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A review by savaging
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
2.0
I'll tell you what I liked:
That Harari insists on calling all species of the genus Homo "human." And that when he's diving into our deep past as a species, he resists the generalizations and just-so stories of other pop-science ('we're naturally jealously monogamous!' 'we're naturally bonobo polyamorists!' etc.). Instead he leaves open the full diverse bizarrities of our past.
Also, it's kind of nice that Harari is skeptical of many forms of 'progress,' and takes note of the way other species are devastated in our 'advanced' cultures. He retains a little shudder of horror when he talks about our possible futures as a species.
And I'll tell you what I didn't like:
Once you get through the first bit on early humans, Harari serves up an all-you-can eat buffet of evo-psy-tinged nonsense. All the writers who steal and expound on each other -- Steven Pinker, Malcolm Gladwell, Jonathan Haidt -- get their stupidest unifying theories regurgitated here.
And the worst of these is the pseudo-sophisticated moral equivalency argument for empire. You know the one: well, empires were bad, sure. Sure they killed a lot of people. BUT, if you THINK ABOUT IT -- if you're brave enough to put your moral repugnance aside and look it full in the face -- they are also good! The four-part argument goes like this:
1) Because of Empire we have culture! (as though indigenous people don't have culture. As though mass genocide is a necessary fertilizer for pretty art and new ideas) How can you say you're against Empire if you're saying that sentence in an imperial language like English, hmmmm? (Gotcha)
2) Throw in some Steven Pinker line about how everyone's safer and less violent now that they're ruled by white people.
3) Every culture destroyed by Empire was itself an empire, just a smaller one. Some are simply better at this game than others. (Which carries the implication: if white people didn't do this first then everyone else would have done it to us and you'd all be speaking Algonquin now! Meaning: genocide is our natural state of affairs, and the ones who do it best and quickest probably deserve the reward; and the ones who do it worst and slowest probably deserve annihilation).
4) Even the language used to fight against empire is an imperial construct. (As though the bullies single-handedly invented an idea of 'human rights,' and no other cultures have been able to express 'don't enslave rape pillage murder us please because that's messed up.')
There are real, material, current, horrific consequences to this reasoning. The fact that the author is from Israel, site of cutting-edge ethical equivocation over stealing land and resources from brown people, was additionally haunting within this empire-boosterism book.
This is what made Sapiens unredeemable for me. But since I went through all the trouble to read this heavy glossy tome, here are some more grievances:
-In the drive to connect science and empire in a unified theory (both are born from a radical willingness to admit ignorance), Harari suggests others didn't genocide the Europeans first because they just weren't curious enough.
-Harari talks about economics through thought experiments more than real history and anthropology. This is a favorite trick of economists, and allows them to say shit like:
"Capital trickles away from dictatorial states that fail to defend private individuals and their property" (pg. 318). Harari then concocts a make-believe scenario about why this is the case ('imagine that Joe Smith lends blah blah to Mr. Jones blah blah'). As for history, he then shows how Dutch companies got filthy rich while Spain stagnated, and claims that's because the Dutch respected individual rights. The actual history here is the Dutch invaded Indonesia, and with love of freedom, individual rights, and private property in their hearts, ended the freedom, smashed the individual rights, and stole the property of the Indonesian people. By 'respect for property', Harari should clarify that he means 'respect for white property.'
In sum: I'm sick of tries at moral equivalency between imperial genociders and the genocided. Yes, the people who have been murdered aren't pure and perfect, but I'm so tired of people who hunt down and glory in those imperfections to dodge the overwhelming moral weight of our own histories. I'm sick of people who think they sound daring, nuanced, and clever by crafting gotcha sentences to make us admire empire, war, and exploitation.
In an aside, Harari mentions the people of Tasmania, who were systematically hunted down and eradicated by white colonizers. He has an image of Truganini, the last native Tasmanian alive. Her dead body was put on display in colonizer's museums, her skin and hair were held at the English Royal College of Surgeons until 2002. This page, admitting a clear and brutal story, was a powerful one in the middle of the nonsense. But the fact that he can speak Truganani's name, invite us to look at her face, and then set her and the other murdered ones up on a scale, with 'culture' and 'inevitability' on the other side, and proclaim that the two sides balance -- this made the book nearly unreadable for me.
