### ^310352573 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3744 ###### ^310352573q No matter what you call it – game theory, postmodernism or memetics – the dynamics of history are not directed towards enhancing human well-being. ^310352573 ##### ^310352574 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3824 ###### ^310352574q modern science differs from all previous traditions of knowledge in three critical ways: The willingness to admit ignorance. Modern science is based on the Latin injunction ignoramus – ‘we do not know’. It assumes that we don’t know everything. Even more critically, it accepts that the things that we think we know could be proven wrong as we gain more knowledge. No concept, idea or theory is sacred and beyond challenge. The centrality of observation and mathematics. Having admitted ignorance, modern science aims to obtain new knowledge. It does so by gathering observations and then using mathematical tools to connect these observations into comprehensive theories. The acquisition of new powers. Modern science is not content with creating theories. It uses these theories in order to acquire new powers, and in particular to develop new technologies. ^310352574 ##### ^310352592 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3838 ###### ^310352592q Ancient traditions of knowledge admitted only two kinds of ignorance. First, an individual might be ignorant of something important. To obtain the necessary knowledge, all he needed to do was ask somebody wiser. ... Second, an entire tradition might be ignorant of unimportant things. By definition, whatever the great gods or the wise people of the past did not bother to tell us was unimportant. ^310352592 ##### ^310352577 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3851 ###### ^310352577q In every age, even the most pious and conservative, there were people who argued that there were important things of which their entire tradition was ignorant. Yet such people were usually marginalised or persecuted – or else they founded a new tradition and began arguing that they knew everything there is to know. ^310352577 ##### ^310352578 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3863 ###### ^310352578q particular theories are supported so consistently by the available evidence, that all alternatives have long since fallen by the wayside. Such theories are accepted as true – yet everyone agrees that were new evidence to emerge that contradicts the theory, it would have to be revised or discarded. Good examples of these are the plate tectonics theory and the theory of evolution. ^310352578 ##### ^310352579 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3869 ###### ^310352579q Our current assumption that we do not know everything, and that even the knowledge we possess is tentative, extends to the shared myths that enable millions of strangers to cooperate effectively. If the evidence shows that many of those myths are doubtful, how can we hold society together? How can our communities, countries and international system function? ^310352579 ##### ^310352580 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3880 ###### ^310352580q One of the things that has made it possible for modern social orders to hold together is the spread of an almost religious belief in technology and in the methods of scientific research, which have replaced to some extent the belief in absolute truths. ^310352580 ##### ^310352581 highlight_tags:: [[qa]], [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3924 What is the law of large numbers and who invented it? ###### ^310352581q Jacob Bernoulli’s Law of Large Numbers. Bernoulli had codified the principle that while it might be difficult to predict with certainty a single event, such as the death of a particular person, it was possible to predict with great accuracy the average outcome of many similar events. ^310352581 ##### ^310352582 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3952 ###### ^310352582q In medieval Europe, logic, grammar and rhetoric formed the educational core, while the teaching of mathematics seldom went beyond simple arithmetic and geometry. Nobody studied statistics. The undisputed monarch of all sciences was theology. ^310352582 ##### ^310352583 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3967 ###### ^310352583q In 1620 Francis Bacon published a scientific manifesto titled The New Instrument. In it he argued that ‘knowledge is power’. The real test of ‘knowledge’ is not whether it is true, but whether it empowers us. Scientists usually assume that no theory is 100 per cent correct. Consequently, truth is a poor test for knowledge. The real test is utility. A theory that enables us to do new things constitutes knowledge. ^310352583 ##### ^310352584 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3974 ###### ^310352584q Prior to 1500, science and technology were totally separate fields. When Bacon connected the two in the early seventeenth century, it was a revolutionary idea. ^310352584 ##### ^310352585 highlight_tags:: [[pink]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=3982 Whats the difference? ###### ^310352585q people did develop new technologies, but these were usually created by uneducated craftsmen using trial and error, not by scholars pursuing systematic scientific research. ^310352585 ##### ^310352586 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4015 ###### ^310352586q Up until the nineteenth century, the vast majority of military revolutions were the product of organisational rather than technological changes. ^310352586 ##### ^310352587 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4021 Is organization not technological? ###### ^310352587q technologically speaking, Rome had no edge over Carthage, Macedonia or the Seleucid Empire. Its advantage rested on efficient organisation, iron discipline and huge manpower reserves. ^310352587 ##### ^310352588 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4029 ###### ^310352588q to the best of our knowledge, gunpowder was invented accidentally, by Daoist alchemists searching for the elixir of life. ^310352588 ##### ^310352593 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4042 ###### ^310352593q The Ideal of Progress Until the Scientific Revolution most human cultures did not believe in progress. They thought the golden age was in the past, and that the world was stagnant, if not deteriorating. Strict adherence to the wisdom of the ages might perhaps bring back the good old times, and human ingenuity might conceivably improve this or that facet of daily life. However, it was considered impossible for human know-how to overcome the world’s fundamental problems. ... Many faiths believed that some day a messiah would appear and end all wars, famines and even death itself. But the notion that humankind could do so by discovering new knowledge and inventing new tools was worse than ludicrous – it was hubris. The story of the Tower of Babel, the story of Icarus, the story of the Golem and countless other myths taught people that