Informative and interesting perspective to our humankind history and growth.
I will elaborate on what I think about the book. The book starts of discussing about the general history of humankind, specifically, the Homo sapiens, how it manage to survive and conquer the other similar Homo species, even though it is not the strongest physically. And humans are so good at hunting that they caused the extinction of some large mammals.
After that, it talks about the revolutions that led us to where we are now. The Cognitive Revolution: where Homo sapiens learn more about the world, communication and writing.
The Agricultural Revolution: where "we" started to settle in a location and learn to grow our own food instead of constantly hunting and moving about, and how our body and mind started to evolve/change due to this. Our diet used to be a variety of food (whatever we can hunt/ gather/ forage) vs now where it is more constant of the same type of food (growing the same rice/ corn year in, year out). And, instead of living free without worry, now we are constantly thinking about the next harvest, whether it will be good or bad. Without the Agricultural Rev, we will not have the size of the population as we have now. The hunting-gathering period requires nimble and small pack of humans, does not cater to big group.
As part of the growth, there is more rules and protection required. Rules to ensure nobody steals and protection from other people invading and stealing the village's food. Here is where the various empires begin to emerge, along with 'imagined order', new languages (mathematics) and taxes.
Human created their own internal hierarchy
The "unification" of humankind was through three factors: monetary, imperialism and religion.
Imperialism, through time, converts locals into believing they are part of the empire. Instead of recognising themselves as their local identify and culture, they adopted the culture and practices of the empire who conquered them (that they very likely hated at the start of colonisation)
Religion also gather people who are outside a community to unite under the same purpose. Religion also includes communism and capitalism.
Scientific Revolution: An evergrowing feedback loop. with resources, you do research whereby new discoveries allow the country to develop powerful weaponry to increase their power. Increased in power to conquer more countries leads to more resources. This is also the period where human start to develop a questioning mind (compared to earlier when they accept what is taught by their respective religion)
As humans are curious creature, we started to do more exploration and research. Through exploration, they are able to find new lands to conquer. By conquering, it promises them more resources for trading to increase their wealth (capitalism in play), all these are done at the expense of the local native tribes/ empires
Industrial Revolution: access to more energy and manpower than ever before --> leading to parabolic growth in economy (production). Have we actually consider the livelihood of the chickens in the production line? It seems that instead of treating slaves poorly, we are treating the cattles and chickens poorly for our consumption (happiness?). It also talks about consumerism as the new culture/religion - making us buy more and more products in the market (enriching the big companies - ie the new empires)
The book briefly talks about how the world is now more peaceful than before, where based on a percentage count, the death rate through war/crime is higher then compared to the present. I disagree to some extent on this comparison because there are many more people/human now than before, but I think it makes sense as there are less wars these days compared to the medieval times etc.
Happiness - after all that human have achieved, are we really happy? How do we measure our progress? We should be happier than the people who have lived 10,000yrs ago, but are we? We have develop chemical solution to maintain the happiness level (Prozac). But the problem we realised is that happiness is never permanent. Buddhist teach us to contentment, to accept life as is. There is bound to be ups and downs in life, so the solution is we should not chase the ups and accept the downs. We should reduce our pursuit for happiness (extrinsic or intrinsic).
The books end with talking about human acting as life creator and consider its ethics and morality. Although we are now able to use technology to cure many diseases and provide replacement limbs for many people (arms, legs), we are also able to create new life in the lab. What are the consideration we should take when we are making the decision whether to create a new life/species?
