Thinking About Sapiens

 I did manage to read Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2015; HarperPerennial, 2018) - probably not the most heartwarming read as it covers the history of humanity with an ethical cast. Not quite for the sentimental.  We are not a good species, a well behaved species. We are a species of very successful killers. We may even succeed in killing off ourselves. But this book is so brilliantly written you should go out and get a copy, read every line, and decide how to respond to Harari's arguments.

Until then I leave you with this passage:

If the curtain is indeed about to drop on Sapiens history, we members of one of its final generations should devote some time to answering one last question: what do we ant to become? This question, sometimes known as the Human Enhancement question, dwarfs the debates that currently preoccupy politicians, philosophers, scholars and ordinary people. After all, today's debate between today's religions, ideologies, nations, and classes will in all likelihood will disappear along with Homo Sapiens. If our successors indeed function on a different level of consciousness (or perhaps possess something beyond consciousness we cannot even conceive),  it seems doubtful that Christianity or Islam will be of interest to them, that their social organization could be Communist or capitalist, or that their genders could be male or female.

p. 413; Chapter 20: "The End of Homo Sapiens: The Frankenstein Prophecy"

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Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?

p. . 416; Chapter 21: "Afterword: The Animal that Became a God"