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| Credit: Youtube/TED |
Yuval Noah Harrari was in a talk presented by TED on YouTube.
At that talk, Yuval present a presentation about human, animals, different abilities of humans and animals. He also gave some explanation about fictional reality and objective reality.
Let us dive in
70,000 years ago our ancestors were insignificant animals. The most important things to know about prehistoric humans is that they were important. Their impact on the world was not much greater than that of jellyfish or fireflies or woodpeckers.
Today in contrast we control this planet. And the question
is how did we come from there to here? How we turn ourselves from insignificant
apes minding their own business in the corner of Africa into the rulers of
planet earth.
Usually, we look for the difference between us and
all the other animals on the individual level. We want to believe I want
believe that there is something special about me, about my body, about my brain
that makes me so superior to a dog or a pig, or a chimpanzee.
But the truth is that on the individual level, I am embarrassingly
similar to a chimpanzee. And if you take me and a chimpanzee and put us
together on the some lonely island, and we had to struggle for struggle for
survival to see who survives better. I will definitely place my bet on the
chimpanzee, not on myself. This is not something wrong with me personally. I
guess if they took almost anyone of you and placed you alone with a chimpanzee
on some island, the chimpanzee would do much better. The real difference between
humans and all other animals is not on the individual level, it’s on the
collective level.
Humans control the planet because they are the only
animals that can cooperate both flexibly and in very large numbers. Now, there
are other animals like the socal insects, the bees, the ants, that can
cooperate in large numbers, but they don’t do so flexibly. Their cooperation is
very rigid. There is basically just one way in which a beehive can function. And
if there is a new opportunity or a new danger the bees cannot reinvent the
social system overnight. They cannot for example, execute the queen and
establish a republic of bees or a communist dictatorship of worker bees.
Other animals, like the social mammals, the wolves, the
elephant, the dolphin, the chimpanzees, they can cooperate musch more flexibly
but not so only in small numbers because cooperation among chimpanzees is based
on intimate knowledge one of the other. If I am a chimpanzee and you are
chimpanzee and I want to cooperate with you, I need to know you personally.
What kind of chimpanzee are you? Are you a nice chimpanzee? Are you evil
chimpanzee? Are you trustworthy? If I don't know you, how can I cooperate with
you.
The only animals that can combine the two abilities
together and cooperate both flexibly and still do so in very large numbers is
us, Homo sapiens.
One versus one or even ten versus ten chimpanzees might
be better than us. But, if you pit 1,000 humans against 1,000 chimpanzees, the
humans will win easily. For the simple reason the thousands chimpanzees cannot
cooperate at all and if you now to cram 100,000 chimpanzees into Oxford Street
or into Wembley Stadium, or Tienanmen Square you will get chaos, completely
chaos. Just imagine Wembley Stadium with 100,000 chimpanzees. Completely
madness. In contrast, humans normally gather in ten thousands, and what we get
is not chaos. Usually, what we get is extremely sophisticated and effective
network of cooperation.
All the huge achivements of humankind throughout history
wether it’s building the pyramids or flying to the moon have been based not on
the individual ability, but on this ability to cooperate flexibly in large
numbers. Think even about this very talk that I am giving now. I'm standing
here in front of an audience of about 300 or 400 people most of you are
completely strangers to me. Similarly, I don't really know all the people who
have organized and workon this event. I don’t know the pilot and the crew
members of the plane that brought me over here yesterday to London I don't know
the people who invented and manufactured this microphone and theses cameras,
which are recording what I'm saying. I don't know the people who wrote all the
books and articles that I’ve red in preparation for this talk. And I certainly don’t
know all the people who might be watching this talk over the Internet,
somewhere in Buenos Aires or New Delhi.
Nevertheless, even though we don’t know each other,
we can work together to create a global exchange of ideas. This is something
chimpanzees cannot do. They communicate of course, but you will never catch a
chimpanzee traveling to some distant chimpanzee band to give them a talk about
bananas or about elephants, or anything else that can that might interest
chimpanzees. Now Cooperation is, of course is not always nice. All the horrible
things humans have been doing throughout history and we have been doing some
very horrible things. All those things are also based on large-scale
cooperation. Prisons are a system of cooperation, slaughterhouses are a system
of cooperation, concentration camps are a system of cooperations. Chimpanzees
don't have slaughterhouses and a prisons and concentration camp.
Now suppose I’ve managed to convince you perhaps,
that, yes, we control the world because we can cooperate flexibly in large
numbers. The next question is immediately rises in the mind of a inquisitive
listener is: “how exactly do we do it?”
“What enables us
alone of all the animals to cooperate in such a way?”
The answer is our imagination. We can cooperate
flexibly with countless numbers of strangers because we alone of all the
animals on the planet can create and believe fiction, fictional stories. And as
long as everybody believes in the same fiction, everybody obeys and follows the
same rules, the same norms, and the same values.
All other animals use their communication system
only to describe reality. A chimpanzee may say, “Look! There is a lion, let’s
run away!”. Or, “Look! There is a banana tree over there. Let’s go and get
bananas!
Human, in contrast use their language not merely to
describe reality, but also to create
reality, fictional reality. A human can say,”Look, there is a God above the clouds!”.
