Spread of World Religions

Wisdom of Dan John

Never Let Go

Quiet: The Power of Introverts

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

Some highlights:

• In the Culture of Character, the ideal self was serious, disciplined, and honorable. What counted was not so much the impression one made in public as how one behaved in private.... “The social role demanded of all in the new Culture of Personality was that of a performer,” Susman famously wrote. “Every American was to become a performing self.”
• Grant had a theory about which kinds of circumstances would call for introverted leadership. His hypothesis was that extroverted leaders enhance group performance when employees are passive, but that introverted leaders are more effective with proactive employees.
• I am a horse for a single harness, not cut out for tandem or teamwork … for well I know that in order to attain any definite goal, it is imperative that one person do the thinking and the commanding. —ALBERT EINSTEIN
• I don’t believe anything really revolutionary has been invented by committee. If you’re that rare engineer who’s an inventor and also an artist, I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone. You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team.
• The New Groupthink elevates teamwork above all else. It insists that creativity and intellectual achievement come from a gregarious place. It has many powerful advocates. “Innovation—the heart of the knowledge economy—is fundamentally social,” writes the prominent journalist Malcolm Gladwell. “None of us is as smart as all of us,” declares the organizational consultant Warren Bennis, in his book Organizing Genius....
• College students who tend to study alone learn more over time than those who work in groups. Even elite athletes in team sports often spend unusual amounts of time in solitary practice.
• What’s so magical about solitude? In many fields, Ericsson told me, it’s only when you’re alone that you can engage in Deliberate Practice, which he has identified as the key to exceptional achievement.
• excessive stimulation seems to impede learning
• Another study, of 38,000 knowledge workers across different sectors, found that the simple act of being interrupted is one of the biggest barriers to productivity. Even multitasking, that prized feat of modern-day office warriors, turns out to be a myth. Scientists now know that the brain is incapable of paying attention to two things at the same time. What looks like multitasking is really switching back and forth between multiple tasks, which reduces productivity and increases mistakes by up to 50 percent.
• group brainstorming doesn’t actually work. One of the first studies to demonstrate this was conducted in 1963.
• organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham. “If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.” The one exception to this is online brainstorming.
• Dorn has observed that her extroverted clients are more likely to be highly reward-sensitive, while the introverts are more likely to pay attention to warning signals.... In fact, some scientists are starting to explore the idea that reward-sensitivity is not only an interesting feature of extroversion; it is what makes an extrovert an extrovert.
• Extroverts’ dopamine pathways appear to be more active than those of introverts.
• Introverts also seem to be better than extroverts at delaying gratification, a crucial life skill associated with everything from higher SAT scores and income to lower body mass index.
• Extroverts get better grades than introverts during elementary school, but introverts outperform extroverts in high school and college. At the university level, introversion predicts academic performance better than cognitive ability.
• Extroverts are better than introverts at handling information overload.... But introverts seem to think more care
• introverts like people they meet in friendly contexts; extroverts prefer those they compete withfully than extroverts.
• But the catharsis hypothesis is a myth—a plausible one, an elegant one, but a myth nonetheless. Scores of studies have shown that venting doesn’t soothe anger; it fuels it.

Stoicism

A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine

Some highlights:

• Such is the madness of men, [Diogenes] said, that they choose to be miserable when they have it in their power to be content.
• For the Stoics, a person’s virtue . . . depends on her excellence as a human being—on how well she performs the function for which humans were designed. In the same way that a “virtuous” (or excellent) hammer is one that performs well the function for which it was designed—namely, to drive nails—a virtuous individual is one who performs well the function for which humans were designed. To be virtuous, then, is to live as we were designed to live.
• By studying logic, they hoped to perform well one of the functions for which we were designed; namely, to behave in a rational manner. And by studying physics, they hoped to gain insight into the purpose for which we were designed.
• The Roman Stoics retained this goal, but we find them also repeatedly advancing a second goal: the attainment of tranquility.
• Stoic tranquility was a psychological state marked by the absence of negative emotions, such as grief, anger, and anxiety, and the presence of positive emotions, such as joy.
• Stoics thought there is nothing wrong with enjoying the good things life has to offer, as long as we are careful in the manner in which we enjoy them. In particular, we must be ready to give up the good things without regret.
• BEGIN EACH DAY by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness—all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance....
• the easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have
• THE STOICS THOUGHT they had an answer to this question. They recommended that we spend time imagining that we have lost the things we value....
• Most of us spend our idle moments thinking about the things we want but don’t have. We would be much better off, Marcus says, to spend this time thinking of all the things we have and reflecting on how much we would miss them if they were not ours.
• After expressing his appreciation that his glass is half full rather than being completely empty, he will go on to express his delight in even having a glass....
• Hedonic adaptation has the power to extinguish our enjoyment of the world. Because of adaptation, we take our life and what we have for granted rather than delighting in them. Negative visualization, though, is a powerful antidote to hedonic adaptation. By consciously thinking about the loss of what we have, we can regain our appreciation of it, and with this regained appreciation we can revitalize our capacity for joy.
• While most people seek to gain contentment by changing the world around them, Epictetus advises us to gain contentment by changing ourselves—more precisely, by changing our desires.
• when a Stoic concerns himself with things over which he has some but not complete control, such as winning a tennis match, he will be very careful about the goals he sets for himself. In particular, he will be careful to set internal rather than external goals.
• If we want our life to go well, Epictetus says, we should, rather than wanting events to conform to our desires, make our desires conform to events
• When the Stoics advocate fatalism, they are, I think, advocating a restricted form of the doctrine. More precisely, they are advising us to be fatalistic with respect to the past, to keep firmly in mind that the past cannot be changed.
• We can either spend this moment wishing it could be different, or we can embrace this moment.
• The Stoics, by way of contrast, welcomed a degree of discomfort in their life.
• Seneca advises us to avoid people who are simply whiny, “who are melancholy and bewail everything, who find pleasure in every opportunity for complaint.”
• Marcus recommends that when we interact with an annoying person, we keep in mind that there are doubtless people who find us to be annoying.
• ...keep in mind that our annoyance at what he does will almost invariably be more detrimental to us than whatever it is he is doing.
• It is easy these days to find people who will agree that their life would have gone better if they had shown more sexual reserve; it is hard to find people who think their life would have gone better if they had shown less.
• One of their sting-elimination strategies is to pause, when insulted, to consider whether what the insulter said is true.... 
• One particularly powerful sting-elimination strategy is to consider the source of an insult. If I respect the source, if I value his opinions, then his critical remarks shouldn’t upset me.
• Indeed, a Stoic sage, were one to exist, would probably take the insults of his fellow humans to be like the barking of a dog. When a dog barks, we might make a mental note that the dog in question appears to dislike us, but we would be utter fools to allow ourselves to become upset.
• as Epictetus puts it, “what upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about these things.”
• Refusing to respond to an insult is, paradoxically, one of the most effective responses possible.
• ...keep in mind that the things that anger us generally don’t do us any real harm; they are instead mere annoyances.
• Epictetus therefore advises us not to seek social status, since if we make it our goal to please others, we will no longer be free to please ourselves.
• not needing wealth is more valuable than wealth itself
• ... desire for luxuries is not a natural desire. Natural desires, such as a desire for water when we are thirsty, can be satisfied; unnatural desires cannot.
• According to Seneca, our financial goal should be to acquire “an amount that does not descend to poverty, and yet is not far removed from poverty.”
• [For a Stoic,] happiness depends more on his values than on where he resides.
• More generally, the psychiatrist Sally Satel and the philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers, in a book that challenges certain aspects of modern psychological therapy, write, “Recent findings suggest that reticence and suppression of feelings, far from compromising one’s psychological well-being, can be healthy and adaptive. For many temperaments, an excessive focus on introspection and self-disclosure is depressing.
• Stoics don’t think it is helpful for people to consider themselves victims of society—or victims of anything else, for that matter. If you consider yourself a victim, you are not going to have a good life; if, however, you refuse to think of yourself as a victim—if you refuse to let your inner self be conquered by your external circumstances—you are likely to have a good life.
• Many of us have been persuaded that happiness is something that someone else, a therapist or a politician, must confer on us. Stoicism rejects this notion.
• Stoics, although they didn’t understand evolution, nevertheless discovered psychological techniques that, if practiced, can help us overcome those aspects of our evolutionary programming that might otherwise disrupt our tranquility.
• WHEN DOING THINGS to cause myself physical and mental discomfort, I view myself—or at any rate, a part of me—as an opponent in a kind of game. This opponent—my “other self,” as it were—is on evolutionary autopilot: He wants nothing more than to be comfortable and to take advantage of whatever opportunities for pleasure present themselves.
• And why is self-discipline worth possessing? Because those who possess it have the ability to determine what they do with their life. Those who lack self-discipline will have the path they take through life determined by someone or something else, and as a result, there is a very real danger that they will mislive.