any attempt to go beyond human limitations would inevitably lead to disappointment and disaster. ^310352593 ##### ^310399325 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4084 ###### ^310399325q the Gilgamesh myth of ancient Sumer. Its hero is the strongest and most capable man in the world, King Gilgamesh of Uruk, who could defeat anyone in battle. One day, Gilgamesh’s best friend, Enkidu, died. Gilgamesh sat by the body and observed it for many days, until he saw a worm dropping out of his friend’s nostril. At that moment Gilgamesh was gripped by a terrible horror, and he resolved that he himself would never die. He would somehow find a way to defeat death. Gilgamesh then undertook a journey to the end of the universe, killing lions, battling scorpion-men and finding his way into the underworld. There he shattered the mysterious “stone things” of Urshanabi, the ferryman of the river of the dead, and found Utnapishtim, the last survivor of the primordial flood. Yet Gilgamesh failed in his quest. He returned home empty-handed, as mortal as ever, but with one new piece of wisdom. When the gods created man, Gilgamesh had learned, they set death as man’s inevitable destiny, and man must learn to live with it. ^310399325 ##### ^310399326 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4100 ###### ^310399326q People avoided the issue of death because the goal seemed too elusive. Why create unreasonable expectations? We’re now at a point, however, where we can be frank about it. The leading project of the Scientific Revolution is to give humankind eternal life. ^310399326 ##### ^310399708 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4123 ###### ^310399708q A good example is the family of King Edward I of England (1237–1307) and his wife, Queen Eleanor (1241–90). Their children enjoyed the best conditions and the most nurturing surroundings that could be provided in medieval Europe. ... The sources mention sixteen children that Queen Eleanor bore between 1255 and 1284: ... Edward, was the first of the boys to survive the dangerous years of childhood, ... it took Eleanor sixteen tries to carry out the most fundamental mission of an English queen – to provide her husband with a male heir. Edward II’s mother must have been a woman of exceptional patience and fortitude. Not so the woman Edward chose for his wife, Isabella of France. She had him murdered when he was forty-three. ^310399708 ##### ^310399331 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4159 ###### ^310399331q The only modern ideology that still awards death a central role is nationalism. In its more poetic and desperate moments, nationalism promises that whoever dies for the nation will forever live in its collective memory. Yet this promise is so fuzzy that even most nationalists do not really know what to make of it. ^310399331 ##### ^311187081 highlight_tags:: [[pink]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4210 Would science not select for whatever furthers understanding? ###### ^311187081q a liberal government, a Communist government, a Nazi government and a capitalist business corporation would use the very same scientific discovery for completely different purposes, and there is no scientific reason to prefer one usage over others. ^311187081 ##### ^311187082 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4217 ###### ^311187082q The feedback loop between science, empire and capital has arguably been history’s chief engine for the past 500 years. ^311187082 ### 15 The Marriage of Science and Empire ##### ^311187084 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4247 ###### ^311187084q Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, scurvy is estimated to have claimed the lives of about 2 million sailors. ^311187084 ##### ^311187085 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4251 ###### ^311187085q Lind did not know what the citrus fruits had that the sailors’ bodies lacked, but we now know that it is vitamin C. A typical shipboard diet at that time was notably lacking in foods that are rich in this essential nutrient. On long-range voyages sailors usually subsisted on biscuits and beef jerky, and ate almost no fruits or vegetables. The Royal Navy was not convinced by Lind’s experiments, but James Cook was. He resolved to prove the doctor right. He loaded his ship with a large quantity of sauerkraut and ordered his sailors to eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables whenever the expedition made landfall. Cook did not lose a single sailor to scurvy. ^311187085 ##### ^311187086 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4266 ###### ^311187086q In the century following the Cook expedition, the most fertile lands of Australia and New Zealand were taken from their previous inhabitants by European settlers. The native population dropped by up to 90 per cent and the survivors were subjected to a harsh regime of racial oppression. ^311187086 ##### ^311187087 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4270 ###### ^311187087q An even worse fate befell the natives of Tasmania. Having survived for 10,000 years in splendid isolation, they were almost exterminated within a century of Cook’s arrival. European settlers first drove them off the richest parts of the island, and then, coveting even the remaining wilderness, hunted them down and killed them systematically. Some of the last survivors were hounded into an evangelical concentration camp, where well-meaning but not particularly open-minded missionaries tried to indoctrinate them in the ways of the modern world. The Tasmanians were instructed in reading and writing, Christianity and various ‘productive skills’ such as sewing clothes and farming. But they refused to learn. They became ever more melancholic, stopped having children, lost all interest in life, and finally chose the only escape route from the modern world of science and progress – death. ^311187087 ##### ^311187088 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4298 ###### ^311187088q In 1775 Asia accounted for 80 per cent of the world economy. The combined economies of India and China alone represented two-thirds of global production. In comparison, Europe was an economic dwarf.3 The global centre of power shifted to Europe only between 1750 and 1850, when Europeans humiliated the Asian powers in a series of wars and conquered large parts of Asia. By 1900 Europeans firmly controlled the world’s economy and most of its territory. In 1950 western Europe and the United States together accounted for more than half of global production, whereas China’s portion had been reduced to 5 per cent. ^311187088 ##### ^311187089 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4335 ###### ^311187089q France and the United States quickly followed in Britain’s footsteps because the French and Americans already shared the most important British myths and social structures. The Chinese and Persians could not catch up as quickly because they thought and organised their societies differently. ^311187089 ##### ^311187090 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4364 ###### ^311187090q Both scientist and conqueror began by admitting ignorance – they both said, ‘I don’t know what’s out there.’ They both felt compelled to go out and make new discoveries. And they both hoped the new knowledge thus acquired would make them masters of the world. ^311187090 ##### ^311187091 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4376 ###### ^311187091q When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, he took 165 scholars with him. Among other things, they founded an entirely new discipline, Egyptology, and made important contributions to the study of religion, linguistics and botany. ^311187091 ##### ^311187108 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4387 ###### ^311187108q One day as they were training, the astronauts came across an old Native American. The man asked them what they were doing there. They replied that they were part of a research expedition that would shortly travel to explore the moon. When the old man heard that, he fell silent for a few moments, and then asked the astronauts if they could do him a favour. ... ‘the people of my tribe believe that holy spirits live on the moon. I was wondering if you could pass an important message to them from my people.’ ... When they returned to their base, the astronauts searched and searched until they found someone who could speak the tribal language, and asked him to translate the secret message. ... The man explained that the sentence they had memorised so carefully said, ‘Don’t believe a single word these people are telling you. They have come to steal your lands.’ ^311187108 ##### ^311187109 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4414 ###### ^311187109q Columbus believed he had reached a small island off the East Asian coast. ... Columbus stuck to this error for the rest of his life. The idea that he had discovered a completely unknown continent was inconceivable for him and for many of his generation. For thousands of years, not only the greatest thinkers and scholars but also the infallible Scriptures had known only Europe, Africa and Asia. Could they all have been wrong? Could the Bible have missed half the world? ^311187109 ##### ^311187098 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4458 ###### ^311187098q The closest precedents to the modern European empires were the ancient naval empires of Athens and Carthage, and the medieval naval empire of Majapahit, which held sway over much of Indonesia in the fourteenth century. ^311187098 ##### ^311187110 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4461 ###### ^311187110q Between 1405 and 1433, Zheng led seven huge armadas from China to the far reaches of the Indian Ocean. The largest of these comprised almost 300 ships and carried close to 30,000 people.7 They visited Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and East Africa. Chinese ships anchored in Jedda, the main harbour of the Hejaz, and in Malindi, on the Kenyan coast. ... Zheng He explored the oceans, and assisted pro-Chinese rulers, but he did not try to conquer or colonise the countries he visited. Moreover, the expeditions of Zheng He were not deeply rooted in Chinese politics and culture. When the ruling faction in Beijing changed during the 1430s, the new overlords abruptly terminated the operation. The great fleet was dismantled, crucial technical and geographical knowledge was lost, and no explorer of such stature and means ever set out again from a Chinese port. ^311187110 ##### ^311187101 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4474 Europeans had the audacity ###### ^311187101q The Zheng He expeditions prove that Europe did not enjoy an outstanding technological edge. What made Europeans exceptional was their unparalleled and insatiable ambition to explore and conquer. ^311187101 ##### ^311187102 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4502 Native Aztecs ###### ^311187102q (Native hygiene was far better than Spanish hygiene. When the Spaniards first arrived in Mexico, natives bearing incense burners were assigned to accompany them wherever they went. The Spaniards thought it was a mark of divine honour. We know from native sources that they found the newcomers’ smell unbearable.) ^311187102 ##### ^311187111 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4519 ###### ^311187111q The Aztecs allowed the aliens to march all the way to the capital, then respectfully led the aliens’ leader to meet Emperor Montezuma. In the middle of the interview, Cortés gave a signal, and steel-armed Spaniards butchered Montezuma’s bodyguards (who were armed only with wooden clubs, and stone blades). ... Cortés kept Montezuma captive in the palace, making it look as if the king remained free and in charge and as if the ‘Spanish ambassador’ were no more than a guest. ... This situation lasted for several months, during which time Cortés interrogated Montezuma and his attendants, trained translators in a variety of local languages, and sent small Spanish expeditions in all directions to become familiar with the Aztec Empire and the various tribes, peoples and cities that it ruled. The Aztec elite eventually revolted against Cortés and Montezuma, elected a new emperor, and drove the Spaniards from Tenochtitlan. ... The rebellious peoples provided Cortés with an army of tens of thousands of local troops, and with its help Cortés besieged Tenochtitlan and conquered the city. ... Within a century of the landing at Vera Cruz, the native population of the Americas had shrunk by about 90 per cent, due mainly to unfamiliar diseases that reached America with the invaders. ^311187111 ##### ^311259056 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4610 ###### ^311259056q Jones pointed out surprising similarities between Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language that became the sacred tongue of Hindu ritual, and the Greek and Latin languages, as well as similarities between all these languages and Gothic, Celtic, Old Persian, German, French and English. ^311259056 ##### ^311259057 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4624 ###### ^311259057q Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fewer than 5,000 British officials, about 40,000–70,000 British soldiers, and perhaps another 100,000 British business people, hangers-on, wives and children were sufficient to conquer and rule up to 300 million Indians. ^311259057 ### 16 The Capitalist Creed ##### ^313029652 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4727 ###### ^313029652q What enables banks – and the entire economy – to survive and flourish is our trust in the future. This trust is the sole backing for most of the money in the world. ^313029652 ##### ^313029653 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4748 ###### ^313029653q Credit arrangements of one kind or another have existed in all known human cultures, going back at least to ancient Sumer. The problem in previous eras was not that no one had the idea or knew how to use it. It was that people