That Harari insists on calling all species of the genus Homo "human." And that when he's diving into our deep past as a species, he resists the generalizations and just-so stories of other pop-science ('we're naturally jealously monogamous!' 'we're naturally bonobo polyamorists!' etc.). Instead he leaves open the full diverse bizarrities of our past.
Also, it's kind of nice that Harari is skeptical of many forms of 'progress,' and takes note of the way other species are devastated in our 'advanced' cultures. He retains a little shudder of horror when he talks about our possible futures as a species.
And I'll tell you what I didn't like:
Once you get through the first bit on early humans, Harari serves up an all-you-can eat buffet of evo-psy-tinged nonsense. All the writers who steal and expound on each other -- Steven Pinker, Malcolm Gladwell, Jonathan Haidt -- get their stupidest unifying theories regurgitated here.
And the worst of these is the pseudo-sophisticated moral equivalency argument for empire. You know the one: well, empires were bad, sure. Sure they killed a lot of people. BUT, if you THINK ABOUT IT -- if you're brave enough to put your moral repugnance aside and look it full in the face -- they are also good! The four-part argument goes like this:
1) Because of Empire we have culture! (as though indigenous people don't have culture. As though mass genocide is a necessary fertilizer for pretty art and new ideas) How can you say you're against Empire if you're saying that sentence in an imperial language like English, hmmmm? (Gotcha)
2) Throw in some Steven Pinker line about how everyone's safer and less violent now that they're ruled by white people.
3) Every culture destroyed by Empire was itself an empire, just a smaller one. Some are simply better at this game than others. (Which carries the implication: if white people didn't do this first then everyone else would have done it to us and you'd all be speaking Algonquin now! Meaning: genocide is our natural state of affairs, and the ones who do it best and quickest probably deserve the reward; and the ones who do it worst and slowest probably deserve annihilation).
4) Even the language used to fight against empire is an imperial construct. (As though the bullies single-handedly invented an idea of 'human rights,' and no other cultures have been able to express 'don't enslave rape pillage murder us please because that's messed up.')
There are real, material, current, horrific consequences to this reasoning. The fact that the author is from Israel, site of cutting-edge ethical equivocation over stealing land and resources from brown people, was additionally haunting within this empire-boosterism book.
This is what made Sapiens unredeemable for me. But since I went through all the trouble to read this heavy glossy tome, here are some more grievances:
-In the drive to connect science and empire in a unified theory (both are born from a radical willingness to admit ignorance), Harari suggests others didn't genocide the Europeans first because they just weren't curious enough.
-Harari talks about economics through thought experiments more than real history and anthropology. This is a favorite trick of economists, and allows them to say shit like:
"Capital trickles away from dictatorial states that fail to defend private individuals and their property" (pg. 318). Harari then concocts a make-believe scenario about why this is the case ('imagine that Joe Smith lends blah blah to Mr. Jones blah blah'). As for history, he then shows how Dutch companies got filthy rich while Spain stagnated, and claims that's because the Dutch respected individual rights. The actual history here is the Dutch invaded Indonesia, and with love of freedom, individual rights, and private property in their hearts, ended the freedom, smashed the individual rights, and stole the property of the Indonesian people. By 'respect for property', Harari should clarify that he means 'respect for white property.'
In sum: I'm sick of tries at moral equivalency between imperial genociders and the genocided. Yes, the people who have been murdered aren't pure and perfect, but I'm so tired of people who hunt down and glory in those imperfections to dodge the overwhelming moral weight of our own histories. I'm sick of people who think they sound daring, nuanced, and clever by crafting gotcha sentences to make us admire empire, war, and exploitation.
In an aside, Harari mentions the people of Tasmania, who were systematically hunted down and eradicated by white colonizers. He has an image of Truganini, the last native Tasmanian alive. Her dead body was put on display in colonizer's museums, her skin and hair were held at the English Royal College of Surgeons until 2002. This page, admitting a clear and brutal story, was a powerful one in the middle of the nonsense. But the fact that he can speak Truganani's name, invite us to look at her face, and then set her and the other murdered ones up on a scale, with 'culture' and 'inevitability' on the other side, and proclaim that the two sides balance -- this made the book nearly unreadable for me.