Review: Sapiens

I started reading Sapiens more than a year ago. It even prompted a blog post of mine. But I got distracted and never finished until I returned to it a few months ago and now that I've finished it, I have thoughts.

Some of Sapiens reads like a textbook but without the dreary prose. From time to time, Harrari will extrapolate and go off on some interesting observation about what makes us a unique species. These observations are the best parts of the book.

I've always felt that a post-religious society is a trap because we cannot escape the traits that led humans to believe in religion in the first place. So I felt at home reading about Harrari's observations on secular humanism and how even the supposed progeny of the Enlightenment will abandon the scientific method when it's convenient.

He starts by breaking down Humanism into three categories.

• Liberal Humanism: Humanity is individualistic and resides within each individual homo sapiens. The supreme commandment is to protect the inner core and freedom of each individual homo sapiens.
• Socialist Humanism: Humanity is collective and resides within the species homo sapiens as a whole. The supreme commandment is to protect equality within the species homo sapiens.
• Evolutionary Humanism: Humanity is a mutable species. Humans might degenerate into subhumans or evolve into superhumans. The supreme commandment is to protect humankind from degenerating into subhumans, and to encourage its evolution into superhumans.

(I got excited to learn more about Evolutionary Humanism until I discovered that he was talking about Nazis.)

Harrari sets up his critique of humanism with the foundations of the scientific revolution. Rather than summarize, I'll let Penn Jillette speak (start at 1:21):

Hararri writes:

“Our current assumption that we do not know everything, and that even the knowledge we possess is tentative, extends to the shared myths that enable millions of strangers to cooperate effectively. If the evidence shows that many of those myths are doubtful, how can we hold society together? How can our communities, countries, and international system function?"

So the Scientific Revolution is about admitting we don't know most things and looking for ways to prove our beliefs so they become Truth. But an adherence to truth and the scientific method does not unite people, myths do. This goes back to my original Sapiens post about our ability to tell a story and how that binds us as a species.

Harrari then turns to the flaws in secular humanism.

"All modern attempts to stabilize the sociopolitical order have had no choice but to rely on either of two unscientific methods:

1. Take a scientific theory, and in opposition to common scientific practices, declare that it is a final and absolute truth. This was the method used by Nazis (who claimed that their racial policies were the corollaries of biological facts) and Communists (who claimed that Marx and Lenin had divined absolute economic truths that could never be refuted).
2. Leave science out of it and live in accordance with a non-scientific absolute truth. This has been the strategy of liberal humanism, which is built on a dogmatic belief in the unique worth and rights of human beings - a doctrine which has embarrassingly little in common with the scientific study of Homo sapiens.”

This really helps me understand socialists and even critical race theorists. The fact that America is a country where Obama became president and Oprah made billions means nothing if the black race as a whole still lags behind whites. To them, it's the collective that matters.

And sure, you can poke holes in the theories of postmodernists, like Foucault, or Marxists, like Marx. But the fact is that liberal humanism, with all its personal freedom and individualism, has just as shaky of a foundation. There is no scientific method that proves it is the correct view.

Of course, I would argue that religion, whether in a traditional theistic sense or secular humanism, is something we decide as a community and not something we come to know through the scientific method. Just as art is something we judge on a personal level. The Good, the True, the Beautiful: all separate and distinct.

So you can still be an Enlightenment thinker when it comes to things like medicine or climate change, but believe, as a group ethic, in Marxism, Christianity, or the Holiness of Individual Liberty  - even if it cannot be proven to be true. The point isn't to believe in a myth because it's true; it's because it unites us. Myths always have.

So if sapiens have used myths to unite multiple tribes, do today's partisan problems arise from a society in which there are too many competing tribes with their own myths? We would either need a super meta myth to unite them all or a more decentralized plan that quarantines the myths and keeps them at stable levels.

The Abandonment of Community and Family
The other section that struck my interest was the topic of community. It very closely resembled arguments from The Third Pillar.

“When a person fell sick, the family took care of her … if a person wanted to build a hut, the family lent a hand… if a person wanted to marry, the family chose … if conflict arose with a neighbor, the family muscled in.

“When my neighbor was in need, I helped build his hut and guard his sheep without expecting payment in return. When I was in need, my neighbor returned the favor … Village life had many transactions but few payments … less than ten percent of commonly used products and services were bought in the market. Most human needs were taken care of by the family and the community.”

Harrari gives a sobering analysis of how the state and the market evolved to destroy families and communities. Libertarians and socialists are equally at fault here:

“Over time, states and markets used their growing power to weaken traditional bonds of family and community ... They approached people with an offer they could not refuse: ‘Become individuals. Marry whomever you desire, without asking permission from your parents. Take up whatever job suits you, even if community elders frown. Live wherever you wish, even if you cannot make it every week to the family dinner. You are no longer dependent on your family or your community. We, the state and the market, will take care of you instead. We will provide food, shelter, education, health, welfare and employment. We will provide pensions, insurance and protection.’"

He then goes on to explain how the state or market provide everything from mortgages to home health aides, all the things families and communities used to do. Forget that we evolved over millennia to be a tribal species, we can now live a comfortable life without interacting with anyone. Your services are no longer required.

Health insurance via subsidiary
The internet has turned every topic to be racist or sexist or somehow problematic. Also, everything is somehow related to healthcare, including this blog post. Watch this:

The topic of healthcare is of particular interest to me. No American is happy with our current status and the dominant solutions are either more market (transparent prices!) or more state (Medicare for all!).

Not that long ago there was a third pillar in the health care industry. Rather than call it community or family, I prefer the term subsidiary.

Yuval Levin once wrote:

"a hyper-individualist culture is likely to be governed by a hypercentralized government, and each is likely to exacerbate the worst inclinations of the other...

“This would seem to make subsidiarity—the entrusting of power and authority to the lowest and least centralized institutions capable of using them well—a key to addressing the particular problems of our age of individualism."

This article from Reason traces the history of healthcare in America and shows the role subsidiaries, community-based institutions, used to play.

“For example, during the first decades of the 20th century, the nation had thousands of mutual aid societies, also known as lodges or fraternal orders...  They functioned as social clubs, usually with distinctive uniforms and regalia. At the local lodge, bar, or church where they met, immigrants could speak their native language and share food from their home country. Fraternal orders also offered members, in return for regular dues payments, financial security products. Most supplied life insurance. Many contracted with physicians and hospitals to provide medical care.

African Americans created a massive network of these associations, some of which evolved into black-owned insurance companies and banks. One such society in Mississippi—the Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor—constructed a hospital. Dues-paying members received burial insurance and up to 31 days of medical and surgical care."

The article goes on to recommend something called the Direct Primary Care model, where people pay a flat monthly rate to a local independent health care provider who then covers basic services. No insurance, no deductibles, no co-payments.

There are a lot of problems with U.S. healthcare. I don't know if the DPC model will fix them. I don't know if working through a subsidiary like the Elks or some other local civic organization will fix them. I'm just convinced that more market or more state will not. If there is a better solution, it will be designed by someone who understands homo sapiens and what it is that makes us unique.