seldom wanted to extend much credit because they didn’t trust that the future would be better than the present. ^313029653 ##### ^313029659 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4785 ###### ^313029659q In 1776 the Scottish economist Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, ... Smith’s claim that the selfish human urge to increase private profits is the basis for collective wealth is one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history – revolutionary not just from an economic perspective, but even more so from a moral and political perspective. What Smith says is, in fact, that greed is good, and that by becoming richer I benefit everybody, not just myself. Egoism is altruism. ^313029659 ##### ^313029656 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4801 ###### ^313029656q Smith therefore repeated like a mantra the maxim that ‘When profits increase, the landlord or weaver will employ more assistants’ and not ‘When profits increase, Scrooge will hoard his money in a chest and take it out only to count his coins.’ A crucial part of the modern capitalist economy was the emergence of a new ethic, according to which profits ought to be reinvested in production. ^313029656 ##### ^313029657 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4814 ###### ^313029657q medieval noblemen espoused an ethic of generosity and conspicuous consumption. They spent their revenues on tournaments, banquets, palaces and wars, and on charity and monumental cathedrals. Few tried to reinvest profits in increasing their manors’ output, developing better kinds of wheat, or looking for new markets. ^313029657 ##### ^313029658 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4832 ###### ^313029658q Capitalism began as a theory about how the economy functions. It was both descriptive and prescriptive – it offered an account of how money worked and promoted the idea that reinvesting profits in production leads to fast economic growth. But capitalism gradually became far more than just an economic doctrine. It now encompasses an ethic – a set of teachings about how people should behave, educate their children and even think. Its principal tenet is that economic growth is the supreme good, or at least a proxy for the supreme good, because justice, freedom and even happiness all depend on economic growth. ^313029658 ##### ^315023005 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4855 ###### ^315023005q it was European imperialism that created the capitalist credit system in the first place. ^315023005 ##### ^315023006 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4859 ###### ^315023006q in the sociopolitical systems of China, India and the Muslim world, credit played only a secondary role. Merchants and bankers in the markets of Istanbul, Isfahan, Delhi and Beijing may have thought along capitalist lines, but the kings and generals in the palaces and forts tended to despise merchants and mercantile thinking. ^315023006 ##### ^315023007 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4886 ###### ^315023007q Europeans turned to limited liability joint-stock companies. Instead of a single investor betting all his money on a single rickety ship, the joint-stock company collected money from a large number of investors, each risking only a small portion of his capital. The risks were thereby curtailed, but no cap was placed on the profits. Even a small investment in the right ship could turn you into a millionaire. ^315023007 ##### ^316098110 highlight_tags:: [[c1]], [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4895 ###### ^316098110q In 1568 the Dutch, who were mainly Protestant, revolted against their Catholic Spanish overlord. At first the rebels seemed to play the role of Don Quixote, courageously tilting at invincible windmills. Yet within eighty years the Dutch had not only secured their independence from Spain, but had managed to replace the Spaniards and their Portuguese allies as masters of the ocean highways, build a global Dutch empire, and become the richest state in Europe. ^316098110 ##### ^316098111 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4939 ###### ^316098111q it was the Dutch merchants – not the Dutch state – who built the Dutch Empire. The king of Spain kept on trying to finance and maintain his conquests by raising unpopular taxes from a disgruntled populace. The Dutch merchants financed conquest by getting loans, and increasingly also by selling shares in their companies that entitled their holders to receive a portion of the company’s profits. ^316098111 ##### ^316098112 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4957 ###### ^316098112q in the early modern age it was common for private companies to hire not only soldiers, but also generals and admirals, cannons and ships, and even entire off-the-shelf armies. The international community took this for granted and didn’t raise an eyebrow when a private company established an empire. ^316098112 ##### ^316098113 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4960 ###### ^316098113q VOC ruled Indonesia for close to 200 years. Only in 1800 did the Dutch state assume control of Indonesia, making it a Dutch national colony for the following 150 years. ^316098113 ##### ^316098114 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4963 ###### ^316098114q While VOC operated in the Indian Ocean, the Dutch West Indies Company, or WIC, plied the Atlantic. In order to control trade on the important Hudson River, WIC built a settlement called New Amsterdam on an island at the river’s mouth. The colony was threatened by Native Americans and repeatedly attacked by the British, who eventually captured it in 1664. The British changed its name to New York. The remains of the wall built by WIC to defend its colony against Native Americans and British are today paved over by the world’s most famous street – Wall Street. ^316098114 ##### ^316098115 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=4994 ###### ^316098115q The Mississippi Bubble was one of history’s most spectacular financial crashes. The royal French financial system never recuperated fully from the blow. The way in which the Mississippi Company used its political clout to manipulate share prices and fuel the buying frenzy caused the public to lose faith in the French banking system and in the financial wisdom of the French king. Louis XV found it more and more difficult to raise credit. This became one of the chief reasons that the overseas French Empire fell into British hands. While the British could borrow money easily and at low interest rates, France had difficulties securing loans, and had to pay high interest on them. In order to finance his growing debts, the king of France borrowed more and more money at higher and higher interest rates. Eventually, in the 1780s, Louis XVI, who had ascended to the throne on his grandfather’s death, realised that half his annual budget was tied to servicing the interest on his loans, and that he was heading towards bankruptcy. Reluctantly, in 1789, Louis XVI