Sapiens 17 -- The End of Homo Sapiens

See also these transcripts, posted by someone else who took Dr. Harari's Coursera course.

Lesson 17 - part 1 -- Homo sapiens will upgrade into a different kind of being

• Biological engineering:  implanting a gene or taking some drug which is aimed to modify the shape, the capabilities, the needs or the desires of an organism.  Biological engineering isn’t new, but what is new are the abilities of today’s biological engineering.  

Lesson 17 - part 2 -- cont'd, non-biological upgrades to Sapiens

• Cyborg engineering
• Non-organic beings:  like the Blue Brain project

Lesson 17 - part 3 -- If any of these methods succeed, and if this really occurs, what would be the social and the political and the ethical implications?

Final note from Dr Harari, our course presenter.

People often ask, what is the purpose of studying history? They sometimes imagine that we study history in order to predict the future, or in order to learn from past mistakes. In my view, we should study history not in order to learn from the past, but in order to be free of it.

Each of us is born into a particular world, governed by a particular system of norms and values, and a particular economic and political order. Since we are born into it, we take the surrounding reality to be natural and inevitable, and we tend to think that the way people today live their lives is the only possible way. We seldom realize that the world we know is the accidental outcome of chance historical events, which condition not only our technology, politics and economics but even the way we think and dream. This is how the past grips us by the back of the head, and turn our eyes towards a single possible future. We have felt the grip of the past from the moment we were born, so we don’t even notice it. The study of history aims to loosen this grip, and to enable us to turn our head around more freely, to think in new ways, and to see many more possible futures.

I hope that by introducing you to the history of humankind, this course has helped loosen the grip of the past.

Sapiens 16 -- Happily Ever After

See also these transcripts, posted by someone else who took Dr. Harari's Coursera course.

Lesson 16 - part 1 -- Has progress made us happier?  (See this!)

• Some say "yes":  Modern medicine, comforts and conveniences, more power
• Others say "no":  See the downside of the agricultural revolution (lecture 5)
• Middle ground:  Not until the scientific revolution, after which we learned to use power for progress
• Should we be optimistic about our modern age?  Not really, because . . . 
• Whatever progress we've made, it's been only a very small sample of years:  "It is too early to know whether this represents a fundamental shift in the currents of history, or an ephemeral wave of good fortune."
• Over the last few decades, we have also disrupted "the ecological equilibrium of our planet in numerous new ways with what is likely to be very difficult and dangerous consequences for ourselves."
• Finally, "we can congratulate ourselves on the unprecedented accomplishment of modern Homo sapiens, only if we completely ignore the fate of all other animals. . . . modern industrial agriculture may well turn out to be the greatest crime in history, which caused massive suffering."
• We are not necessarily happier than our ancestors, since "social, and ethical, and spiritual factors have as great an impact on our happiness as material conditions."

Lesson 16 - part 2 -- What is happiness?  How to measure it.  The biological view.

• Definition:  "The generally accepted definition of happiness as is studied today in the social and life sciences is that happiness is subjective wellbeing. ... According to this definition, happiness is something that we feel. It is either a sense of immediate pleasure, or a sense or a feeling of long-term contentment with the way life is going."
• Scientific measurement of happiness:  "Psychologists or biologists who want to assess how people feel simply give them questionnaires to fill out and to report what they are feeling."
• Most important finding:  "happiness does not really depend on objective conditions of either wealth or health or even society. Rather, happiness depends above all, on the correlation between expectations and conditions."
• History doesn't seem to matter much:  "even dramatic changes in the conditions of human beings in history did not necessarily make them happier or change their happiness level for better or worse."
• "people in the Middle Ages had much more difficult living conditions in many respects than people today in the world. But their expectations were also very different from ours."  (bullock cart vs. Ferrari)
• How modern society makes us *more* unhappy:  "An interesting conclusion from this is that if happiness is indeed determined by expectations, then two of the central pillars of modern society, the media and the advertising industry, may actually be ... working to ensure that people won’t become happier even if there are huge improvements in their conditions."
• "There are lots of studies that show that the body image of people today is far lower than in the past. People are far less satisfied with the way they look today than they were 100 years ago or 1,000 years ago. This leads some scholars to argue that the issue of expectations in the media and so forth, cause discontent."
• Again, history doesn't matter much:  "So these are the main findings of scholars in fields such as psychology and sociology and economics. Happiness depends on expectations. Because expectations adapt to conditions, happiness levels throughout history changed to a smaller degree than we usually think."
• Biological view:  "evolution has shaped us to be neither too miserable, nor too happy. A biochemical system in our body shaped by evolution enables us to enjoy momentary rushes of pleasant sensations. But these never last long, or at least not forever."  We stick more or less to a baseline constant neurochemistry.
• Biology trumps history:  "If we accept this biological approach to happiness, that happiness is determined by our internal biological system, biochemical system, and not by events outside then it turns out that history is not very important, at least, not very important for human happiness, because historical events have very little impact on the structure of the human biochemical system, on the internal structure of our bodies and brain."

Lesson 16 - part 3 -- Happiness = meaning, or the Buddhist view of happiness

• Some argue that happiness is not just pleasure or brain chemistry:  "meaningful activities can be extremely satisfying, even if they’re not easy, even if they are not joyful very much" (Kahneman study)
• So, if happiness depends on meaning, then still, Medieval people could have been even happier than people today in affluent societies.
• But there is no meaning to human existence:  "According to science, at least to science in the early 21st century, humans, like, just like all other phenomena in the world, are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without any purpose, without any goal, without any meaning."
• So, happiness depends on somehow convincing ourselves that life has meaning when it doesn't really (self-delusion).
• Buddhism assigns the question of happiness more importance than perhaps any other religion in history.. . . People are liberated from suffering, not when they experience this or that fleeting pleasure, which immediately disappears but when they understand the impermanent nature of all of their feelings and therefore stop craving them and chasing them."

Sapiens 15 -- A Permanent Revolution

See also these transcripts, posted by someone else who took Dr. Harari's Coursera course.

Lesson 15 - part 1 -- destruction of habitats, rule by timetable

• "Less than 10% of the big animals of the world, oceans and continents together today are wild animals. The vast majority are us Homo sapiens and are domesticated and enslaved farmyard animals." 
• "Doomsday prophecies about humanity running out of resources and energy are probably incorrect. In contrast the fear of ecological destruction, that humankind is destroying the ecosystem around it is far more justified."
• IR --> a revolution in time, rhythms of life

Lesson 15 - part 2 -- collapse of the family, rise of individuality (from state/market forces)

• growing power of markets and states have usurped the role of family
• "The state and the market during the 19th and 20th century approached people with an offer that couldn’t be refused. They told us become individuals."
• " It is very common, especially in romantic literature to present the individual as somebody who is all the time struggling against the state and the market, but this is completely wrong. This is just the opposite of what really happened."
• "For millions of years, humans have been living as members of intimate communities and families. For the last few thousand years cities, kingdoms and empires grew. They were still composed of families and communities. Now, within a mere two centuries from about 1800 onwards we have become alienated individuals living within these states and markets."
• The identity of people today is based more and more with identification with the state, or with market groups.  (Madonna fans, Manchester United supporters, vegetarians, etc.)

