Homo Sapiens - by Harari

I bought this  2014 book two years ago.  I started it, reading maybe a third before I put it down. I liked it enough.I’d read H.G. Wells, History of the World as a teen. Later I’d be moved by Future Shock and Culture of Narcissism. It was that kind of read.  Seminal, they’d say, in history circles. Yet I’d found the author at times pedantic, opinionated, and even pompous.  I didn’t feel this eway about Guns, Germs and Steel by Diamond or Niall Ferguson’s Ascent of Wealth, a Financial History of the World,  or Paul Johnso’s  Modern Times, great read I’d so enjoyed.  It was that sort of Omnibus Read.  But I’d put it down. I was reading a History of Christianity at the time and I’d bogged down reading that too. I often have several reads on the go and with work I have to read increasing amounts of drivel and nonsense.

But a friend commented on Homo Sapiens. She’d really enjoyed Harari and I'd almost unfairlly damned him with faint praise.  The truth is I’d not finished his book and it really was well written and quite brilliant at the time. He certainly was erudite.  I’d wearied of marketting and saless, all that propaganda nonsense that passes as subtlety but irritates me in my advancing years. I realized I’d been unfair to Harari.  It was in the midst of Covid, being bludgeoned by misinformation and disinformation, lies and corruptions, Anitida uprising and Capitol hill mobs,  creating an overwheming stench when I picked Homo Sapiens up again. We quite well might be on the verge of something. War and Rumors of War.  Did Harari have an answer?

I was jealous of Harari, I realized.  It was clear in his thinking he knew something. With Rolling Stones singing Living in a Ghost Town, lockdowns and hysteria, I’d fallern to  reading westerns and erotic romance for escapism, binging watching Netflix tv. Animal Kingdom, the Crown, Tombstone, Flea Bag. It was getting me through the day.  So much despair and loss, depression and anxiety.  i’d just read Kate Lister’s a Curious History of Sex and could hardly put it down. it well research but also so wittingly written.  I considered Harrari more substantial.  He did make history appealling though like a Druidic Story teller he wove patterns with words.  He cast a spell.  I settled down to listen.  I am glad I did.

I was younger when I read the great omnibus reads and less opinionated and judgemental myself. I wouldn’t have noticed that when Harrari was critical of Christianity he didn’t mention Judaism and was almost gentle with Islam. He barely commented on Hinduism but almost sang the praises of Leonard Cohen’s Buddhism, his knowledge apparently deep yet almost superficial and very biased all the while he presented as unbiased in that deeply offensive way that the politically correct do. I kept asking who his audience was and realized he was writing to appease or appeal to his masters. Now who did he see these were I kept asking?  

Marx said Money is the God of the Jews. Harari certainly made a case for the religion of materialism and secularism.   I was half way through when I looked him up, finding he taught at the University of Jerusalem. I’d actually thought he was Persian at one point. I did though like how he included the Armenians and Georgians.  Later I’d really like how he brought in South America and Africa. He’d been focussing so much on ancient China and Europe. Yet his ideas were magical. Great swaths of data gathered and woven into this masterful tapestry.  

I actually grew to like him.  Halfway through the book I looked forward to reading it, not quite like a war thriller, or a Clancy.. He wasn’t Khalla or Coban. But there reaally was a Jurassic Park quality in the writing. He was truly brilliant. History as fiction. The whole notion that we have the imaginative scenarios and we prop them up with a whole lot of ritual. He gave us ancient history but he really got into his stride in modern times making sense of the Corprate power that toppled governments and the scientific advances that were so recent , mere hundreds of years or daring after  hundreds of thousands of caution.  I actually loved his explanation of exploration and colonialism and was delighted with his discussion of the ideas of religions and ideology, the confusion created by different words with similiar meanings.  He really was extremely erudite. 

I felt like I’d attended a lecture by a master. I’d signed up for a lecture by psychologist Jordan Peterson a year ago, cancelled by Covid, only because I’d loved  the way Peterson debated,more like a supreme court judge than an academic. I’d loved Steven Hicks lectures on philosophy yet here was this giant of literature and history, Harari,  entertaining me with his wit. He had a wealth of knowledge but his skill was selection.  

As I progressed I really did like his comments on behaviourist Harlow.  He mentioned Freud but didn’t give Victor Frankl his due though he was clearly a student of Seligman discussing happiness in modern times versus happines in medieval times. It was my area of expertise and I frankly thought he did a magnificent overview. Which is what he was doing with history. Overviews of economics, anthropology, culture, sociology, ethics and religions. I’d read Fields of Blood a marvellous work of history exploring whether religion or politics caused war.  There was the same selection bias and yet I couldn’t help but rememer the great talking head flick of all time, Dinner with Andre. The more I read Harari the more I felt like I was at a retreat with one of the spiritual masters, like Richard Rohr or Trungpa.   He told stories of facts like Jesus or the Dubliners. There was that quality of being given insights like the classic Spirituality of Imperfections gave to the wisdom teaching. More political and still with talk of war but nonetheless he included the bio engineering of a phosphorescent green bunny. He talked of the cyborg future and gave whole chapters  each of which could be a Ted’s talk on it’s own  

Crime overall is declining. War overall is declining. The life epectancy is increaing. Gigameth is a project of immortality. Science is religion.  Yet as different as life and death. There’s a novelty in the notion of today and yesterday, our perception of then so coloured by our immersion in now. Harari hints at this but doesn’t quite laugh at himself as one might imagine Kate Lister laughing at herself.  There’s a vanity to man and by the end of this great read I was actually amused by the human Harari.  He could admit to be lost as well as the next but there was an amusement to his predictament.  A reason for carrying on.  

I suppose I was arrogant when I first read Harrari, before Covid, before the disillusionment with politics and academics.  Yet I am so glad I picked him up after she said how much she liked him. It was in fact a gift of a read, an omnibus account of life, little weak on music and art but with a whole lot of the stuff that we learned with dates and numbers and names of self important people marketted by the powerful..  History is always written by the winners. Men but even nthe occasional woman gains  fame. Harari does well to mention Georgia, and talk of the little guys and gals suffering under the kings and queens, bankers and generals.   It was a serious work. There was a bit of tantalising porn for the intellectual, even some bits of Australian wankerism at times.

It didn’t leave me feeling like Waiting for Godot but again it gave me hope.  Slouching towards Bethlehem or Baghdad for that matter, Beijing or Washtington, London or Rio de Janeira I felt there was something special in a monkey sent to outer space. I suspect that Adams of Hitchker’s Guide to the Gaxay fame or Mr. Bean might well enjoy Harrari as much as Obama or Reagan. It might even appeal to a Saudi Prince though I doubt that Xi Jinping would care for it.  There are always those who read for dominance and would never like a DH Lawerence account of love.  Harari loves history, his subject and clearly us Homo Sapiens. That was what redeemed the work.  He is truly interested in all of us, the big guy and the little guy, the girls and the boys, the babies and the greats. It’s that kind of read. It was the Economist and New Yorker written with a view to the person who would like to listen to the BBC or watch PBS but not be above reading a People magazine waiting in line at the supermarket..