convened the Estates General, the French parliament that had not met for a century and a half, in order to find a solution to the crisis. Thus began the French Revolution. ^316098115 ##### ^316098116 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5007 ###### ^316098116q the British East India Company. This company outperformed even the VOC. From its headquarters in Leadenhall Street, London, it ruled a mighty Indian empire for about a century, maintaining a huge military force of up to 350,000 soldiers, considerably outnumbering the armed forces of the British monarchy. Only in 1858 did the British crown nationalise India along with the company’s private army. ^316098116 ##### ^316347615 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5022 ###### ^316347615q In 1840 Britain duly declared war on China in the name of ‘free trade’. It was a walkover. The overconfident Chinese were no match for Britain’s new wonder weapons – steamboats, heavy artillery, rockets and rapid-fire rifles. Under the subsequent peace treaty, China agreed not to constrain the activities of British drug merchants and to compensate them for damages inflicted by the Chinese police. Furthermore, the British demanded and received control of Hong Kong, which they proceeded to use as a secure base for drug trafficking (Hong Kong remained in British hands until 1997). In the late nineteenth century, about 40 million Chinese, a tenth of the country’s population, were opium addicts. ^316347615 ##### ^316347616 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5030 ###### ^316347616q In 1881 Egyptian nationalists had had enough and rebelled. They declared a unilateral abrogation of all foreign debt. Queen Victoria was not amused. A year later she dispatched her army and navy to the Nile and Egypt remained a British protectorate until after World War Two. ^316347616 ##### ^316347617 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5037 ###### ^316347617q The value of Greek Rebellion Bonds rose and fell on the London stock exchange in tempo with military successes and failures on the battlefields of Hellas. The Turks gradually gained the upper hand. With a rebel defeat imminent, the bondholders faced the prospect of losing their trousers. The bondholders’ interest was the national interest, so the British organised an international fleet that, in 1827, sank the main Ottoman flotilla in the Battle of Navarino. After centuries of subjugation, Greece was finally free. But freedom came with a huge debt that the new country had no way of repaying. The Greek economy was mortgaged to British creditors for decades to come. ^316347617 ##### ^316347618 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5051 ###### ^316347618q An oil-rich country cursed with a despotic government, endemic warfare and a corrupt judicial system will usually receive a low credit rating. As a result, it is likely to remain relatively poor since it will not be able to raise the necessary capital to make the most of its oil bounty. A country devoid of natural resources, but which enjoys peace, a fair judicial system and a free government is likely to receive a high credit rating. As such, it may be able to raise enough cheap capital to support a good education system and foster a flourishing high-tech industry. ^316347618 ##### ^316347619 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5068 ###### ^316347619q The most important economic resource is trust in the future, and this resource is constantly threatened by thieves and charlatans. Markets by themselves offer no protection against fraud, theft and violence. It is the job of political systems to ensure trust by legislating sanctions against cheats and to establish and support police forces, courts and jails which will enforce the law. ^316347619 ##### ^316347620 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5085 ###### ^316347620q At the end of the Middle Ages, slavery was almost unknown in Christian Europe. During the early modern period, the rise of European capitalism went hand in hand with the rise of the Atlantic slave trade. Unrestrained market forces, rather than tyrannical kings or racist ideologues, were responsible for this calamity. ^316347620 ##### ^316347621 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5095 ###### ^316347621q Contract labourers would have produced a commodity too expensive for mass consumption. Sensitive to market forces, and greedy for profits and economic growth, European plantation owners switched to slaves. ^316347621 ##### ^316347622 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5096 ###### ^316347622q From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, about 10 million African slaves were imported to America. About 70 per cent of them worked on the sugar plantations. Labour conditions were abominable. Most slaves lived a short and miserable life, and millions more died during wars waged to capture slaves or during the long voyage from inner Africa to the shores of America. All this so that Europeans could enjoy their sweet tea and candy – and sugar barons could enjoy huge profits. ^316347622 ##### ^316347623 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5109 ###### ^316347623q When growth becomes a supreme good, unrestricted by any other ethical considerations, it can easily lead to catastrophe. Some religions, such as Christianity and Nazism, have killed millions out of burning hatred. Capitalism has killed millions out of cold indifference coupled with greed. ^316347623 ##### ^316347633 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5123 ###### ^316347633q In 1885 the European powers agreed to give this organisation control of 1.4 million square miles in the Congo basin. This territory, seventy-five times the size of Belgium, was henceforth known as the Congo Free State. ... Rubber was fast becoming an industrial staple, and rubber export was the Congo’s most important source of income. The African villagers who collected the rubber were required to provide higher and higher quotas. Those who failed to deliver their quota were punished brutally for their ‘laziness’. Their arms were chopped off and occasionally entire villages were massacred. According to the most moderate estimates, between 1885 and 1908 the pursuit of growth and profits cost the lives of 6 million individuals (at least 20 per cent of the Congo’s population). Some estimates reach up to 10 million deaths. ^316347633 ##### ^316347626 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5134 ###### ^316347626q The economic pie of 2014 is far larger than the pie of 1500, but it is distributed so unevenly that many African peasants and Indonesian labourers return home after a hard day’s work with less food than did their ancestors 500 years ago. ^316347626 ### 17 The Wheels of Industry ##### ^320850484 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5156 ###### ^320850484q Whenever a shortage of either has threatened to slow economic growth, investments have flowed into scientific and technological research. These have invariably