Lesson 15 - part 3 -- a more peaceful world, the dissolution of European empires has been unique in human history

• The pace of change is faster than ever before in human history.  We expect that the world will be very different 20 years from now.
• At the same time, the level of violence has decreased; the world is more peaceful.
• The "collapse of the family and community, and the rise of the state, caused a decrease in internal levels of violence."
• "Throughout history, most violence resulted from local feuds, local conflicts, between families and communities."  But the rise of the power of the state has prevented this.
• "In Detroit, the murder capital of the United States, about 50 people are murdered each year for every 100,000 people. . . . In contrast, in ancient societies of simple farmers, who had no political organization larger than the local community, about 400 individuals were violently killed each year for every 100,000 people. That’s eight times more than in Detroit."
• Collapse of European Empires -- replaced by independent states.  The "greatest transfer of power in history" (in terms of magnitude, speed, and peacefulness/orderliness).  The dissolution of the British Empire or the USSR = very different than the process of collapse of earlier empires.
• USSR collapse in 1980's:  "Never in history before, had so much power been given up so quickly, by so few people."

Lesson 15 - part 4 -- Since 1945, states no longer invade other states in order to conquer and swallow them up.  (See this!)

• "Since 1945, no independent country recognized by the United Nations has been conquered and wiped off the map by, by some other country."
• Fewer international wars than ever:
• South America:  only 3 major international wars in the past 130 years
• Arab states:  Since WW2, no full scale international wars between Arab states except for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990
• Muslim states:  Only 1 major war -- Iran-Iraq in the 1980s
• In Africa, vast majority of conflicts are civil wars and revolutions and rebellions
• Common counter-argument:  There have been such periods of relative peace before, and they always ended in major wars.
• BUT:  "Today the word “peace” has acquired a new meaning. The new peace does not mean the absence of war it means the implausibility of war, the impossibility of war."
• People and governments and, businesses and companies, run their lives without even imaging the possibility of a serious war. 
• Why so peaceful?  4 theories:
• The price of war is *much* greater:  nuclear weapons made the cost of war so high.
• The profits of war is *much* less:  
• wealth today = human capital (knowledge, rather than material wealth as in the past)  
• "you can’t conquer the riches of Silicon Valley, because the ... wealth of Silicon Valley resides in the minds, in the brains of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft engineers."
• Peace is much more profitable: International trade/investment is much too important now.
• States are losing their independence and therefore cannot wage wars:  governments cannot conduct independent economic or foreign policies. They are incapable of initiating and conducting full scale war on their own without the approval of their international community and of the international elites.

Sapiens 14 -- The Industrial Revolution

See also these transcripts, posted by someone else who took Dr. Harari's Coursera course.

Lesson 14 - part 1 -- Industrial Revolution gave humankind control of enormous new (and cheaper) energy resources and raw materials.  We have *plenty* of energy and resources, if only we can learn to harness them.

• The IR is not the discovery of some new energy source or raw material, but rather the idea that there are limitless resources out there and we simply need to learn to harness these resources.
• Steam engine = the 1st invention (to pump out coal mines); counter-intuitive to convert heat energy into movement
• "This invention of the steam engine was important not only in itself, but also because it broke a big psychological barrier. It proved that by inventing the right machine, you could use almost any kind of energy in the world for any purpose you want."
• E=mc2 
• Other sources of energy that humans learned to harness:  petroleum, electricity, atoms
• "The Industrial Revolution was thus a revolution of energy. Its deep meaning is that there is no limit to the amount of energy at our disposal. The only limit is set by our ignorance."  The world doesn't lack energy, just the knowledge of how to harness it.
• Before the IR, plants were the only source of energy (as food to fuel muscles).  On earth, plant energy through photosynthesis makes up only 3k exajoules/year, a very small fraction of the nearly 4 million exajoules reach earth every year through the sun's energy.
• We're not running out of raw materials either:  More energy allows us to extract/transport materials in new ways and discover new ones:  plastic, aluminum, WWI Germany ammonium story.

Lesson 14 - part 2 -- the impact of the IR was first and foremost in agriculture

• Animals turned into food machines:  "The modern animal industry is not motivated by animosity; it is fueled mainly by greed coupled with indifference. Not caring about the fate of these creatures."
• Harlow’s experiment on the infant monkeys showed that mammals have social/emotional needs.
• Iindustrial methods of agriculture, of raising animals, are one of the things that led to a very sharp increase in the productivity of agriculture and in human food reserves.
• "In almost all previous societies peasants comprised more than 90% of the population, and this was true until the early 20th century. Only following the industrialization of agriculture was possible for a smaller and smaller number of farmers to produce more and more food to feed people in the cities." (2% of the population of the US work in agriculture)
• For the first time in human history the supply of goods and products began to outstrip demand. This created an entirely new economic problem, the problem of consumption.

Lesson 14 - part 3 -- Consumerism

• "The modern capitalist economy must constantly grow, must increase production more and more in order to survive."  And at the same time, people must buy this stuff.
• "Consumerism sees the consumption of more and more products and services as a good thing as a positive thing. Consumerism encourages people to spoil themselves, treat themselves, and even kill themselves by slowly by eating too much. Consumerism sees frugality as a problem as some kind of psychological disorder."
• Shopping as a favorite pastime, obesity as a victory of consumerism.
• "In medieval Europe, aristocrats spent their money carelessly on luxuries, whereas peasants lived frugally not wasting money on unnecessary stuff. Today we’ve simply switched roles."
• So, the IR changed ethics/morality with the revolutionary new capitalist-consumerist double ethic:  The supreme commandment of the rich is, invest! You must invest your money, don’t waste it! The supreme commandment for all the rest of the people is, buy! You must buy more! 

Sapiens 13 -- The Capitalist Creed

See also these transcripts, posted by someone else who took Dr. Harari's Coursera course.

Lesson 13 - part 1 -- economic history and the rise of the capitalist system

• The most unique/important characteristic of the modern capitalist economy = GROWTH.
• 2:30-10:07 = a hypothetical example that shows how capitalism is based on trust in future growth
• "The secret, the magic of capitalism, is that it finances present expenses with make believe money that has no cover in the present and may only may have cover in the future. For most of history, the economy was frozen. It hardly grew at all. It was very hard to finance new enterprises because people did not trust in the future."
• CREDIT enables us today to build the present at the expense of the future, and this is what enables the economy to grow so fast. (unlike money, which is based on trust of something in the present, like the king/govt)
• In pre-modern times, credit was limited because people did not have trust in future economic growth; so, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, it was difficult for growth to occur.

 Lesson 13 - part 2 -- Adam Smith's revolution in ethics; capitalism and science are mutually dependent upon each other

• A new revolutionary idea:  GREED IS GOOD.  Adam Smith’s claim that the selfish human urge to increase private profits is the basis for the collective wealth and welfare of society.  Economics is a win-win, not a zero-sum game.
• Jesus: a rich man cannot enter the kingdom of God.  Smith: rich men are the best people in society. 
• CAPITALism is based on the idea the profits must be reinvested to increase production.  (Vs. wealth, which is wasted on unproductive activities; lots of wealthy people are not capitalists)
• It was a very strange and alien idea to most people throughout history. In pre-modern times, people believed that production was more or less constant so there was no reason to reinvest your profits in production. 
• (Other species don't believe in this idea of perpetual economic growth; wolves, for example, don't expect the supply of sheep to grow.)
• Connection between science and capitalism:  "The human economy, in the last 500 years, nevertheless, managed to really grow without limits, exponentially, thanks to scientists coming up with new discoveries and new gadgets . . . Banks and governments print the money, but ultimately, it is the scientists who have to foot the bill."

