Notebook for Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Harari, Yuval Noah Citation (APA): Harari, Y. N. (2015). Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com Part One: The Cognitive Revolution Highlight (yellow) - 1. An Animal of No Significance > Page 10 Human babies are helpless, dependent for many years on their elders for sustenance, protection and education. This fact has contributed greatly both to humankind’s extraordinary social abilities and to its unique social problems. Highlight (yellow) - 1. An Animal of No Significance > Page 13 Eagles, for example, identify thermal columns rising from the ground, spread their giant wings and allow the hot air to lift them upwards. Yet eagles cannot control the location of the columns, and their maximum carrying capacity is strictly proportional to their wingspan. Highlight (yellow) - 2. The Tree of Knowledge > Page 21 The appearance of new ways of thinking and communicating, between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago, constitutes the Cognitive Revolution. What caused it? We’re not sure. The most commonly believed theory argues that accidental genetic mutations changed the inner wiring of the brains of Sapiens, enabling them to think in unprecedented ways and to communicate using an altogether new type of language. We might call it the Tree of Knowledge mutation. Highlight (yellow) - 2. The Tree of Knowledge > Page 22 Our language evolved as a way of gossiping. According to this theory Homo sapiens is primarily a social animal. 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. Highlight (yellow) - 2. The Tree of Knowledge > Page 24 As far as we know, only Sapiens can talk about entire kinds of entities that they have never seen, touched or smelled. 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.’ This ability to speak about fictions is the most unique feature of Sapiens language. Note - 2. The Tree of Knowledge > Page 24 So what makes us uniquely human is to generate constructs that are more form than function. Unlike bees for example who construct hives out of pure function (it just so happens it's quite beautiful). So daydreaming is primarily Sapiens' domain) Highlight (yellow) - 2. The Tree of Knowledge > Page 26 The alpha male usually wins his position not because he is physically stronger, but because he leads a large and stable coalition. Note - 2. The Tree of Knowledge > Page 26 Shit. So playing politics can never be escaped because it's ingrained in our species. Highlight (yellow) - 2. The Tree of Knowledge > Page 27 The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Highlight (yellow) - 2. The Tree of Knowledge > Page 28 People easily understand that ‘primitives’ cement their social order by believing in ghosts and spirits, and gathering each full moon to dance together around the campfire. What we fail to appreciate is that our modern institutions function on exactly the same basis. Take for example the world of business corporations. Modern business- people and lawyers are, in fact, powerful sorcerers. The principal difference between them and tribal shamans is that modern lawyers tell far stranger tales. Highlight (yellow) - 2. The Tree of Knowledge > Page 29 Peugeot is a figment of our collective imagination. Lawyers call this a ‘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. It can open a bank account and own property. It pays taxes, and it can be sued and even prosecuted separately from any of the people who own or work for it. Highlight (yellow) - 2. The Tree of Knowledge > Page 30 People were afraid to start new businesses and take economic risks. It hardly seemed worth taking the chance that their families could end up utterly destitute. Note - 2. The Tree of Knowledge > Page 30 Taleb argues for more skin in the game to fix a lot of problems but here it says it was the reduction of skin in the game that encouraged progress. Highlight (yellow) - 2. The Tree of Knowledge > Page 31 Telling effective stories is not easy. The difficulty lies not in telling the story, but in convincing everyone else to believe it. Much of history revolves around this question: how does one convince millions of people to believe particular stories about gods, or nations, or limited liability companies? Yet when it succeeds, it gives Sapiens immense power, because it enables millions of strangers to cooperate and work towards common goals. Highlight (yellow) - 2. The Tree of Knowledge > Page 32 Unlike lying, 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. Highlight (yellow) - 2. The Tree of Knowledge > Page 32 Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have thus been living in a dual reality. On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations and corporations. 