I heard a clip of Yuval Noah Harari talking about useless people and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Since it was only a clip I wanted to hear the idea expressed in greater detail. I went to Goodreads to see his list of books. It looked like I had two options that would address the clip I had heard. I chose Homo Deus as it had almost 250,000 reviews and roughly 200,000 of those were 4 or 5 star reviews.
I began the book not knowing what to expect. Two weeks ago I had never heard of Harari and my first exposure to him was a dismissive comment about most people in the future. The book can be summarized as follows technology will make most people irrelevant, there will be no individuality for most people as algorithms will run their lives, and a class of super humans will become gods.
When discussing death Harari writes:
“For modern people death is a technical problem that we can and should solve….In reality however humans don’t die because a figure in a black cloak taps them on the shoulder, or because God decreed it, or because mortality is an essential part of some great cosmic plan. Humans always die due to some technical glitch.”
The vast theme of the book is attaining divinity. Once divinity is attained we will have created a new species. Harari writes:
“In the 21st century the third big project of human kind will be to acquire for us divine powers of creation and destruction and upgrade Homo sapiens into Homo Deus.”
He continues by saying:
“So we may well think of the new human agenda as consisting really of only one project with many branches - attaining divinity.”
Technological advancement is the key to attaining divinity. Harari writes:
“One day our knowledge will be so vast and our technology so advanced that we can distill the elixir of eternal youth, the elixir of true happiness, and any other drug we might possibly desire and no god will stop us.”
He continues:
“In the 21st century those who ride the train of progress will acquire divine abilities of creation and destruction while those left behind will face extinction.”
Harari’s forecast for the future is bleak. He foresees a future bereft of free will. Harari doesn’t believe humans have souls. He thinks gods and nations are both imaginary things that are used to control people. In the future the “useless class” will only be able to find meaning in drugs and computer games.
Harari sees the world as a place with no purpose or meaning. We are because we evolved from something before us. In the future we will evolve into something else and humans will cease to exist. Our actions don’t really matter and our sole purpose is to be happy but we really don’t have any control over that because the chemical reactions in our bodies actually are algorithms that determine everything we do.
The book sounds like it was written by someone who is looking for a purpose in life after stripping it of anything meaningful. In the end the only thing that can give Harari purpose is to become a god.
Overall I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.
William Wilberforce has been called an agitator for his commitment to ending the slave trade. One of his well known speeches on the subject was given on May 12, 1789.
Cardinal Richelieu has been hailed as a great statesman and as a subversive authoritarian. Depending on who you talk to he was a man needed to strengthen the monarchy in France, or he was a tyrant seeking personal power. Next week I will have a book review that may shed more light on Cardinal Richelieu.
When Lenin was working on his major writing projects he would often pace across the room formulating the ideas that he would write down by saying them out loud. Once he had the idea for what he wanted to write he would often repeat the idea to Nadezhda Krupskaya, who would provide feedback. Once this process was complete he would then write the ideas down.
Here is an AI rendering of what that might have looked like when he was drafting What is to be Done.
This month this community will focus on political subversion. What is subversion? When is it justified? What is the interplay between subversion and agitation? These are some of the topics to be discussed this month.
“You get used to the despot’s shortcomings, when they are not great vices, and the change of an autocratic ruler leads to involuntary fear.”
Sergei Trubetskoi