And if you don’t do what I tell you to do, when you die, God will punish you
and send you to hell. And if you all believe this story that I’ve invented,
then you will follow the same norms and laws, and values and you can cooperate.
This is something only humans can do. You can never convince a chimpanzee to
give you a banana by promising him, “After you die, you will go to chimpanzee
heaven. And you will receive lots of banana for your good deeds. So now give me
this banana1”. No chimpanzee will ever believe such a story. Only humans
believe such story which is why we control the world whereas the chimpanzees
are locked up in zoos and research laboratories.
Now you may find it acceptable, that yes in the
religious field humans cooperate by believing in the same fictions. Millions of
people come together to build cathedral or mosque or fight of crusade or a
jihad because they all believe in the same story about God and Heaven and Hell.
But what I want to emphasize is exactly the same mechanism underlies all other
forms of mass scale human cooperation, not only in the religious field. Take
for example the legal field. Most legal systems today in the world are based on
the belief in human rights.
”But what is
human rights?”
Human rights, just like God and heaven are just a
story that we’ve invented. They are not an objective reality, they are not some
biological effect about Homo sapiens.
Take a human being, cut him open, look inside, you will find the heart, the
kidneys, neurons, hormones, DNA, but you won't find any rights.
The only place you find rights are in the stories
that we have invented and spread around over the last few centuries. They may be
very positive stories, very good stories, but they are still just fictional
stories that we’ve invented. The same is true of the political will. The most
important factors in modern politics are states and nations.
“What are states
and nations?”
They are not an objective reality. A mountain is an
objective reality. You can see it. You can touch it even you can smell it. But
in nation or a state, like Israel or Iran or France or Germany, this is a just story
that we've invented and became extremely attached too. The same is true of the
economic field. The most important actors today in the global economy are companies
and cooperations. Many of you today, perhaps, work for a cooperation like
Google or Toyota or McDonald's.
“What are
exactly these things?”
They are what lawyers can call legal fictions. There
are stories invented and maintained by the powerful wizards we call lawyers.
“What do corporations do all day?”
Mostly, they try to make money.
⬧⬧⬧
"Did you know that Yuval Noah Harrari is one of the best selling book's author? He published some books such as Homo Deus and Sapiens and have been translated to any language across the world"
You can find him and read his books available in Amazon. Just click here.
⬧⬧⬧
“What is money?”
Again, money is not an objective reality; it has no
objective value. Take this green piece of paper, the dollar bill. Look at that.
It has no value. You cannot eat it, you cannot drink it, you cannot wear it.
But then came along these master storyteller, the
big bankers, the finance ministers, the prime ministers, and they tell us a
convincing story. “Look! You see this green piece of paper?. It is actually
worth of 10 bananas”. And if you belive it, if I believe it and if everybody
believe it, it actually works I can take this worthless piece of paper, go to
the supermarket, give it to a complete stranger to whom I’ve never met before
and get in exchange real bananas which actually I can it. This is something
amazing. You can never do it with chimpanzees. Chimpanzees trade, of course, “yes
you give me a coconut, I will give you a banana that can work. But, you give me
a worthless piece of paper and expect me to give you a banana?”. “No way! What do you thin I am, a human?
Money, in fact, is the most succesfull story ever invented
and told by humans, because it is the only story everybody believe. Not
everybody believes in God, not everyboday believes in human right, not
everybody believes in nationalism but everybody believe in money and in the
dollar bill. Take even Osama bin Laden, he hated America and American religion,
and America culture but he had no objection to American dollars. He was quite
fond of them, actually.
"To conclude then, we humans control the world because we live in a jewel reality. All other animals live in an objective reality. The reality consists of objective entities, like rivers and trees, lions and elephants. We humans, we also live in an objective reality in our world too. There are rivers, trees, lions, and elephants. But over the centuries we have constructed on top of this objective reality a second layer of objective reality. A second layer of fictional reality. A reality made a fictional entities like nations, gods, money, and corporations".
“And what is
amazing is that a history unfolded, this fictional reality became more and more powerful. So
that today, the most powerful forces in the world are these fictional entities.
Today, the very survival of rivers and trees, lions and elephants depends on
the decisions and wishes of fictional entities like United States, Google, and
World Bank. Entities that exist only in our imagination.”
Host questions : “The
mazing breakthroughs that we are experiencing right now not only will
potentially make our lives better, they will create new classes and new classes
struggles, just as the industrial revolution did. Can you elaborate for us?”
Yuval Noah Harrari’s answer :
Yes, in
industrial revolution we saw the creation of a new class of the urban
proletariat. And much of the political and social history of the last 200 years
involved what to do with this class and the new problem and opportunities. Now,
we see the creation of a new massive class of useless people. As computers
become better and better in more and more filled. There is a distinct
possibility that computers will out-perform us in most tasks and will make
human redundant. And then the big political and economic question of the 21st
will be, “what we need human for? Or at least, “what do we need so many humans for?”.
The truth is that these kind of things will keep humans happy with drugs and
computer games.
◾◾◾
"Did you know that Yuval Noah Harrari is one of the best selling book's author? He published some books such as Homo Deus and Sapiens and have been translated to any language across the world"
You can find him and read his books available in Amazon. Just click here.
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