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. Highlight (yellow) - 2. The Tree of Knowledge > Page 37 The Cognitive Revolution is accordingly the point when history declared its independence from biology. Until the Cognitive Revolution, the doings of all human species belonged to the realm of biology, or, if you so prefer, prehistory Highlight (yellow) - 2. The Tree of Knowledge > Page 37 From the Cognitive Revolution onwards, historical narratives replace biological theories as our primary means of explaining the development of Homo sapiens. To understand the rise of Christianity or the French Revolution, it is not enough to comprehend the interaction of genes, hormones and organisms. It is necessary to take into account the interaction of ideas, images and fantasies as well. Highlight (yellow) - 2. The Tree of Knowledge > Page 38 The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mythical glue that binds together large numbers of individuals, families and groups. This glue has made us the masters of creation. Highlight (yellow) - 3. A Day in the Life of Adam and Eve > Page 49 at the individual level, ancient foragers were the most knowledgeable and skilful people in history. There is some evidence that the size of the average Sapiens brain has actually decreased since the age of foraging. Highlight (yellow) - 3. A Day in the Life of Adam and Eve > Page 51 The foragers’ secret of success, which protected them from starvation and malnutrition, was their varied diet. Note - 3. A Day in the Life of Adam and Eve > Page 51 Maybe one should try to replicate this in the modern world, by looking for varied meats, vegetables, nuts and berries. Basically random whole foods. Part Two: The Agricultural Revolution Highlight (yellow) - 5. History’s Biggest Fraud > Page 79 The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud. 2 Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa. Highlight (yellow) - 5. History’s Biggest Fraud > Page 83 This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions. Highlight (yellow) - 5. History’s Biggest Fraud > Page 87 population growth burned humanity’s boats. If the adoption of ploughing increased a village’s population from a hundred to 110, which ten people would have volunteered to starve so that the others could go back to the good old times? There was no going back. The trap snapped shut. Highlight (yellow) - 5. History’s Biggest Fraud > Page 87 The pursuit of an easier life resulted in much hardship, and not for the last time. It happens to us today. How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high- powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty- five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad. Highlight (yellow) - 5. History’s Biggest Fraud > Page 87 One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. Once people get used to a certain luxury, they take it for granted. Then they begin to count on it. Finally they reach a point where they can’t live without it. Note - 5. History’s Biggest Fraud > Page 87 Always do a cost-benefit analysis when purchasing a luxury. Rent when possible. Highlight (yellow) - 5. History’s Biggest Fraud > Page 97 This discrepancy between evolutionary success and individual suffering is perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from the Agricultural Revolution. Highlight (yellow) - 6. Building Pyramids > Page 98 Farming enabled populations to increase so radically and rapidly that no complex agricultural society could ever again sustain itself if it returned to hunting and gathering. Highlight (yellow) - 6. Building Pyramids > Page 99 People found it difficult to leave their artificial islands. They could not abandon their houses, fields and granaries without grave risk of loss. Furthermore, as time went on they accumulated more and more things– objects, not easily transportable, that tied them down. Ancient farmers might seem to us dirt poor, but a typical family possessed more artefacts than an entire forager tribe. Highlight (yellow) - 6. Building Pyramids > Page 101 History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets. Note - 6. Building Pyramids > Page 101 From Blade Runner: society is built on the backs of a disposable workforce. Highlight (yellow) - 6. Building Pyramids > Page 110 Imagined orders are not evil conspiracies or useless mirages. Rather, they are the only way large numbers of humans can cooperate effectively. Highlight (yellow) - 6. Building Pyramids > Page 114 The teenage son of a medieval baron did not have a private room on the castle’s second floor, with posters of Richard the Lionheart and King Arthur on the walls and a locked door that his parents were not allowed to open. He slept alongside many other youths in a large hall. He was always on display and always had to take into account what others saw and said. Someone growing up in such conditions naturally concluded that a man’s true worth was determined by his place in the social hierarchy and by what other people said of him. Note - 6. Building Pyramids > Page 114 Interesting. This is a pretty enlightening passage on the effect of society and upbringing. Highlight (yellow) - 6. Building Pyramids > Page 115 Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experiences as we can. We must open ourselves to a wide spectrum of emotions; we must sample various kinds of relationships; we must try different cuisines; we must learn to appreciate different styles of music. One of the best ways to do all that is to break free from our daily routine, leave behind our familiar setting, and go travelling in distant lands, where we can ‘experience’ the culture, the smells, the tastes and the norms of other people. We hear again and again the romantic myths about ‘how a new experience opened my eyes and changed my life’. Highlight (yellow) - 6. Building Pyramids > Page 118 It follows that in order to change an existing imagined order, we must first believe in an alternative imagined order. In order