produced not only more efficient ways of exploiting existing resources, but also completely new types of energy and materials. ^320850484 ##### ^320850548 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5174 ###### ^320850548q Since human and animal bodies were the only energy conversion device available, muscle power was the key to almost all human activities. Human muscles built carts and houses, ox muscles ploughed fields, and horse muscles transported goods. The energy that fuelled these organic muscle-machines came ultimately from a single source – plants. Plants in their turn obtained their energy from the sun. By the process of photosynthesis, they captured solar energy and packed it into organic compounds. Almost everything people did throughout history was fuelled by solar energy that was captured by plants and converted into muscle power. ... When sunlight was scarce and when wheat fields were still green, humans had little energy. Granaries were empty, tax collectors were idle, soldiers found it difficult to move and fight, and kings tended to keep the peace. When the sun shone brightly and the wheat ripened, peasants harvested the crops and filled the granaries. Tax collectors hurried to take their share. Soldiers flexed their muscles and sharpened their swords. Kings convened councils and planned their next campaigns. Everyone was fuelled by solar energy – captured and packaged in wheat, rice and potatoes. ^320850548 ##### ^320850550 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5194 ###### ^320850550q As the British population swelled, forests were cut down to fuel the growing economy and make way for houses and fields. Britain suffered from an increasing shortage of firewood. It began burning coal as a substitute. Many coal seams were located in waterlogged areas, and flooding prevented miners from accessing the lower strata of the mines. ... Around 1700, a strange noise began reverberating around British mineshafts. ... It emanated from a steam engine. There are many types of steam engines, but they all share one common principle. You burn some kind of fuel, such as coal, and use the resulting heat to boil water, producing steam. As the steam expands it pushes a piston. The piston moves, and anything that is connected to the piston moves with it. You have converted heat into movement! In eighteenth-century British coal mines, the piston was connected to a pump that extracted water from the bottom of the mineshafts. ^320850550 ##### ^320850490 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5208 ###### ^320850490q In 1825, a British engineer connected a steam engine to a train of mine wagons full of coal. The engine drew the wagons along an iron rail some thirteen miles long from the mine to the nearest harbour. This was the first steam-powered locomotive in history. ^320850490 ##### ^320850491 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5342 ###### ^320850491q in almost all societies peasants comprised more than 90 per cent of the population. Following the industrialisation of agriculture, a shrinking number of farmers was enough to feed a growing number of clerks and factory hands. Today in the United States, only 2 per cent of the population makes a living from agriculture, yet this 2 per cent produces enough not only to feed the entire US population, but also to export surpluses to the rest of the world. ^320850491 ##### ^320850492 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5368 ###### ^320850492q Consumerism has worked very hard, with the help of popular psychology (‘Just do it!’) to convince people that indulgence is good for you, whereas frugality is self-oppression. ^320850492 ##### ^320850493 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5385 ###### ^320850493q The capitalist and consumerist ethics are two sides of the same coin, a merger of two commandments. The supreme commandment of the rich is ‘Invest!’ The supreme commandment of the rest of us is ‘Buy!’ ^320850493 ##### ^321870752 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5401 ###### ^321870752q If you took all these people and put them on a large set of scales, their combined mass would be about 300 million tons. If you then took all our domesticated farmyard animals – cows, pigs, sheep and chickens – and placed them on an even larger set of scales, their mass would amount to about 700 million tons. In contrast, the combined mass of all surviving large wild animals – from porcupines and penguins to elephants and whales – is less than 100 million tons. ^321870752 ##### ^321870753 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5418 ###### ^321870753q Today, humankind is driving many species into extinction and might even annihilate itself. But other organisms are doing quite well. Rats and cockroaches, for example, are in their heyday. These tenacious creatures would probably creep out from beneath the smoking rubble of a nuclear Armageddon, ready and able to spread their DNA. Perhaps 65 million years from now, intelligent rats will look back gratefully on the decimation wrought by humankind, just as we today can thank that dinosaur-busting asteroid. ^321870753 ##### ^321870754 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5484 ###### ^321870754q from the earliest times, more than a million years ago, humans lived in small, intimate communities, most of whose members were kin. The Cognitive Revolution and the Agricultural Revolution did not change that. They glued together families and communities to create tribes, cities, kingdoms and empires, but families and communities remained the basic building blocks of all human societies. The Industrial Revolution, on the other hand, managed within little more than two centuries to break these building blocks into atoms. Most of the traditional functions of families and communities were handed over to states and markets. ^321870754 ##### ^321870755 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5503 ###### ^321870755q Village life involved many transactions but few payments. There were some markets, of course, but their roles were limited. You could buy rare spices, cloth and tools, and hire the services of lawyers and doctors. Yet less than 10 per cent of commonly used products and services were bought in the market. Most human needs were taken care of by the family and the community. ^321870755 ##### ^321870756 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5517 ###### ^321870756q In the Chinese Ming Empire (1368–1644), the population was organised into the baojia system. Ten families were grouped to form a jia, and ten jia constituted a bao. When a member of a bao commited a crime, other bao members could be punished for it, in particular the bao elders. Taxes too were levied on the bao, and it was the responsibility of the bao elders rather than of the state officials to assess the situation of each family and determine the amount of tax it should pay. From the empire’s perspective, this system had a huge advantage. Instead of maintaining thousands of revenue officials and tax