Being rationale in your own bubble of perception
Societies are build upon common myths
Summarized excerpt of SAPIENS from Yuval Noah HARARI
Harari, in his book SAPIENS gives an explanation of the creation of our societies based on the capacity for abstraction of the Sapiens race, a capacity which has enabled it to supplant all other races. Its explanation deserves a closer look because it structures all of our current societies.
70,000 years ago, Sapiens left Africa through the Middle East and set out to conquer the planet. It was not the 1st exit but the previous ones had been without a future, the indigenous populations - Neanderthals, Denisovans ... - had taken over.
But between 70,000 and 30,000 years, these other races disappeared, Sapiens spread everywhere and took control of these new territories. He deploys new techniques there: the needle, the oil lamp. He buries his dead and practices religions. What happened?
For Harari, this new breed of homines has benefited from strengths that have proven to be decisive:
- A more evolved language. All animals have languages. The monkey can warn his fellows that a lion is approaching the river. Sapiens has a language richer in sound which allows it to transmit much more information, on what surrounds it but also on its congeners. Studies show that gossip is a very strong social bond.
- But above all, this language allows him to transmit information not only about things or people but about things that do not exist. Only Sapiens would be able to talk about things they have never seen, touched or felt. This is, for Harari, a fundamental cognitive revolution. It allowed the birth of myths, legends, Gods, religions. Above all, it allows life in society.
The emergence of corporations.
When we observe animals, monkeys, wolves, they form societies of limited size: 10, 20 individuals under the authority of an alpha male who must constantly fight so that the group is maintained and not divided. not. For the Sapiens, and thanks to their more evolved language, to gossip, the groups could certainly reach 100, 150 individuals. This can still be seen for the functioning of informal groups. Beyond this threshold, Harari explains that the secret of societies of several thousand individuals probably lies in the emergence of fiction.
'' All large-scale cooperation - whether it is a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe - is rooted in common myths that do not exist than in the collective imagination. Churches are rooted in common religious myths, states are rooted in common patriotic myths, judicial systems are rooted in common legal myths. ‘’
Two Catholics will cooperate because they share the same faith, two Serbs because they are from the same homeland, two jurists because they share the same vision of justice and law. However, none of the things that unite them has a material existence: they are abstract ideas of religion, homeland, justice.
“You can imagine that the primitive sapiens cemented their social order by believing in the same ghosts, the same spirits and gathered, at every full moon to dance around a fire. What we do not understand is that our modern institutions operate on exactly the same basis '' _
When a notary, like a sorcerer, traces signs on a piece of paper, affixes other signs representing people at the bottom and thus creates, for example, an SCI; he gave life to an imaginary entity which nevertheless became, legally, the owner of the property entrusted to him and created a small company, links between its shareholders. The same is true, for example, for Peugeot SA, which replaced Armand Peugeot, a modest bicycle maker, who was involved in the construction of automobiles. The company outlived him, and engineers, workers, customers behaved as if the company really existed.
“Since the Cognitive Revolution, the Sapiens have therefore lived in a double reality. On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees, lions; on the other, the imaginary reality of Gods, nations and societies. Over time, imaginary reality has become ever more powerful, to the point that nowadays the survival of our rivers, trees and lions depends on imaginary realities like Almighty God, the United States or Google ’’ _
Telling effective stories is not easy. The difficulty is to convince: how to convince thousands or millions of people of particular stories about Gods, nations or anonymous societies? When it works, it gives the Sapiens immense power: the power to allow millions of strangers to cooperate, to work together towards common goals.
For millennia, changes in social structures, the invention of new technologies, new settlements depended on environmental pressure and genetic mutations. They were very slow. For two million years, Homo erectus kept the same technique of stone tools, a characteristic feature of its kind.
On the other hand, since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens has always been able to change behavior quickly and pass new ones on to subsequent generations without any need for genetic or environmental changes. This is what has given Sapiens a decisive advantage over all other hominaceous breeds. From the Cognitive Revolution, historical accounts replaced biological theories as the main explanations for the development of Homo Sapiens.
‘’ _ This does not mean that Homo Sapiens and human culture have evaded biological laws. We are still animals and our physical, emotional and cognitive abilities remain shaped by our DNA. Our societies are built with the same elements as Neanderthal and chimpanzee societies. Significant differences do not begin to appear until we cross the threshold of 150 individuals. Together the Sapiens are then able to build orderly structures - commercial networks, mass celebrations, political institutions - that they could never have created in isolation Between us and the chimpanzees, the real difference lies in the mythical glue that binds great numbers of individuals, families and groups. This glue made us masters of creation.
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