to dismantle Peugeot, for example, we need to imagine something more powerful, such as the French legal system. Highlight (yellow) - 6. Building Pyramids > Page 118 There is no way out of the imagined order. When we break down our prison walls and run towards freedom, we are in fact running into the more spacious exercise yard of a bigger prison. Highlight (yellow) - 7. Memory Overload > Page 121 Foragers were never obliged to handle large amounts of mathematical data. No forager needed to remember, say, the number of fruit on each tree in the forest. So human brains did not adapt to storing and processing numbers. Highlight (yellow) - 8. There is No Justice in History > Page 133 how did humans organise themselves in mass- cooperation networks, when they lacked the biological instincts necessary to sustain such networks? The short answer is that humans created imagined orders and devised scripts. These two inventions filled the gaps left by our biological inheritance. Highlight (yellow) - 8. There is No Justice in History > Page 136 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. Highlight (yellow) - 8. There is No Justice in History > Page 144 Most sociopolitical hierarchies lack a logical or biological basis– they are nothing but the perpetuation of chance events supported by myths. That is one good reason to study history. If the division into blacks and whites or Brahmins and Shudras was grounded in biological realities– that is, if Brahmins really had better brains than Shudras– biology would be sufficient for understanding human society. Highlight (yellow) - 8. There is No Justice in History > Page 146 A good rule of thumb is ‘Biology enables, Culture forbids.’ Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities. It’s culture that obliges people to realise some possibilities while forbidding others. Biology enables women to have children– some cultures oblige women to realise this possibility. Biology enables men to enjoy sex with one another– some cultures forbid them to realise this possibility. Highlight (yellow) - 8. There is No Justice in History > Page 147 Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behaviour, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition. No culture has ever bothered to forbid men to photosynthesise, women to run faster than the speed of light, or negatively charged electrons to be attracted to each other. Part Three: The Unification of Humankind Highlight (yellow) - 9. The Arrow of History > Page 163 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’. Highlight (yellow) - 9. The Arrow of History > Page 164 Guaranteeing that every individual will be free to do as he wishes inevitably short- changes equality. The entire political history of the world since 1789 can be seen as a series of attempts to reconcile this contradiction. Highlight (yellow) - 9. The Arrow of History > Page 165 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. Highlight (yellow) - 9. The Arrow of History > Page 165 If, say, a Christian really wants to understand the Muslims who attend that mosque down the street, he shouldn’t look for a pristine set of values that every Muslim holds dear. Rather, he should enquire into the catch- 22s of Muslim culture, those places where rules are at war and standards scuffle. It’s at the very spot where the Muslims teeter between two imperatives that you’ll understand them best. Highlight (yellow) - 10. The Scent of Money > Page 177 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. Highlight (yellow) - 10. The Scent of Money > Page 177 Money enables people to compare quickly and easily the value of different commodities (such as apples, shoes and divorces), to easily exchange one thing for another, and to store wealth conveniently. Highlight (yellow) - 10. The Scent of Money > Page 180 money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised. Highlight (yellow) - 10. The Scent of Money > Page 185 Once trade connects two areas, the forces of supply and demand tend to equalise the prices of transportable goods. Highlight (yellow) - 10. The Scent of Money > Page 186 Money is more open- minded than language, state laws, cultural codes, religious beliefs and social habits. Money is the only trust system created by humans that can bridge almost any cultural gap, and that does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age or sexual orientation. Thanks to money, even people who don’t know each other and don’t trust each other can nevertheless cooperate effectively. Highlight (yellow) - 10. The Scent of Money > Page 186 Money is based on two universal principles: Highlight (yellow) - 10. The Scent of Money > Page 186 Universal convertibility: with money as an alchemist, you can turn land into loyalty, justice into health, and violence into knowledge. Highlight (yellow) - 10. The Scent of Money > Page 186 Universal trust: with money as a go- between, any two people can cooperate on any project. Highlight (yellow) - 10. The Scent of Money > Page 187 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. Highlight (yellow) - 12. The Law of Religion > Page 210 Today religion is often considered a source of discrimination, disagreement and disunion. Yet, in fact, religion has been the third great unifier of humankind, alongside money and empires. Highlight (yellow) - 12. The Law of Religion > Page 210 