#11: Sapiens: race that killed earth
My notes here from the book will leave you a different person!
I read Sapiens in 2021. The book did not blow my mind but here are 19 timeless notes I took from this book with a rare wisdom. I have chosen not to explain them from my perspective for I believe everyone shall take whatever they can but I sure will recommend you to read these quotes slowly. Slow and thoughtful.
Trust me you'll be left a different person by the end of it. Here are you go!
1. "History takes place within bounds of the biological arena"
2. "Sapiens create more and more complex games which each generation develops and elaborates even further"
3. "Dogs learnt to manipulate sapiens for their own needs"
4. "Fishing villages (not agri): First permanent settlements in history"
5. "Accidents always existed. Then it was maybe a tiger or a snake bite; now automobile"
6. “Pre industrial warfare saw more than 90% deaths due to cold, starvation and diseases than weapons” (today, more people die in road accidents than terror attacks and we all know latter is our first priority)
7. “Vital to ask questions which have no answers else we might be tempted to dismiss 60-70k years of human history with the excuse that ‘people who lived back then did nothing’ but did it?”
8. “The wandering bands of Sapiens were the most imp and most destructive force that the animal kingdom had ever produced”
9. “Earth’s climate never rests but is in constant flux. Every event in history occurred against the background of some climate change.” (think of Indus Valley Civilisation. Most advanced civilization from India and we did not know of it till 20th century. Flux!)
10. “Historical records make sapiens look like an ecological serial killer” (eg: In Australia 23/24 species went extinct in few thousand years after Sapiens appeared on the continent)
11. “Religion can be defined as a system of human norms and values that are founded on a belief in superhuman order”
12. “Buddha found the cause of suffering not in ill fortune, social injustice or divine whims but the behavior patterns of one’s own mind.”
13. “Money is minted not on paper but built on the foundation of mutual trust. You lose trust, it loses essence.” (Explains rise of crypto and limiting trust in fiat currency)
14. On why shall you read history
15. On memes: “Cultural evolution is based on the replication of cultural information units called memes”
16. “Poverty is a technical problem amenable to intervention”
17. “Even science needs a sugar daddy No intellectual brilliance can compensate lack of funds”
18. “..and sugar daddies don’t believe in science but care only for their pleasures: political, economic, and religious pleasures”
19. Science is unable to set its own priorities. It’s also incapable of determining what to do with its discoveries. And this is why it needs sugar daddies. A communist, nazi, socialist, liberal government will use genetic discovery in diff way. Why? ‘cz they funded it!”
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