Lesson 13 - part 3 -- The link between capitalism and Empire

• Credit and capitalism were not unique European inventions.  However, pre-modern Asian kings and generals tended to look down on merchants and bankers, and their activities were financed by taxation.
• European expansion, however, was financed and driven by the interests of merchants and bankers.
• "The empires built by bankers and investors managed to defeat the empires built by kings and nobleman, because they had a much stronger financial base. It’s better and easier to finance an empire from investments than from taxation. Nobody wants to pay taxes, but everybody is very happy to invest."
• English, French, or Dutch empires were created and managed by private businesses, by limited liability companies.  The stock exchange could finance campaigns of exploration and conquest far more easily and efficiently than any kingdom or empire that taxed its subjects.
• 5:43-8:85 = story of the Dutch Company VOC that conquered and ruled Indonesia for 200 years
• Most British colonies were also established by private companies, rather than by the crown itself.
• Opium War, Britain vs. China (1840's) is a notorious example of the connection between governments and capitalists, government controlled by capitalists and looked after their interests
• Today's links between government and capitalism:  The success of a country today in the world depends much more on its credit rating than on its natural resources. Credit ratings indicate the probability that a country will pay its debts, determines its ability to borrow money.

Lesson 13 - part 4 -- The calamities caused by free markets (with no government regulation)

• Capitalists insist that governments should not interfere with free markets.  But there is no such thing as a market that is completely free from politics/government "because the most important economic resource is trust in the future."  And governments ensure trust.
• "If markets are not regulated, there is a very real danger that the powerful players in the market will exploit and oppress the less powerful in the pursuit of profits."
• TAST = the greatest crime of capitalism
• "Unrestrained market forces and not tyrannical kings or racist ideologies were responsible for slavery in European colonies. . . . This whole enterprise, the slave trade, was not controlled by any state or any government. It was a purely economic enterprise organized, managed and financed by the free market, according to the laws of supply and demand."
• "When growth becomes the supreme good, and it is unrestricted by any other ethical or political consideration, the pursuit of growth can lead easily to catastrophe."
• "Much like the agricultural revolution the growth of the modern economy might turn out to be a colossal fraud. The human species and the global economy as a whole may well keep growing and growing, but many individuals still live in hunger and in very difficult conditions."

Sapiens 12 -- The Marriage of Science and Empire

See also these transcripts, posted by someone else who took Dr. Harari's Coursera course.

Scientific research can only flourish in alliance with religion, ideology or economic-political force to justify the cost of the research. The 2 economic/political forces that most promoted modern science = European imperialism and capitalism.

Lesson 12 - part 1 -- Europe's unique potential for modern dominance

Between 1500-1800, Europe did not have any technological advantage over other world powers.
"[B]ut Europe was gradually building a unique potential whose importance became obvious in the 19th century. The apparent equality between Europe, China and the Muslim world in 1750 was a mirage. They might have been equal in their power but their potential was very different."

• 1:36- 6:30 -- How surprising it is that Europe ended up being the "master of the outer world" in the modern age, given that they had previously been a mere shadow compared to other Eurasian powers.
• "Technology was far less important before 1850. Even as late as 1800, the technological gap between European, Asian, and African powers was relatively small. In the year 1800, Europeans did not have a significant technological advantage over Muslims, Indians or Chinese."
• Questions:
• When Britain began to build railways and modern industrial factories, why were France, Germany and the United States able to follow quickly whereas China lagged behind
• When the gap between industrial and non-industrial nations became a very obvious economic and political factor, how come European countries like Italy, Russia and Austria managed to close the gap and join the industrializing club whereas Persia, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire failed to do so?
• Answer:  "What they [China and Persia] really lacked was the values, the judicial apparatus and the social political structures that took centuries to form and mature in the west and which could not be so easily copied and internalized."
• Europe's unique potential = science + capitalism

Lesson 12 - part 2 -- The link between science and empire in Early Modern Europe:  European scientists and conquerors both had the same mentality, one of exploring and conquering.

• Both European scientists and conquers shared the same basic mind-set, beginning by admitting ignorance. They both then felt compelled to go out into the world and make new discoveries, and they both hoped that new knowledge would yield power.
• "European imperialism was in this way very unique and very different from all previous imperial projects in history. Previous conquerors assumed that they already understood the world perfectly."
• In the 18th and 19th centuries almost every important military expedition that left from Europe to distant lands had on board scientists who set out not to fight but to make scientific discoveries. They also had political ambitions of conquest. 
• Cook Expedition/HMS Beagle examples:  Was it a scientific expedition which was protected by a military force or was it a military expedition which a few scientists joined in order to look around?"  Both -- the scientific revolution and modern imperialism were inseparable.
• Story about Native American message to moon spirits in 1969:  "Europeans may come with all kinds of ideas about science and exploration and so forth, but on the way they are also coming to steal your lands."

Lesson 12 - part 3 -- Discovery of the New World = the foundational event of the Scientific Revolution

• "The discovery of America is what really began the scientific revolution because it taught Europeans to favor present observations over past traditions and sacred texts."
• Columbus never realized/admitted that he discovered a new continent (middle ages mindset). The idea of a new, unknown continent was inconceivable for people of his generation, because for thousands of years not only the greatest thinkers of Europe knew only about Europe,  Africa and Asia.  Plus, America is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible; how could the Holy Scriptures have missed half the world?
• Amerigo Vespucci = the first "modern explorer" to have the courage to argue that these new lands were indeed a new continent which we know nothing about.
• Martin Waldseemüller = German mapmaker who, convinced by Vespucci, first mapped the new continents, naming them America.
• A revolutionary new map (Italy, 1525) leaves mostly blank space, inviting explorers to fill in the gaps of ignorance.

• The European "explore and conquer" missions were unique in human history; previous societies had never aimed to conquer unfamiliar distant lands (only those adjacent)
• Even Alexander the Great was only out to conquer known, already-existing empires.
• c.f. Zheng He, who did not try to conquer or colonize the countries he visited. "More importantly these expeditions were not deeply rooted in Chinese politics and culture" and they were stopped once the initiating ruling faction changed in Beijing.  
• Why not China or the Arabs?
• They had the means to do it (as Zheng He shows). They were no further away; they had the technological, the economic, the military abilities.  But they didn't.
• "The Chinese were just not interested. They didn’t think that there was anything important which they don’t already know about, that some place in the new world there could be something that was important for China."
• deBary's reverse question:  Why couldn't the Europeans behave themselves as civilized, mature, responsible people and get their own house in order to stay home like China, India, the Arabs, rather than chasing around the world to make trouble for others?
• It was the resources and the wealth that the Europeans accumulated in these new lands and oceans that eventually gave them enough power to compete with the Asian empires and to defeat them. 
• Geography = the first really important science of the scientific revolution (not physics, chemistry, biology). "Geography received the biggest in investments and it gave back the biggest results. It gave the Europeans mastery over new lands and new oceans. What began with geography soon spread to other disciplines such as medicine, physics, logistics, economics, anthropology and history."

 Lesson 12 - part 4 -- Beyond geography: the spread of European science.  And why we can't really say whether European imperialism was good or bad.

• Following the success in geography, even studies which seemed completely useless were often supported by the European empires, because they might discover something useful.
• like quinine, treatment for malaria, which they learned about from Native Americans and allowed them to conquer Africa
• discovery of Harappan Civilization in India -- no Indian had discovered it!
• deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics, which no previous conquerer of Eygpt (of many!) had ever attempted
• Also, European empires supported scientific projects because these could give them ideological support.  History, archaeology, biology could be used to support the idea of a superior European race.
• Harari argues that the question of whether European imperialism was good or bad is not a useful question.  Because these empires were so widespread, so powerful, they led to so many changes and did "so many different things that they provide plenty of evidence for anything you want to say about them."