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. Highlight (yellow) - 12. The Law of Religion > Page 210 Religions assert that our laws are not the result of human caprice, but are ordained by an absolute and supreme authority. This helps place at least some fundamental laws beyond challenge, thereby ensuring social stability. Highlight (yellow) - 12. The Law of Religion > Page 212 the first religious effect of the Agricultural Revolution was to turn plants and animals from equal members of a spiritual round table into property. Highlight (yellow) - 12. The Law of Religion > Page 213 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. Highlight (yellow) - 12. The Law of Religion > Page 213 Polytheism thereby exalted not only the status of the gods, but also that of humankind. Highlight (yellow) - 12. The Law of Religion > Page 216 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 (the room is currently off- limits to visitors). 2 More Christians were killed by fellow Christians in those twenty- four hours than by the polytheistic Roman Empire throughout its entire existence. Highlight (yellow) - 12. The Law of Religion > Page 219 The monotheist religions expelled the gods through the front door with a lot of fanfare, only to take them back in through the side window. Christianity, for example, developed its own pantheon of saints, whose cults differed little from those of the polytheistic gods. Highlight (yellow) - 12. The Law of Religion > Page 220 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. Highlight (yellow) - 12. The Law of Religion > Page 223 The average Christian believes in the monotheist God, but also in the dualist Devil, in polytheist saints, and in animist ghosts. Highlight (yellow) - 12. The Law of Religion > Page 223 Scholars of religion have a name for this simultaneous avowal of different and even contradictory ideas and the combination of rituals and practices taken from different sources. It’s called syncretism. Syncretism might, in fact, be the single great world religion. Highlight (yellow) - 12. The Law of Religion > Page 224 In the end he came to the realisation that suffering is not caused by ill fortune, by social injustice, or by divine whims. Rather, suffering is caused by the behaviour patterns of one’s own mind. Note - 12. The Law of Religion > Page 224 Siddhartha Gautama, Buddha Highlight (yellow) - 12. The Law of Religion > Page 226 Gautama found that there was a way to exit this vicious circle. If, when the mind experiences something pleasant or unpleasant, it simply understands things as they are, then there is no suffering. Highlight (yellow) - 12. The Law of Religion > Page 226 nirvana (the literal meaning of which is ‘extinguishing the fire’). Note - 12. The Law of Religion > Page 226 Is it possible to be in Nirvana while still having goals to be great, yet not being affected by actual attainment of the goal but deriving pleasure from being present in the process? Highlight (yellow) - 13. The Secret of Success > Page 239 It is an iron rule of history that what looks inevitable in hindsight was far from obvious at the time. Highlight (yellow) - 13. The Secret of Success > Page 240 Determinism is appealing because it implies that our world and our beliefs are a natural and inevitable product of history. It is natural and inevitable that we live in nation states, organise our economy along capitalist principles, and fervently believe in human rights. To acknowledge that history is not deterministic is to acknowledge that it is just a coincidence that most people today believe in nationalism, capitalism and human rights. Highlight (yellow) - 13. The Secret of Success > Page 240 history is what is called a ‘level two’ chaotic system. 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. Highlight (yellow) - 13. The Secret of Success > Page 240 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. Highlight (yellow) - 13. The Secret of Success > Page 241 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. Note - 13. The Secret of Success > Page 241 This is beautiful. It's also another argument supporting optionality. We really don't know what the future holds so the post efficient strategy is increasing the number of possible branches and choosing the upper bound when it appears. Highlight (yellow) - 13. The Secret of Success > Page 242 cultures are mental parasites that emerge accidentally, and thereafter take advantage of all people infected by them. This approach is sometimes called memetics. It assumes that, just as 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’. Highlight (yellow) - 13. The Secret of Success > Page 243 Game theory explains how in multi- player systems, views and behaviour patterns that harm all players nevertheless manage to take root and spread. Arms races are a famous example. Many arms races bankrupt all those who take part in them, without really changing the military balance of power. Part Four: The Scientific Revolution Highlight (yellow) - 14. The Discovery of Ignorance > Page 256 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. Highlight (yellow) - 14. The Discovery of Ignorance > Page 258 But more and more students are motivated– or forced– to study mathematics. There is an irresistible drift towards the exact sciences– defined as ‘exact’ by their use of mathematical tools. Even fields of study that were traditionally