Review on "Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari

The way Sapiens began was fantastic. I believe that this is a must-read book of all time - a brilliantly written collection of thoughts from an inquisitive person who has devoted his life to science but does not want to bore you with his thesis. I liked the way that the author’s voice and the information about the ancient days of the humankind, it was fascinating. I lack proper knowledge about any non-fiction and the origin of humans so I was hyped to know our origins better. However I soon grew tired of the author’s ironic and condescending humor. His confidence was emerging from all his words and his personal opinions and the way he tried to enforce them kind of annoyed me.

Here are some of the points that I disagree with.

In page 152 paragraph 10 chapter‘ There is no justice in history’ on the hierarchy of rich and poor, Harari states apart from the fact that poverty is a natural state of humankind, it takes labor insightfulness and collaboration to bolt from that kind of condition. Harari questions why do we have poverty? For which he writes that most people are born in to poor families are tend to be poor for their lives. That may be the truth. But the real question here should have been why there is prosperity? Harari seems unprepared to securitize the reason for that kind of culture to exist and he completely avoids the concept of documented economic mobility of many Americans.

In chapter 6 Harari’s “re-writing” of the Declaration of Independence is sheer sophistry.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure.”

When analyzed the difference between the biological fact and Declaration’s true wordings it was seen that Haari thinks people don’t believe in human equality because it is an objective truth, where as it’s not, they believe in it so that the society can function in an organized way. He transcribed an assertion of ideas to biological terms is a fallacy. We know that happiness is inexpedient to measure; Harari simply replaced/alternated it with ‘pleasure’ as if it were somehow more precise. He could have simply claimed it to increased level of endorphins.

Harari mostly uses immature and clichéd alternations to deny the actuality of human soul and the presence of God. According to him, these abstruse and immaterial theories don’t exist just because scientists haven’t found them in a concrete and material world. But paradoxically he asserts that scientists don’t know where human mind resides however there are scientific and apparent evidences that it does.

Harari fabulously states that the statement of the catholic church “the human life begins at the time of conception” is not a scientific statement but foreordained doctrine in what the adamant Catholic’s faiths in. If that is the case, and there’s nothing radically distinctive in human being when compared to the rest of the beings then why is not the sufferings of the domestic animals taken in to account, but not that of the human embryos or fetus in the case of abortion.

For Harari, the only human quality responsible for human supremacy in nature is the capacity for flexible cooperation in contrast to the rigid one of the rest of animals. No analysis to examine the underlying reasons of this strange quality that makes it possible to overcome the instincts and the cruel natural law.