Sapiens 11 -- The Discovery of Ignorance

See also these transcripts, posted by someone else who took Dr. Harari's Coursera course.

Lesson 11 - part 1 -- “The scientific revolution” refers to the phenomenal growth of human power over the last 500 years, which resulted from the discoveries and inventions of modern science. In nature, speed, and magnitude, nothing like it has happened before.

• Investment in scientific research:  "Until the early modern period humans invested little effort in scientific research because they doubted their ability to obtain new medical, military or economic powers."  And "Rulers did finance educational institutions like universities and monasteries, but, their aim  was to spread and preserve traditional knowledge for the purpose of supporting the existing order."
• There is a  positive feedback loop of mutual reinforcement between modern science, politics, and economics.
• 3 ways modern science differs from previous traditions of knowledge:
• based on the idea of ignorance; we don't know everything
• Before:  Prophets of the past, ancient religious texts, were assumed to have all the answers. (or not, for things that were unimportant for humans)
• Imagine Darwin calling himself the "seal of the biologists" like Muhammed as "seal of the prophets"!
• In contrast, the dominant method in modern research is to take for granted the insufficiency of old knowledge.
• Makes modern science far more dynamic and inquisitive than any previous tradition of knowledge
• centrality of observation and mathematics
• Before:  narrative stories were used as proof (Bible stories)
• Medieval education = grammar, logic, rhetoric
• 1687 = Newton's “The Mathematical Principle of Natural Philosophy” -- math/mearsurements used as proof
• Today's education = emphasis on "exact sciences" that use mathematical tools
• theories are not enough; knowledge should lead to power
• Before, most thinkers did not try to translate their findings about the universe into technological gadgets; today = close connection between science and technology
• New things were invented before, but most often the result of trial-and-error by an uneducated craftsman, rather than the result of systematic science.
• Even when there was a tech-gap between civilizations, it was not an intentional plan of some ruler or king.  And often, it didn't translate into power (like in China, where the less-tech Mongols won).

Lesson 11 - part 2 -- (notes integrated above)

Lesson 11 - part 3 -- the revolutionary idea of PROGRESS

• What our ancestors saw as political, ethical and spiritual dilemmas, for us are technical problems, we hope the scientists will work out a solution.
• Before, the notion that ordinary people could overcome life's difficulties or change the world simply by discovering new knowledge, and inventing new tools was ludicrous. (Even Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha didn't do that!)
• Now, many of us are convinced that we can overcome every and any problem simply by acquiring and applying new knowledge.  For example, many past societies viewed poverty as an inescapable part of this world. Today it is more and more common to see poverty as a technical problem that can be solved.  (And in fact, Harari argues, there is really no more "biological poverty," where you're on the edge of life in terms of calories.)
• Can science defeat even death?  
• Over the last century the average life expectancy of humans jumped from about 30 years to about 67 years in the whole world, and 80 years in the developed world. 
• Gilgamesh (who eventually accepted that death was inevitable) vs. the Gilgamesh Project (for eternal life)
• Most late modern religions/ideologies have already taken death out of the equation: Communism, capitalism, feminism, etc. are all silent on what happens when you die, because they're not interested in afterlife

Lesson 11 - part 4 -- But it's not all so rosy.  It is "very rare that scientists dictate the agenda of science."

• Most scientific studies are funded because somebody believes that they can help attain some economic, political, or ideological goal.  For example, USA/USSR invested $$ in nuclear physics, but not underwater archaeology.
• "Scientific research can flourish only when it has found an alliance, with some religion, or some ideology. The ideology justifies the cost of the research and determines where the money should go and in exchange the ideology influences the scientific agenda and determines, what to do with the discoveries."
• "The feedback loop between science, empires, and capitalism has arguably been the chief mortar of history for the last 500 years."

Sapiens 10 -- The Law of Religion

See also these transcripts, posted by someone else who took Dr. Harari's Coursera course.

Lesson 10 - part 1 --What is religion?  Polytheistic tolerance.

• Definition of religion:  “a system of human laws and values, which is founded on a belief in a super human order."
• Criteria 1:  religion must believe in a super human order, which is not the product of human whims, or human agreements (unlike the laws of soccer)
• Criteria 2:  establishes norms and values derived from the super human order and which are binding for people (unlike the Theory of Relativity)
• Religion played a very crucial role in the unification of humankind. Some religions argued that there is a set of norms and values which all people must follow, which are true everywhere, any time, for everybody.  (Not all religions, though, like animism.)
• Polytheism:  Many polytheists do believe in a single main power that governs the entire universe, including all the gods (like Fate in Greece, or atman in Hinduism).  But, unlike in monotheism, this single power is devoid of interests, disinterested in human concerns.  There's no point making sacrifices or building temples to Fate or atman.
• "This then is the fundamental insight of polytheistic religions like Hinduism: The supreme power of the universe has absolutely no interests and no biases. If we want help with our mundane problems and ambitions, we must approach the partial and biased powers" -- like the lesser gods.
• Thus, polytheists are tolerant, accepting of many gods, rarely persecute infidels or heretics.  When Romans or Aztecs conquered people, they didn't force conversions but rather could just expand their pantheons.  (It was only that Christians refused to worship the emperor that got them in trouble.)
• "If we combine all the victims of all these persecutions of Christians by the polytheistic Romans, it turns out that in three centuries the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians. In contrast, over the course, of the next 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians in the millions...."

Lesson 10 - part 2 -- How fanatical monotheists came to dominate most of the world; monotheism is really a mish-mash of both polytheism and dualism

"With time followers of certain polytheistic gods, became so fond their particular god, that they drifted away from this basic insight. They began to believe that their particular god, was not just one among many, but was the only god and that he was identical to the supreme power of the universe. At the same time they continued to view their god as having interests and biases. They continued to believe that their god, even though the supreme power of the universe, still cared about the mundane affairs of humans. They could still make deals with this god, like making a sacrifice in exchange for getting victory in a war. This is how monotheistic religions were born."

• 1st monotheistic religion:  ancient Egypt (1350 BC) when Pharaoh Akhenaten declared that one of the previously minor deities of the Egyptian pantheon, the god Aten, was in fact the supreme power.  But it didn't stick after the pharaoh died.
• Judaism is monotheistic, too, but doesn't have widespread appeal.  The supreme being is only interested in the affairs of the small Jewish nation.  
• Christianity is the big breakthrough:  the supreme being is interested in everyone, and everyone should know about it.  The model for Islam, as well.
• Monotheists usually believed that their message was the one and only truth; compelled to discredit all other religions, waging violence, persecutions, and holy wars.
• The idea of one god who cares about everyone is hard to accept, even for monotheists, because on a primal level, Sapiens like to divide the world us/them.  
• Polytheism continued to survive, as Christians developed saints for various people and problems.
• For monotheists, the problem of evil, is extremely difficult.  The work-around is dualism, which can explain why there is evil (Satan), but leaves a big gap to the answer of order -- who/what governs the struggle between good/evil?
• Monotheistic mish-mash:  Monotheistic religions absorbed dualistic beliefs:  For example, the dualist belief in the existence of an evil god that fights against the good god  is nowhere to be found in the Old Testament.  The idea of holy war makes no logical sense in monotheism -- God is omnipotent, he doesn't need us to fight for him! -- but is baggage inherited from dualism.  Also heaven/hell.