part of the humanities, such as the study of human language (linguistics) and the human psyche (psychology), rely increasingly on mathematics and seek to present themselves as exact sciences. Note - 14. The Discovery of Ignorance > Page 258 A good reminder I need to study math. Maybe start with really grokking statistics. Highlight (yellow) - 14. The Discovery of Ignorance > Page 260 Here and there people did develop new technologies, but these were usually created by uneducated craftsmen using trial and error, not by scholars pursuing systematic scientific research. Note - 14. The Discovery of Ignorance > Page 260 Agrees with Taleb! Craftsmen vs academics! Highlight (yellow) - 14. The Discovery of Ignorance > Page 272 During the past 500 years modern science has achieved wonders thanks largely to the willingness of governments, businesses, foundations and private donors to channel billions of dollars into scientific research. These billions have done much more to chart the universe, map the planet and catalogue the animal kingdom than did Galileo Galilei, Christopher Columbus and Charles Darwin. If these particular geniuses had never been born, their insights would probably have occurred to others. Highlight (yellow) - 14. The Discovery of Ignorance > Page 272 if the proper funding were unavailable, no intellectual brilliance could have compensated for that. Highlight (yellow) - 14. The Discovery of Ignorance > Page 272 Most scientific studies are funded because somebody believes they can help attain some political, economic or religious goal. Highlight (yellow) - 14. The Discovery of Ignorance > Page 274 scientific research can flourish only in alliance with some religion or ideology. The ideology justifies the costs of the research. In exchange, the ideology influences the scientific agenda and determines what to do with the discoveries. Hence in order to comprehend how humankind has reached Alamogordo and the moon– rather than any number of alternative destinations– it is not enough to survey the achievements of physicists, biologists and sociologists. We have to take into account the ideological, political and economic forces that shaped physics, biology and sociology, pushing them in certain directions while neglecting others. Highlight (yellow) - 15. The Marriage of Science and Empire > Page 278 Was Cook’s ship a scientific expedition protected by a military force or a military expedition with a few scientists tagging along? That’s like asking whether your petrol tank is half empty or half full. It was both. The Scientific Revolution and modern imperialism were inseparable. People such as Captain James Cook and the botanist Joseph Banks could hardly distinguish science from empire. Nor could luckless Truganini. Highlight (yellow) - 15. The Marriage of Science and Empire > Page 281 The world’s first commercial railroad opened for business in 1830, in Britain. By 1850, Western nations were criss-crossed by almost 25,000 miles of railroads – but in the whole of Asia, Africa and Latin America there were only 2,500 miles of tracks. Highlight (yellow) - 15. The Marriage of Science and Empire > Page 282 The Chinese and Persians did not lack technological inventions such as steam engines (which could be freely copied or bought). They lacked the values, myths, judicial apparatus and sociopolitical structures that took centuries to form and mature in the West and which could not be copied and internalised rapidly. 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. Highlight (yellow) - 15. The Marriage of Science and Empire > Page 282 What potential did Europe develop in the early modern period that enabled it to dominate the late modern world? There are two complementary answers to this question: modern science and capitalism. Europeans were used to thinking and behaving in a scientific and capitalist way even before they enjoyed any significant technological advantages. Highlight (yellow) - 15. The Marriage of Science and Empire > Page 283 What forged the historical bond between modern science and European imperialism? Highlight (yellow) - 15. The Marriage of Science and Empire > Page 283 The key factor was that the plant-seeking botanist and the colony-seeking naval officer shared a similar mindset. 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. Highlight (yellow) - 15. The Marriage of Science and Empire > Page 284 The Arabs, to name one example, did not conquer Egypt, Spain or India in order to discover something they did not know. The Romans, Mongols and Aztecs voraciously conquered new lands in search of power and wealth – not of knowledge. In contrast, European imperialists set out to distant shores in the hope of obtaining new knowledge along with new territories. Highlight (yellow) - 15. The Marriage of Science and Empire > Page 286 Many cultures drew world maps long before the modern age. Obviously, none of them really knew the whole of the world. No Afro-Asian culture knew about America, and no American culture knew about Afro-Asia. But unfamiliar areas were simply left out, or filled with imaginary monsters and wonders. These maps had no empty spaces. Highlight (yellow) - 15. The Marriage of Science and Empire > Page 286 During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Europeans began to draw world maps with lots of empty spaces – one indication of the development of