A history of 1.3 seconds

The earth is 4.5 billion (4,500,000,000) years old and life evolved on our planet about 3.5 billion years ago. Naturally. Without a benign god sweating blood to “create” anything, scientists agree on this a with rare absence of squabbling.

Humans or Homo sapiens came much later. The first humans lived in Africa 70,000 years ago. In other words, if you consider 3.5 billion years as the first day or the first 24 hours of life on our planet, humans arrived just 1.3 seconds ago. (Trust me, I haven’t botched up my arithmetic this time!) Yet, the 1.3 seconds has overwritten the history of the previous 24 hours.

Seventy thousand years ago, human beings began walking from deep within Africa in search of “greener pastures”.

Ultimately, they spread to every corner of the globe, from Europe to Alaska to Papua New Guinea. Every human, from the naked South American tribal to the semi-naked Bollywood actor, from the starving child in Eritrea to Bill Gates, from the illegal immigrant held captive in Manus island off Australia to the queen of England, every human can trace their ancestry to a common mother some 70,000 ago. Broadly speaking, this audacious hypothesis is now undisputed science.

SAPIENS, a book by one of the finest thinkers of our time, Yuval Noah Harari, is a history of this journey. Never before have I read a book that offers such an array of eye-popping facts and insights into what we are. Please read it. After reading it, I believe I have a little more complete and deeper perspective about myself and the world. For me, reading Sapiens has been a transition from illiteracy to getting some idea about the alphabet of the language of our civilization.

I don’t suffer from the delusion that I can write a cogent review of this life-changing book. But I’d love to introduce it to you. And what could be a better way of doing that other than sharing a few passages from the volume with you?

Harari begins with this statement:

“SEVENTY thousand years ago, Homo sapiens was still an insignificant animal minding its own business in a corner of Africa. In the following millennia it transformed itself into the master of the entire planet and terror of the ecosystem. Today it stands at the verge of becoming a god, poised to acquire not only eternal youth, but also the divine abilities of creation and destruction.” ... 

Harari goes on to say: “The wandering band of story-telling sapiens was the most destructive force the animal kingdom has ever produced.” … “The historical records make Homo sapiens look like ecological serial killers.”

"Shortly" after the last ice age, around 10,000 years ago, the agricultural revolution changed the way human beings lived. Harari writes: “This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse circumstances.”

Did we know this? “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.”

On capitalism: “When growth becomes a supreme god, unrestricted by any other ethical consideration, it can easily lead to catastrophe. Some religion, such as Christianity and Nazism, have killed millions out of burning hatred. Capitalism has killed millions out of cold indifference coupled with greed.”

Regarding our relentless pursuit of comfort, which is has been a corollary of capitalism, Harari points out: “The pursuit of easier life resulted in much hardship … One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.”

Luxuries have become part of our culture. But what is culture? Harari says, from the moment of our birth, we are made “to think in certain ways, to behave in accordance with certain standards, to want certain things, and to observe certain rules.” This created “artificial instincts that enabled millions of strangers cooperate effectively. This network of artificial instincts is called culture.”

How important are we on a cosmic scale of things? You might find the answer disturbing.

“As far as we can tell, from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of a blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose … If planet earth was to blow up tomorrow morning, the universe will probably be going about its business as usual. As far as we can tell at this point, human subjectivity will not be missed.”

Does it make us feel too insignificant? Hopefully, yes. And more helpfully, this book will help us put our conflicts and quarrels in perspective, and show them as what they are, insignificant nothings.

31 May 2019

[Book cover courtesy Wikimedia Commons]