collectors, who would have to monitor the earnings and expenses of every family, these tasks were left to the community elders. ^321870756 ##### ^321870757 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5586 ###### ^321870757q Markets and states today provide most of the material needs once provided by communities, but they must also supply tribal bonds. Markets and states do so by fostering ‘imagined communities’ that contain millions of strangers, and which are tailored to national and commercial needs. ^321870757 ##### ^321870758 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5589 ###### ^321870758q An imagined community is a community of people who don’t really know each other, but imagine that they do. ^321870758 ##### ^321870759 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5600 ###### ^321870759q Consumerism and nationalism work extra hours to make us imagine that millions of strangers belong to the same community as ourselves, that we all have a common past, common interests and a common future. This isn’t a lie. It’s imagination. ^321870759 ##### ^321870760 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5649 ###### ^321870760q Charles Dickens wrote of the French Revolution that ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’ ^321870760 ##### ^321870761 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5757 ###### ^321870761q For most of history, polities could enrich themselves by looting or annexing enemy territories. Most wealth consisted of material things like fields, cattle, slaves and gold, so it was easy to loot it or occupy it. Today, wealth consists mainly of human capital and organizational know-how. Consequently it is difficult to carry it off or conquer it by military force. ^321870761 ##### ^321870762 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5781 ###### ^321870762q The threat of nuclear holocaust fosters pacifism; when pacifism spreads, war recedes and trade flourishes; and trade increases both the profits of peace and the costs of war. Over time, this feedback loop creates another obstacle to war, which may ultimately prove the most important of all. The tightening web of international connections erodes the independence of most countries, lessening the chance that any one of them might single-handedly let slip the dogs of war. Most countries no longer engage in full-scale war for the simple reason that they are no longer independent. ^321870762 ##### ^321870763 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5794 ###### ^321870763q To satisfy both optimists and pessimists, we may conclude by saying that we are on the threshold of both heaven and hell, moving nervously between the gateway of the one and the anteroom of the other. History has still not decided where we will end up, and a string of coincidences might yet send us rolling in either direction. ^321870763 ##### ^321870764 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5868 ###### ^321870764q The generally accepted definition of happiness is ‘subjective well-being’. Happiness, according to this view, is something I feel inside myself, a sense of either immediate pleasure or long-term contentment with the way my life is going. ^321870764 ##### ^321870765 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5905 ###### ^321870765q This raises the possibility that the immense improvement in material conditions over the last two centuries was offset by the collapse of the family and the community. If so, the average person might well be no happier today than in 1800. Even the freedom we value so highly may be working against us. We can choose our spouses, friends and neighbours, but they can choose to leave us. With the individual wielding unprecedented power to decide her own path in life, we find it ever harder to make commitments. We thus live in an increasingly lonely world of unravelling communities and families. ^321870765 ##### ^321870766 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5909 ###### ^321870766q happiness does not really depend on objective conditions of either wealth, health or even community. Rather, it depends on the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations. ^321870766 ##### ^321870767 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5921 ###### ^321870767q 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. ^321870767 ##### ^321870768 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5933 ###### ^321870768q If happiness is determined by expectations, then two pillars of our society – mass media and the advertising industry – may unwittingly be depleting the globe’s reservoirs of contentment. ^321870768 ##### ^321870783 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=5943 ###### ^321870783q even immortality might lead to discontent. ... Although the new therapies could extend life and youth, they cannot revive corpses. How dreadful to think that I and my loved ones can live for ever, but only if we don’t get hit by a truck or blown to smithereens by a terrorist! Potentially a-mortal people are likely to grow averse to taking even the slightest risk, and the agony of losing a spouse, child or close friend will be unbearable. ^321870783 ##### ^321870771 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=6064 ###### ^321870771q So perhaps happiness is synchronising one’s personal delusions of meaning with the prevailing collective delusions. As long as my personal narrative is in line with the narratives of the people around me, I can convince myself that my life is meaningful, and find happiness in that conviction. ^321870771 ##### ^321870772 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=6074 ###### ^321870772q Liberal politics is based on the idea that the voters know best, and there is no need for Big Brother to tell us what is good for us. Liberal economics is based on the idea that the customer is always right. Liberal art declares that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Students in liberal schools and universities are taught to think for themselves. Commercials urge us to ‘Just do it!’ Action films, stage dramas, soap operas, novels and catchy pop songs indoctrinate us constantly: ‘Be true to yourself’, ‘Listen to yourself’, ‘Follow your heart’. Jean-Jacques Rousseau stated this view most classically: ‘What I feel to be good – is good. What I feel to be bad – is bad.’ ^321870772 ##### ^321870773 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=6097 ###### ^321870773q The Buddhist position is particularly interesting. Buddhism has assigned the question of happiness more importance than perhaps any other human creed. For 2,500 years, Buddhists have systematically studied the essence and causes of happiness, which is why there is a growing interest among the scientific community both in their philosophy and their meditation practices. ^321870773 ##### ^321870774 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=6104 ###### ^321870774q The problem, according to Buddhism, is that our feelings are no more than fleeting vibrations, changing every moment, like the ocean waves. If five minutes ago I felt joyful and purposeful, now these feelings are gone, and I might well feel sad and dejected. So if I want to experience pleasant feelings, I have to constantly chase them, while driving away the unpleasant feelings. Even if I succeed, I immediately have to start all over again, without ever getting any lasting reward for my troubles. ^321870774 ##### ^321870775 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=6109 ###### ^321870775q According to Buddhism, the root of suffering is neither the feeling of pain nor of sadness nor even of meaninglessness. Rather, the real root of suffering is this never-ending and pointless pursuit of ephemeral feelings, which causes us to be in a constant state of tension, restlessness and dissatisfaction. Due to this pursuit, the mind is never satisfied. Even when experiencing pleasure, it is not content, because it fears this feeling might soon disappear, and craves that this feeling should stay and intensify. People are liberated from suffering not when they experience this or that fleeting pleasure, but rather when they understand the impermanent nature of all their feelings, and stop craving them. ^321870775 ##### ^321870776 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=6127 ###### ^321870776q Buddha agreed with modern biology and New Age movements that happiness is independent of external conditions. Yet his more important and far more profound insight was that true happiness is also independent of our inner feelings. Indeed, the more significance we give our feelings, the more we crave them, and the more we suffer. Buddha’s recommendation was to stop not only the pursuit of external achievements, but also the pursuit of inner feelings. ^321870776 ### 20 The End of Homo Sapiens ##### ^315023009 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=6158 ###### ^315023009q For billions of years, intelligent design was not even an option, because there was no intelligence which could design things. Microorganisms, which until quite recently were the only living things around, are capable of amazing feats. A microorganism belonging to one species can incorporate genetic codes from a completely different species into its cell and thereby gain new capabilities, such as resistance to antibiotics. Yet, as best we know, microorganisms have no consciousness, no aims in life, and no ability to plan ahead. ^315023009 ##### ^315023010 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=6174 ###### ^315023010q Today, the 4-billion-year-old regime of natural selection is facing a completely different challenge. In laboratories throughout the world, scientists are engineering living beings. They break the laws of natural selection with impunity, unbridled even by an organism’s original characteristics. ^315023010 ##### ^315023011 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=6181 ###### ^315023011q the Scientific Revolution might prove itself far greater than a mere historical revolution. It may turn out to be the most important biological revolution since the appearance of life on earth. ^315023011 ##### ^315023012 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=6216 ###### ^315023012q Most of the organisms now being engineered are those with the weakest political lobbies – plants, fungi, bacteria and insects. For example, lines of E. coli, a bacterium that lives symbiotically in the human gut (and which makes headlines when it gets out of the gut and causes deadly infections), have been genetically engineered to produce biofuel.2 E. coli and several species of fungi have also been engineered to produce insulin, thereby lowering the cost of diabetes treatment.3 A gene extracted from an Arctic fish has been inserted into potatoes, making the plants more frost-resistant.4 ^315023012 ##### ^321870777 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=6239 ###### ^321870777q Professor George Church of Harvard University recently suggested that, with the completion of the Neanderthal Genome Project, we can now implant reconstructed Neanderthal DNA into a Sapiens ovum, thus producing the first Neanderthal child in 30,000 years. Church claimed that he could do the job for a paltry $30 million. Several women have already volunteered to serve as surrogate mothers. ^321870777 ##### ^315372428 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=6277 ###### ^315372428q In 2006 the US Naval Undersea Warfare Center reported its intention to develop cyborg sharks, declaring, ‘NUWC is developing a fish tag whose goal is behaviour control of host animals via neural implants.’ The developers hope to identify underwater electromagnetic fields made by submarines and mines, by exploiting the natural magnetic detecting capabilities of sharks, which are superior to those of any man-made detectors. ^315372428 ##### ^315372429 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=6317 ###### ^315372429q What might happen to human memory, human consciousness and human identity if the brain has direct access to a collective memory bank? In such a situation, one cyborg could, for example, retrieve the memories of another – not hear about them, not read about them in an autobiography, not imagine them, but directly remember them as if they were his own. ^315372429 ##### ^315372430 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=6378 ###### ^315372430q What is a spaceship compared to an eternally young cyborg who does not breed and has no sexuality, who can share thoughts directly with other beings, whose abilities to focus and remember are a thousand times greater than our own, and who is never angry or sad, but has emotions and desires that we cannot begin to imagine? Science fiction rarely describes such a future, because an accurate description is by definition incomprehensible. ^315372430 ##### ^315489428 highlight_tags:: [[blue]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=6413 ###### ^315489428q If the curtain is indeed about to drop on Sapiens history, we members of one of its final generations should devote some time to answering one last question: what do we want to become? This question, sometimes known as the Human Enhancement question, dwarfs the debates that currently preoccupy politicians, philosophers, scholars and ordinary people. After all, today’s debate between today’s religions, ideologies, nations and classes will in all likelihood disappear along with Homo sapiens. If our successors indeed function on a different level of consciousness (or perhaps possess something beyond consciousness that we cannot even conceive), it seems doubtful that Christianity or Islam will be of interest to them, that their social organisation could be Communist or capitalist, or that their genders could be male or female. ^315489428 ##### ^315489429 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ICN066A&location=6432 ###### ^315489429q since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, the real question facing us is not ‘What do we want to become?’, but ‘What do we want to want?’ ^315489429