Lesson 10 - part 3 -- Non-god religions spread throughout Afro-Asia in the first millennium BCE; the dominance of non-god religions in the modern age

• Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Stoicism, Epicureanism
• the super human order governing the world is the product of natural laws
• Focus on Buddhism:  how to end suffering, craving with meditation
• Even though, in theory, these religions gave little importance to gods, in practice, the worship of different gods continued to be of considerable importance.
• New natural law religions in the modern age:  liberalism, communism, capitalism, nationalism, and Nazism. "If a religion is a system of human norms and values founded on belief in a superhuman order then communism is no less a religion than Islam."

Lesson 10 - part 4 -- The most important and widespread modern religions = humanist religions that worship Sapiens.

Humanism definition:  the belief that Homo Sapiens has a unique and sacred nature which is fundamentally different from the nature of all the other animals and phenomena in the universe.... Humanists believe that the unique nature of Homo Sapiens is the most important thing in the world and it is this that determines the meaning of everything that happens in the universe. The supreme good is the good of Homo Sapiens, the rest of the world and all other beings exist solely for the benefit of this one species.

3 sects that disagree about who is "humanity"

• Liberal Humanism (liberalism) -- humanity is a quality of individual humans, the sacred nature of humanity resides within each and every individual Homo sapiens. Therefore, the supreme value of the world is the liberty of individuals; "a direct legacy of the traditional Christian belief in free and eternal individual souls"
• Socialist Humanism:  Socialists hold as sacred not the inner voice of each individual, but the species Homo sapiens as a whole. Whereas Liberal Humanism, seeks as much liberty as possible for individual humans, Socialist Humanism seeks equality between all humans.  Also descended from monotheism's idea of all souls being equal before God.
• Evolutionary Humanism: The main ambition of the Nazis was to protect human kind from extinction and encourage its evolutionary progression into super men; "survival of the fittest" vs. the other 2 humanisms, which merely fostered the weak

Sapiens 9 -- Imperial Visions

See also these transcripts, posted by someone else who took Dr. Harari's Coursera course.

The unification of human kind was driven forward by three main forces; money, empires and religions. Lecture 8 examined the role of money and trade . This lesson focuses on the part played by conquerors and empires.

Lesson 09 - part 1 -- Empires are central to human history and modern culture.

• Defining an "empire" -- culturally diverse, territorially flexible
• *not* defined by type of government, as an empire does not have to be ruled by an emperor
• size doesn't matter:  Aztecs, Athenians had small empires
• Modern prejudices against the idea of "empire" 
• Empires don't work; it's not possible to rule over such a large territory
• Yet empires have been the most common form of political organization for the last 2,500 years!  
• Most empires collapse not because of internal rebellions, but rather because of external invasions or splits between the ruling elites
• Destruction of one empire resulted in the formation of a new one (Middle East)
• Empires are evil and corrupt, violate the principle of self-determination, and are built and maintained through war, enslavement, deportation and genocide
• True, but also yield prosperity and thus great advancements in culture (art, philosophy, etc.)
• Another positive legacy = unification through language

Lesson 09 - part 2 -- How empires spread and became such important players in history

• 1st empire:   Akkadian Empire of Sargon the Great, established around 2250 BC in southern Mesopotamia; a major ideal in Mesopotamian and Middle Eastern political thinking for close to 2,000 years after Sargon
• 500 B.C., Cyrus the Great, King of Persia, had an even more ambitious dream than conquering the whole world -- to conquer peoples for their own benefit (rather than for the benefit of the conqueror)
• "This presumption, to rule the entire world for the benefit of all humans, was a very startling, even unnatural presumption for somebody to have. Evolution made Homo sapiens, like all other social animals, xenophobic creatures."
• "Cyrus the Great of Persia had a new imperial ideology characterized by being inclusive and all encompassing. Cyrus saw the whole of humankind as a single group, everybody belonged. His task as king of the world was not to take care of all people, of all humanity."
• Examples of how empires claim to conquer people for their own good:  China, Rome, Muslims, Spanish/Portuguese, British, USSR, USA
• Once the subject people accepted the culture, language, religion and behaviour patterns of the ruling elite there was no longer much difference between them. Barriers collapsed and they merged with one another.
• Examples:  Roman emperors who weren't Roman, Muslim rulers who weren't Arabs
• New citizens adopt the conquering culture as their own, such that it persists even after the empire itself collapses, still basically adhere to the culture, ideologies and ideas of their conquerors:
• Spain's Roman Catholicism and Latinate language; 
• Chinese people who adopted the Han Chinese culture; 
• non-Westerners today who believe in European ideologies of self-determination, liberalism, capitalism, nationalism, etc.
• Most of today’s cultures are based on imperial legacies. If empires are by definition bad, evil, what does it say about us and our cultures? 

Lesson 09 - part 3 -- The failures of nation-states, the rise of a global caste, and why a global empire is the way of the future.

• All human cultures today are at least in part the legacy of empires and of imperial civilizations. 
• It's impossible to the purge human culture from all the imperial legacies and return to a "pure, authentic civilization" -- India example:  Would Indians want to give up the legacies of the British Empire?  To give up the legacies of the Mughal empire before that?  To return to what?  What is "purely" Indian, anyway?
• Nationalism seems to have been a wrong turn in the 20th century; Should there really be as many independent states as there are distinct peoples?  Having close to 200 independent states is a hindrance to reaching global objectives (esp. environmental issues, human rights).
• Rise of a "global caste" of people, united horizontally by interests/culture rather than by nation-state.  For example, a banker in NYC has more in common with a banker in Shanghai than with a poor person in NYC.

Sapiens 8 -- The Direction of History

See also these transcripts, posted by someone else who took Dr. Harari's Coursera course.

Lesson 08 - part 1 -- History is headed in a general direction of global unity.

• Sapien societies can be very different from each other (unlike chimps or ants), but the overall pattern of interaction at the macro level is towards bigger and more complex civilizations. 
• 1492, the number of separate human worlds on the planet had already declined drastically: Afro-Eurasia was 90% of human population, and the other 10% was concentrated mostly in 4 groups:  (1) Mesoamerica (2) Andean (3) Australia (4) Oceanic
• Things we all (mostly) accept:  political model of nation-states, the idea of democracy, capitalism, medical science.
• There are no remaining "authentic cultures" or ancient local traditions free of external influences.
• Globalization of the modern era was only the final step, the climax of much older processes that began working thousands of years previously.
• Like other animal species, Sapiens evolved to think of people as being divided in to ‘us versus them’; we don't care about the interests of members of the same species outside their own group.  But this began to change with the Cognitive Revolution, and in the first millennium BC when the vision of the unification of the whole of humankind began to grow.
• New universal vision:  Everyone can be 'us'!  
• 3 unifying orders:  money, religion, empire.  
• "Merchants, conquerors and prophets were the first people in history who managed to transcend the binary evolutionary division between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and to foresee the potential unity of the whole of humankind."

Lesson 08 - part 2 -- The history of money, and what it allows humans to do

• For most of human history, economy = mutual favors and barter 
• With the rise of cities/kingdoms 5k years ago = specialization
• A barter economy can't work with large numbers of specialists/strangers; problem of calculating exchange rates for a variety of goods, matching supply/demand
• Money = anything people are willing to use in order to represent the value of other things for the purpose of exchanging goods and services.
• The development of money required no technological breakthrough. It was a purely mental revolution, the creation of a new inter-subjective reality that exists only in the shared imagination of many people.
• Today, >90% 90% of all the money in the world that appears in our bank accounts exists only as electronic data
• "Everybody always wants money for the simple reason that everybody else also always wants money, which means that if you have money you can exchange it for anything you like."
• Money enables people to convert one thing into another thing, and to store/transport a large amount of wealth.
• Without money, commercial networks would have had to stay small

Lesson 08 - part 3 -- Money is based on (1) universal convertibility and (2) universal trust.

