On having finished the book Sapiens

I have written here about reading Harari’s book Sapiens. I have finished the book since that post appeared. Now, separated from the time of finishing the book by a few days, in which I spent a lot of time reading graduate student dissertation proposals and writing lecture notes, I thought I would write down my lingering impression from the book.

This impression is bleak. The various revolutions Harari talks about left individual members of Homo Sapiens less well off than before, with the Agricultural Revolution as a prime example. Even worse were the effects of these revolutions (Cognitive, Agricultural, Industrial) on other species on planet Earth.

A secondary impression I got was one of a fundamental tension between Harari’s portrayal of history as proceeding without regard to what is good or bad, for humans or other species, and constantly talking about effects of historical changes as good or bad. I am perfectly content to read normative statements in a book on history (or economics, as a matter of fact), but I want a clearer idea of the author’s ethical convictions. Harari does not elucidate a moral philosophy, but one seems to be in the background, one that I would have liked to be made clearer.