the scientific mindset, as well as of the European imperial drive. The empty maps were a psychological and ideological breakthrough, a clear admission that Europeans were ignorant of large parts of the world. Highlight (yellow) - 15. The Marriage of Science and Empire > Page 287 The first modern man was Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian sailor who took part in several expeditions to America in the years 1499–1504. Between 1502 and 1504, two texts describing these expeditions were published in Europe. They were attributed to Vespucci. These texts argued that the new lands discovered by Columbus were not islands off the East Asian coast, but rather an entire continent unknown to the Scriptures, classical geographers and contemporary Europeans. In 1507, convinced by these arguments, a respected mapmaker named Martin Waldseemüller published an updated world map, Highlight (yellow) - 15. The Marriage of Science and Empire > Page 288 Erroneously believing that Amerigo Vespucci had been the person who discovered it, Waldseemüller named the continent in his honour – America. Highlight (yellow) - 15. The Marriage of Science and Empire > Page 288 There is poetic justice in the fact that a quarter of the world, and two of its seven continents, are named after a little-known Italian whose sole claim to fame is that he had the courage to say, ‘We don’t know.’ Highlight (yellow) - 15. The Marriage of Science and Empire > Page 291 What made Europeans exceptional was their unparalleled and insatiable ambition to explore and conquer. Note - 15. The Marriage of Science and Empire > Page 291 Practical and modern advice: travel and have a thirst for knowledge Highlight (yellow) - 15. The Marriage of Science and Empire > Page 294 Like a science-fiction alien emerging from his spaceship, he declared to the awestruck locals: ‘We come in peace. Take us to your leader.’ Highlight (yellow) - 15. The Marriage of Science and Empire > Page 296 If the subject peoples of the Inca Empire had known the fate of the inhabitants of Mexico, they would not have thrown in their lot with the invaders. But they did not know. Highlight (yellow) - 15. The Marriage of Science and Empire > Page 304 Behind the meteoric rise of both science and empire lurks one particularly important force: capitalism. Were it not for businessmen seeking to make money, Columbus would not have reached America, James Cook would not have reached Australia, and Neil Armstrong would never have taken that small step on the surface of the moon. Highlight (yellow) - 16. The Capitalist Creed > Page 306 Banks are allowed to loan $10 for every dollar they actually possess, which means that 90 percent of all the money in our bank accounts is not covered by actual coins and notes.2 If all of the account holders at Barclays Bank suddenly demand their money, Barclays will promptly collapse (unless the government steps in to save it). Highlight (yellow) - 16. The Capitalist Creed > Page 307 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. Highlight (yellow) - 16. The Capitalist Creed > Page 308 Credit enables us to build the present at the expense of the future. It’s founded on the assumption that our future resources are sure to be far more abundant than our present resources. A host of new and wonderful opportunities open up if we can build things in the present using future income. Note - 16. The Capitalist Creed > Page 308 This chapter made me grok credit. Before that I'd assumed getting in debt in any way was bad. But borrowing from the future is a good analogy. Highlight (yellow) - 16. The Capitalist Creed > Page 311 In 1776 the Scottish economist Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, probably the most important economics manifesto of all time. Note - 16. The Capitalist Creed > Page 311 Reminder to read this classic. Highlight (yellow) - 16. The Capitalist Creed > Page 312 In the new capitalist creed, the first and most sacred commandment is: ‘The profits of production must be reinvested in increasing production.’ Highlight (yellow) - 16. The Capitalist Creed > Page 320 if they want to keep their money and use it to gain more wealth, they are better off investing it where the rule of law prevails and where private property is respected Highlight (yellow) - 16. The Capitalist Creed > Page 322 Island after island fell to VOC mercenaries and a large part of Indonesia became a VOC colony. 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. Today some people warn that twenty-first-century corporations are accumulating too much power. Early modern history shows just how far that can go if businesses are allowed to pursue their self-interest unchecked. Highlight (yellow) - 16. The Capitalist Creed > Page 327 today a country’s credit rating is far more important to its economic well-being than are its natural resources. Highlight (yellow) - 16. The Capitalist Creed > Page 329 They offer governments the same advice that Zen masters offer initiates: just do nothing. But in its extreme form, belief in the free market is as naïve as belief in Santa Claus. There simply is no such thing as a market free of all political bias. 