Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow
If you enjoyed this review, please consider purchasing this book from my Amazon Associates link: https://amzn.to/2NaFiQv. The commissions I receive from your purchase help pay for the costs of running this website. Thanks for your support!
Devin rarely annotates his books (to his credit, he takes notes on his phone). So, when I saw he wrote something in Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow by Yuval Harari, I knew it must be meaningful. He wrote seven words that truly encapsulate how we feel about the book: “Did this guy major in everything?”
Yuval really is a know-it-all, but he’s extremely likable because he takes his knowledge and translates it into layman’s terms. In Sapiens, he distills the history of Homo Sapiens so well; in Homo Deus he uses history to present possibilities for our future-- what we might value and what we might evolve into. There is some overlap with Sapiens, but IMO it’s a good thing because he’s able to repackage and reiterate ideas that are integral to understanding our past and our future as a species.
He must have had a hell of an outline because he organizes his material very well. You better grab a highlighter for real because it feels like everything he has to say is significant. He also makes sure that you understand. Every theory has a bunch of clear-cut examples. Not only that, but his counter-arguments have a bunch of clear-cut examples. This man is rollin in clear-cut examples.
I don’t want to get too far into the weeds in terms of content, but I will briefly touch on his main points so that you can determine if the topics interest you and I can hopefully not forget everything I just read.
As a species, we’ve gotten famine, plague, and war under control in comparison to previous centuries. This is pretty ironic considering the current pandemic, which just goes to show one of his points: he’s writing about possibilities, not prophecies. He published this in 2015, long before we got the Zoomies. Because we’re not dying in mass numbers the way that we used to, the “human agenda” is changing and so is our search for meaning.
He agrees with Nietzsche that God is dead because major religions like Christianity and Islam don’t keep up with the times. Churches used to be hubs of creativity-- he notes that the Vatican was the 12th century Silicon Valley-- but now they (mostly) don’t pioneer progress or technological innovation. The Bible doesn’t have a lot to say about smart-phones.
So, Homo Sapiens have turned to humanism as a new religion. Specifically, liberalism, because it beat out communism after the Cold War. Like other religions, liberalism makes factual claims that don’t stand up to scientific scrutiny. Liberalism hinges on the idea that humans have free will, but that’s being called into question as we understand more about the brain and cede our decisions to technology.
We’re just not as free as we think they are. Harari does an excellent job of dissecting free will, forcing the reader to examine what free will actually means. We like to think that we have an authentic self and that our actions are an extension of our authentic self’s desires. He has chapters upon chapters of evidence that that’s not entirely true. Yikes.
There’s a lot for my existential angst to unpack there, but I was drawn to (and oddly comforted by) his argument that the existence of a distinctly human soul isn’t compatible with the scientific consensus of evolution. Natural selection is a slow process; how could an indivisible, unchangeable “soul” have developed? Plus, where does it fall along the evolutionary spectrum? Us humans think that we’re ~sooo much better~ than animals, so we treat them like shit and run inhumane experiments on them for our gain. But how did we determine that we have a soul and they don’t? What is consciousness? How is it different from intelligence? Did this guy major in everything?
His animal examples connect to his predictions for the future-- what if artificial intelligence ends up exploiting humans the way we exploit animals? For a number of reasons, Harai believes that liberal humanism will become an obsolete religion in the 21st century. So, he posits several options for new religions that could fill that vacuum and what that world would look like. I’ve ranted enough, though-- you can read his thought experiments yourself.
And you should! Because he’s very smart, this book is well-written, and the content is thought-provoking. I’ve thought about this book ever since I put it down. I recommend starting with Sapiens (buying it from my link, obviously) and then moving to Homo Deus. I like Homo Deus slightly more because I think the questions are urgent and pertinent, but Sapiens gives it all more context. Homo Deus receives 5 out of 5 flames.