• "Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised by human beings."  We believe in it because others believe in it.
• 1st known money = Sumerian barley money; inherent value, but not easy to store or transport
• 1st coins = 640 BC by King Alyattes of the kingdom of Lydia (western Turkey); no inherent value
• Coins have 2 advantages over raw metal ingots: no need to weigh it to know how much precious metal; mark of some religious/political authority as guarantee.
• Reciprocal arrangement between rulers and money:  The power of money depends on the power of the ruler (counterfeiting = usurping the power of that religious/political authority, deserves harsh punishment); the power of the ruler depends on the power of money.
• "Trust in money could cross geographical, topographical, and even political borders, thereby enabling people from very different cultures and religions and even kingdoms to trade with one another and to cooperate at least in the economic sphere."
• Roman coins were called "Denarius" - "Dinars" = Arabized form (shows how the use of coins was a transmitted idea)
• "People continued to speak many different languages, to obey different rulers and to worship distinct and very different gods. But more and more people all over the world believe in the same money, in gold and silver and later, sterling and dollars, and to use the same money." 
• Why/how did everyone come to believe in gold/silver as money?  Once trade begins to connect to separate areas, the forces of supply and demand tend to equalize the value of money (and all other goods/services being traded as well)
• This is how people who disagree about religious belief could agree on monetary beliefs:  Whereas religion asks us to believe in something like a god or some scripture, money asks us to believe only that other people believe in something.
• Money is not "evil"!  Money is "the apogee of human tolerance. There is nothing more tolerant it the world than money. Money is far more open-minded than any religion, than any state, than any cultural code, than any social habits. Money is the only trust system that humans created in history that can bridge almost all cultural gaps and it does not discriminate."

Sapiens 7 -- There is No Justice in History

See also these transcripts, posted by someone else who took Dr. Harari's Coursera course.

Lesson 07 - part 1 -- All post-AR societies have functioned by organizing into hierarchies based on imaginary stories.

• Hierarchical organization puts people into different categories and  people are treated accordingly. There is no need to know who they are and their abilities or personalities are.
• Hindu caste myth, Chinese classes myth, Capitalists
• These categories are purely imaginary! 
• While today, most would be outraged by the idea of racial hierarchy, we accept the idea of dividing/separating rich and poor, even though there is no real difference in skills/abilities.

Lesson 07 - part 2 -- Why do different societies choose different hierarchies?

• "The hierarchy that dominates in a particular society originated as a result of some accidental historical circumstances, and was then simply perpetuated over many, many generations"
• Hindu castes:  Aryan invaders feared they might lose their unique identity and their privileged status. To prevent this, they divided the population into castes, arguing that it reflected some kind of cosmic order and that its purpose was to protect society against impurity.
• "The impurity idea is very powerful because it is actually rooted in biological reality....  Different religions and social systems hijacked these biological mechanisms of developing disgust towards something and turned it against certain groups of people."
• American slavery/racism (a similar story):  Also accidental that black Africans became the slaves in US.  
• Causes: Indians died, Africa already had a thriving slave trade they could tap into, partial immunity to tropical diseases.
• "Paradoxically the biological superiority of Africans caused them to become socially inferior, because they were more fit than Europeans to live in the tropical climates..."
• Justifying myths became a racial ideology:  the story of Ham (theological), and the idea that blacks were less intelligent/moral, theory that blacks are polluted/dirty, or unreliable/lazy.
• Vicious, self-perpetuating myth, such that by the mid-20th century segregation in the Southern United States was probably worse than it was in the late 19th century.

The stories continued to be important to exert influence (and in many cases intensified) long after the original conditions disappeared or were long forgotten.

Lesson 07 - part 3 -- Gender hierarchy, the most widespread and persistent division across societies

• Throughout history, most societies have considered women to be men's property. (Rapists can just compensate owners for the "property damage" and move on, not worrying about the woman herself.)
• "To say that a husband raped his wife was as illogical as saying that a man stole his own wallet."
• Is male/female division an imaginary one (like caste or racism), or does it have a basis in biology?
• Every society that we know of in history managed to accumulate many cultural ideas and norms that have very little to do with biology. Societies associate a host of qualities and tasks and duties with masculinity and with femininity and for the most part they lack a firm biological basis.
• How can we determine if differences are truly biological or merely justifying myths?
• A good rule of thumb to distinguish between biological and myth is that biology enables, culture forbids.  Biology gives a possibility, but culture forbids it as "unnatural."  But there is nothing, in biology, that is unnatural because that would mean impossible.
• Our concepts of natural and unnatural are not taken from biology. They are taken from Christian theology and from monotheist theology in general from a Bible. "Natural" = using our bodies in the way God intended.
• sex = biological (objective) vs. gender = cultural (subjective)
• Masculinity can change radically from culture to culture (Louis XIV!)
• Patriarchy is so universal in human societies, it can't be a chance accident (like caste or racism); there must be some biological reason why societies valued male/masculine qualities over female/feminine qualities.

Lesson 07 - part 4 -- Why have men dominated women throughout history?  This remains one of the biggest unsolved riddles of history.  Flaws in the theories about universal biological reasons for patriarchy:

• Physical strength:  But this theory has several problems . . . 
• only true with regard to certain types of strength
• no relation between physical strength and social power (slaves are stronger than masters, young people are stronger than elders, etc.)
• in most societies, the stronger people ranked lowest (manual labor)
• even among chimps, the Alpha male is not always the strongest, but the one with best social skills
• Aggression/Testosterone:  Men evolved to become willing to engage in physical violence much more than women. So throughout history warfare was the monopoly, mainly, of men. Men were the warriors, the soldiers and generals. They used their control of armies and their control of war and warfare in order to gain control of civil society as well.
• BUT, just because men are biologically inclined to be soldiers doesn't mean that they should be the ones to direct/control warfare and reap the rewards.  (Like saying that because all the slaves in a cotton plantation are African, it means that the ones who control the plantation, and enjoy its benefits must also be African.)
• Survival/reproduction:  Men had to compete to spread their genes, so they evolved to be competitive.  Women were reliant on a provider/protector during childbearing/childraising years, so they evolved to be submissive.
• BUT, why does pregnancy/childcare make women dependent on men and not other women?
• Why would male competitiveness necessarily lead to social dominance?  Elephants and bonobos are matriarchal, even though there are dependent females and competitive males.  Strong cooperative networks of females control society, while males are too busy fighting and don't have well-developed social skills.  Females can cooperate to alienate any lone male.

Sapiens 6 -- Building "Pyramids"

See also these transcripts, posted by someone else who took Dr. Harari's Coursera course.

Lesson 06 - part 1 --  People create large societies based on stories, imagined realities.

• Agricultural Revolution --> more complex societies --> more conflict.  
• Most wars are not started because we don't have enough food.  More often, there is some other cause.
• Why?  "Sapiens simply have no natural instincts for cooperating with large numbers of strangers. Humans evolved for millions of years living in small bands. The handful of millennium separating the agricultural revolution from the appearance of cities and empires were simply not enough to allow for mass cooperation instincts to evolve by natural selection."
• Instead of instinct Sapiens had to rely on inventing stories, new imagined realities, that could regulate cooperation on such a huge scale. 
• Han, Roman, Persian empires, for example.
• 2 "stories" that maintain empires:  Both documents promise that if humans act according to its sacred principles, then millions of them would be able to live together, to cooperate effectively, and to create a safe and peaceful and prosperous society.
• Code of Hammurabi (1776 BCE) -- established on the basis of the idea of a divinely ordained social hierarchy (inequality)
• Declaration of Independence (1776 CE) -- established on the exact opposite idea, that of equality
• Which one is right about its claims regarding universal principles of  justice?  Neither.  Universal principles of justice is a fictive concept that exists only in the imagination of Sapiens.
• Biologically speaking, the Declaration of Independence gets a lot completely wrong.
• We believe in a particular way that society should behave, not because it is objectively true, not because it’s a scientific fact, but because, by believing in this imagined story it enables us to cooperate effectively, and to forge a stable society.