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. When kings fail to do their jobs and regulate the markets properly, it leads to loss of trust, dwindling credit and economic depression. Note - 16. The Capitalist Creed > Page 329 Does the past indicate the future of digital currency? Must currency always be regulated to sustain economic growth? I'm getting convinced. Highlight (yellow) - 16. The Capitalist Creed > Page 331 The slave trade was not controlled by any state or government. It was a purely economic enterprise, organised and financed by the free market according to the laws of supply and demand. Highlight (yellow) - 16. The Capitalist Creed > Page 331 This is the fly in the ointment of free-market capitalism. It cannot ensure that profits are gained in a fair way, or distributed in a fair manner. On the contrary, the craving to increase profits and production blinds people to anything that might stand in the way. When growth becomes a supreme good, unrestricted by any other ethical considerations, it can easily lead to catastrophe. Highlight (yellow) - 16. The Capitalist Creed > Page 333 capitalism has created a world that nobody but a capitalist is capable of running. The only serious attempt to manage the world differently – Communism – was so much worse in almost every conceivable way that nobody has the stomach to try again. In 8500 BC one could cry bitter tears over the Agricultural Revolution, but it was too late to give up agriculture. Similarly, we may not like capitalism, but we cannot live without it. Note - 16. The Capitalist Creed > Page 333 Let's not engage in Einstellung. But let's also acknowledge the great inertia that exists. Highlight (yellow) - 17. The Wheels of Industry > Page 344 (playing is the mammalian way of learning social behaviour). Highlight (yellow) - 17. The Wheels of Industry > Page 349 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!’ Highlight (yellow) - 18. A Permanent Revolution > Page 372 The Nobel Peace Prize to end all peace prizes should have been given to Robert Oppenheimer and his fellow architects of the atomic bomb. Nuclear weapons have turned war between superpowers into collective suicide, and made it impossible to seek world domination by force of arms. Highlight (yellow) - 19. And They Lived Happily Ever After > Page 382 Family and community seem to have more impact on our happiness than money and health. People with strong families who live in tight-knit and supportive communities are significantly happier than people whose families are dysfunctional and who have never found (or never sought) a community to be part of. Marriage is particularly important. Repeated studies have found that there is a very close correlation between good marriages and high subjective well-being, and between bad marriages and misery. This holds true irrespective of economic or even physical conditions. An impecunious invalid surrounded by a loving spouse, a devoted family and a warm community may well feel better than an alienated billionaire, provided that the invalid’s poverty is not too severe and that his illness is not degenerative or painful. Highlight (yellow) - 19. And They Lived Happily Ever After > Page 382 the most important finding of all is that 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. If you want a bullock-cart and get a bullock-cart, you are content. If you want a brand-new Ferrari and get only a second-hand Fiat you feel deprived. Highlight (yellow) - 19. And They Lived Happily Ever After > Page 384 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. Highlight (yellow) - 19. And They Lived Happily Ever After > Page 386 Some scholars compare human biochemistry to an air-conditioning system that keeps the temperature constant, come heatwave or snowstorm. Events might momentarily change the temperature, but the air-conditioning system always returns the temperature to the same set point. Highlight (yellow) - 19. And They Lived Happily Ever After > Page 391 happiness consists in seeing one’s life in its entirety as meaningful and worthwhile. There is an important cognitive and ethical component to happiness. Our values make all the difference to whether we see ourselves as ‘miserable slaves to a baby dictator’ or as ‘lovingly nurturing a new life’.2 As Nietzsche put it, if you have a why to live, you can bear almost any how. A meaningful life can be extremely satisfying even in the midst of hardship, whereas a meaningless life is a terrible ordeal no matter how comfortable it is. Note - 19. And They Lived Happily Ever After > Page 391 This statement is conjecture, however it aligns with Frankl's findings in Man's Search for Meaning Highlight (yellow) - 20. The End of Homo Sapiens > Page 412 Unless some nuclear or ecological catastrophe intervenes, so goes the story, the pace of technological development will soon lead to the replacement of Homo sapiens by completely different beings who possess not only different physiques, but also very different cognitive and emotional worlds. Highlight (yellow) - 20. The End of Homo Sapiens > Page 412 We don’t like to contemplate the possibility that in the future, beings with emotions and identities like ours will no longer exist, and our place will be taken by alien life forms whose abilities dwarf our own. We seek comfort in the fantasy that Dr Frankenstein can create only terrible monsters, whom we would have to destroy in order to save the world. We like to tell the story that way because it implies that we are the best of all beings, that there never was and never will be something better than us.