Meaning and the long view
Sapiens
A brief history of humankind, from the cognitive revolution to today.
Key concepts
- Shared fictions (money, nations, companies) let strangers cooperate
- The agricultural revolution as a trap
- Money as the most universal system of trust
- Happiness has not clearly risen with progress
How I use it
Sapiens is a huge body of knowledge and hard to unpack in one go. I’ve also been reading the illustrated version with my son.
The idea I like most is gossip as one of humanity’s greatest inventions. Gossip and stories warned people which person might harm them, or which animal to stay away from, and that helped us survive. I now think of gossip as an analogue technology, and one of the most successful humans ever came up with.
Connected books
Freakonomics
1984
The Power of Now