Lesson 06 - part 2 -- Social order is unstable, because it's based on an imagined reality.

• Sapiens must invest a great deal in maintaining the imagined social order (courts, armies, prisons, etc.)  But it cannot be sustained by violence and coercion alone. "A single priest often does the work of 100 soldiers far more cheaply and effectively."
• How do you cause people to really believe in these fundamental stories?  3 main factors that prevent people from realizing that the order which organizes their lives/society exists only in their imagination:
1. We turn stories from ideas into physical, material culture; example = architecture as a reflection of our modern Western idea of individualism
2. The imagined order shapes our deepest desires and wishes; our most personal desires are usually programmed or determined by the imagined order of the society; example = travel/vacations as an expression of romantic consumerism
• Romanticism:  you must have a wide variety of experiences to have a full life; break free of daily routine
• Consumerism:  to be happy you must consume as many products and services as possible
• "People are so busy pursuing these fantasies that they seldom stop to ask themselves why they believe in them in the first place."
3. The imagined order is not just in your mind, but in the mind of all those around you, an inter-subjective reality.
• Objective vs. Subjective vs. Inter-subjective

"This then is how you build an effective imagined order in which millions of people might believe for decades and centuries and millenium. You embed it in the material environment that surrounds the people in the deepest beliefs and desires of millions upon millions of people. If you can do that then you could create a successful society. Without it you cannot create a stable society, even if you have all the food in the world. Social order will crumble no matter how much food you have in your possession."

Lesson 06 - part 3 -- Numbers are the 3rd ingredient for a successful large human society (1 = surplus food, 2 = imagined orders)

• You need to be able to store/process larger amounts of and a new kind of information (data, numbers)
• 1st = Ancient Sumerians between 3500 BC and 3000 BC invented writing, a new system for storing and processing information outside the brain.
• NOTE:  Writing was invented for storing numerical data.  You don't need writing for stories or legends, poems, religious/philosophical scriptures, which can be stored in your brain.
• Even today, your brain might "freeze" when you see a complicated mathematical equation, because our brains do not naturally think in that way.

"It is telling that the first recorded name in human history does not belong to a prophet, a poet, a philosopher or a great king, but to an accountant."

"Building Pyramids" is the title of this lecture, which is meant as an analogy for all the projects different human societies pursue because of their inter-subjective values.

Sapiens 5 - The Agricultural Revolution was "History's Biggest Fraud"

See also these transcripts, posted by someone else who took Dr. Yuval Noah Harari's Coursera course.

Lesson 05 - part 1 -- Agricultural Revolution, 9000 to 9500 BC:  We became domesticated. (Domus = house)

• Note:  Today scholars agree that agriculture sprang up in several different parts of the world independently: Middle East, Central America, China, New Guinea
• Why these places and not others?  Because most species are not good candidates for domestication, and the ones that are tended to live in these areas (See Guns, Germs and Steel)
• It's *not* true that people became more intelligent and discovered things about animals and plants that they didn’t know before. and thus were able to transition to the good-life of agriculture!
• It's *not* true that people's lives improved with agriculture!  (See Lesson 3.)  
• "The agricultural revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of human kind but this did not translate into a better diet or a better life. Rather it translated into a demographic explosion and into pampered elites. Kings, nobleman, priests and so-forth ate all the extra food."
• From the viewpoint of wheat:  "These plants domesticated homo-sapiens for their advantage, rather than vice versa." !!!

Lesson 05 - part 2 -- How did wheat domesticate us?  What were the benefits of agriculture for Sapiens?

• NOT a better diet or economic security
• NOT security vs. violence:  "In an ancient agricultural village say 8,000 years ago, the chance of the men to die at the hands of another man was 25%."
• Wheat did not offer anything for people as individuals but gave something to Homo sapiens as a specie. Cultivating wheat provided much more food per unit of territory.  
• So, there were more people, but "these people were hungrier and less healthy and probably less happy than their ancestors." !!!  (Evolutionary success = > # of DNA copies in existence, without regard to happiness)
• Why did people agree to this, to sacrifice individual health/happiness for the good of evolution?  They didn't!  It was not a conscious decision, but rather a "fateful miscalculation," an accumulation of small steps.  Population could grow faster among settled people, even though they were less healthy.
• "People are simply unable to foresee the full consequences of their decisions."

Lesson 05 - part 3 -- History is full of a train of trivial decisions that lead to big and unforeseen results

• "[I]t took generations to realize that things were not working as they had hoped." And by then, it was too late, they didn't remember the previous way.  Besides, they couldn't go back now that the population had grown.
• There were HG's who refused to join the "rat-race" and become farmers.  But as soon as one band in an area transitioned to agriculture, their population was able to grow to the point that they could win any conflict by sheer force of numbers.
• Alternative explanation for why the AR happened:  the attempt to fulfill some religious/cultural aspiration or ideal?  
• ^^ Gobekli Tepe, dated to about 9500 BC:  Excavated beginning around 1995, amazing structures built for religious/cultural purpose, which required the huge investment of time/energy of HGs 
• Coincidentally, this is also the site where one of the first strains of wheat was domesticated!  
• "It may have been that foragers there in about 9,500 BC switched from gathering wild wheat to intense cultivation not in order to make their lives easier nor to increase the normal supply of food, but, to support the building and maintaining of this cultural centre of this temple perhaps."

Lesson 05 - part 4 -- The role of animals in the Agricultural Revolution

• Theories about how animals were domesticated
• Evolutionarily, a great success for pigs, chickens, cattle, etc.  But at the same time these are "the most miserable creatures who have ever lived on earth."
• All the terrible ways humans control the aggressive, social, sexual natures of animals
• "The agricultural revolution was a huge success for cows, chickens and pigs as a collective species, but it was a catastrophe for the animals as individuals. The gap between evolutionary success on the one hand and individual suffering on the other hand, is perhaps the most important lesson that we can draw from the agricultural revolution."

Sapiens 4 -- The "Human Flood" leads to mass extinctions

See also these transcripts, posted by someone else who took Dr. Yuval Noah Harari's Coursera course.

Lesson 04 - part 1 -- Soon after the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens became the most important factor in the ecology of planet Earth, long before the agricultural revolution when the spread beyond Eurasia (where all other humans had existed) and caused extinctions, "the first significant mark that Homo sapiens left on planet Earth."

• 45k ago -- Sapiens reached Australia:  analogous to 1492 with Columbus or 1969 moon landing
• How did they cross the huge expanse of sea?
• Ancient Indonesians became advance seafarers:  a unique case whereby a land creature becomes a sea creature within only hundreds of years (unlike millions as with dolphins) and without changing its body
• "the moment that Homo sapiens climbed from the middle to the top rung of the food chain and became the deadliest specie in the annals of plant earth."
• Within a few thousand years, 23 of 24 large animals in Australia were extinct (like the Diprotodon or giant koala).  4 different explanations for how we managed to do this.

Lesson 04 - part 2 -- "The American Blitzkrieg" = An even bigger ecological disaster in America 16k years ago (14,000 BCE)

• "This spread of humans across America, testifies to the incomparable ingenuity and unsurpassed adaptability of our species of Homo sapiens. No other animal had ever moved into such a huge variety of radically different habitats so quickly without undergoing any significant genetic mutation and evolution."
• Animals that were there when Sapiens first arrived but who later became extinct in the Americas:  camels, horses, saber-tooth tiger, giant ground sloth, giant rodents, American elephants, etc.  Within a few thousand years after Sapiens' arrival, these creatures had disappeared.
• We are the deadliest specie ever:  "At the time of the cognitive revolution planet Earth was home to about 200 genera of large terrestrial mammals, mammals weighing more than 50 kilograms. At the time of the agriculture revolution, only about 100 genera survived."
• The next wave of extinction is happening now to sea creatures, which have long managed -- until about 300 years ago -- to avoid the effects of Sapiens until now.