#JustFinished Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
I feel like he spent too much time working at being cutesy and not enough at internal consistency. It was an amusing book, however. Taken as a light historical fiction about the run-up to modern life, it’s good enough.
One example of the issues with the book follows:
He sets up the straw man of biological essentialism, then knocks it down with social consctructs.
He posits that rascism is a foolish social construct, but that sexism is clearly natural.
His argument is that since elephants and bonobos have matriarchal societies and since human societies are overwhelmingly (exclusively?) patriarchal, there must be a patriarchy genetic imperative. Interestingly, in his discussion of racism, he speaks for a while of the overwhelming prevalence of slavery as a custom…
in all societies (even physically separated ones, the same argument he uses about sexism). However, his conclusion is the opposite: that rascism is not biologically rooted but rather is cultural. He does acknowledge that racism still abounds. So why are they different? He gives no good reason and, in fact, rebuts the popular arguments for a biological scaffold to support sexism.
And gods, he hates the modern world.
3/3
@DejahEntendu @bookstodon Thanks for posting. I used to teach the book to my undergraduates for a course on big ideas. I think my problem with the book is that he is nuanced when convenient and paints in broad brush strokes when convenient. For me, the one that sticks in my teeth is his views on religion, which is simplistic and lacks any sense that religions are wide umbrellas with MANY different features. @religion
Full disclosure: my academic background is comparative religions.
@DejahEntendu @bookstodon @religion It is good text to introduce students to thinking on broader time scales and about big ideas, but one needs to use it as a jumping off point rather than a destination.
