Essay #1 Option
Choice A
Develop an argumentative thesis about Yuval Noah Harari's explanation of the Cognitive Revolution.
Choice B
Support, refute, or complicate Harari’s assertion that the “agricultural revolution was the greatest crime against humanity.”
Lesson One Study Questions
One. That Sapiens is an exclusive species today emerging from several species of great apes is both “peculiar and incriminating.” Explain.
The window of history of a dominant, exclusive species called Sapiens is rather small. Harari speculates that we won't last long relative to other species.
Further, it appears that as a species we tend to kill other species. Killing our competition appears to be part of our nature. Our tendency toward violence seems to contradict our self-aggrandizing name “homo sapien,” which means “wise man.”
Three revolutions define Sapiens as the dominant species:
Cognitive Revolution from 70,000 years ago.
Agricultural Revolution from 12,000 years ago.
Scientific Revolution from 500 years ago.
Two. What are defining characteristics of Sapiens?
We have big brains that suck 25% of body’s energy.
We walk upright on two legs, freeing our hands for fine motor skills and advanced communication.
We are born underdeveloped and as babies require a lot of nurture and protection.
We have advanced rapidly from the middle of the food chain to the top of the food chain resulting in disrupting the ecosystem and killing other species, often to the point of extinction.
We learned to use fire to alter our environment and to cook food that otherwise could not be digested efficiently.
Because we are insecure in our Top Dog Food Chain position, we are like “Banana Republic dictators” full of fear and anxiety over our apex role, and as a result we inflict cruelty, havoc, and destruction everywhere we reign. In other words, we are warmongers. Peaceful existence is the exception, not the rule (11).
Reading Sapiens reinforces the Hobbesian notion of the “barbarian throng,” which can only be controlled by fear and rule of law.
Three. What two competing theories explain the emergence of Sapiens as the exclusive species?
One is Interbreeding Theory, which states that Sapiens and Neanderthals mated and evolved into the Sapiens we are today.
The second is Replacement Theory, which states that Sapiens committed genocide against other species, including the Neanderthals. If this theory is true, all of us can be traced back to East Africa from 70,000 years ago.
Sapiens have a religious-based belief that they are exclusive to the animal kingdom, superior and apart, but in fact they were related to other species, which they wiped out:
Soloensis and Denisova were wiped out 50,000 years ago.
Neanderthals were wiped out 30,000 years ago.
Flores Island dwarf-like humans were wiped out 12,000 years ago (18).
Four. How did language cause Sapiens to become more advanced than other species?
From 70,000 to 30,000 years ago, Sapiens embarked upon the Cognitive Revolution.
They developed “supple” language to form advanced communications: storytelling to create myths and legends which created self-identity, morality systems, alliances, enemies or “The Other”; legal systems, religions, art, gossip,collective beliefs, and social cooperation.
Managing tribes led to alpha males and alpha females. This type of dominance was based on connecting with others, building coalitions, managing conflicts, and creating “brand identity” (25).
Five. How did “legal fiction” advance Sapiens to develop cities, political systems, and business enterprises?
We read one of the book’s most important passages: “Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths” (26).
Religious, nationalist, and judicial values and beliefs can bind alliances between people who have never met each other. They share a common commitment based on a common value system.
This value system is based on shared beliefs. These beliefs emerge from shared stories.
“Yet none of these things exist outside the stories people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings” (27).
To make a successful business, Harari asserts that we must be “powerful sorcerers” and “tribal shamans.” He uses the example of Peugeot. Like Rolex, Mercedes, and Apple, Peugeot is an entity that does not exist as a person or a group of persons, but as a brand, an idea, a symbol.
Giving value to a symbol or a brand is unique to Sapiens, and this activity has a great influence on human affairs.
Peugeot is a “legal fiction” and a “figment of our collective imagination” (29).
Peugeot is a corporation, a legal entity, an institution that pays taxes. Individuals are not sued, but the corporation Peugeot can be sued.
Peugeot as a legal fiction is what is called a limited liability company. Before Sapiens invented the limited liability company, they were at too much risk to have their own business because they, not the legal fiction, were liable in the event of being sued. Their children could be sold into servitude, they could lose all of their possessions, and they could be put into prison simply because they were liable for any shortcomings or violations their company presented.
Such legal exposure discouraged people from innovation. In the wake of a limited liability company, however, innovation flourished.
Therefore, limited liability companies, the product of legal fiction, are a huge force in accelerating creativity, business, and innovation.
Harari observes a comparison between religion and business: Both require a story and “hocus pocus” to emerge and exist in people’s collective imagination. Religion needs stories to supports its divine claims. Businesses need the legal magic of lawyers to produce paperwork with legal codes to create a fabrication.
These fabrications, or “legal fictions,” propel human lives in large numbers and disrupt the evolution of societies.
“Telling effective stories is not easy,” the author writes, but the successful, compelling stories create immense power for those in are held in authority of these stories because “millions of strangers to cooperate and to work towards common goals” (31).
A college is not a professor, a group of professors, or a bunch of administrators. A college is an idea, a legal fiction that provides a positive narrative to the community. This positive narrative is about upward mobility and personal enrichment. If the story does not corroborate with reality in some compelling way, the legal fiction or the brand is in danger of weakening or being completely upturned into something else.
When we speak of legal fictions, we are not speaking of lies. Harari writes:
“An imagined reality is not a lie.”
Rather, an imagined reality is a shared value or belief system such as “justice for all,” “diversity in education and the workplace,” “overcoming structural inequality,” “individualism over utilitarianism,” “sacrifice to the family and community and public duty over personal pleasure and personal fulfillment” and so on.
The above are imagined realities that millions of people may share and that millions of others may reject in favor of some contradictory belief system.
Because of the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens live in a dual reality: the objective reality of the world around us and the imagined reality of value systems that are sustained by compelling stories (32).
Competing myths or stories can radically alter our value systems. For example, the author observes France in 1789 when myths supporting “divine right of kings” were supplanted by myths supporting “sovereignty of the people.”
In the United States with structural inequality getting worse and worse, American Millennials are not as friendly toward stories about American democracy and equality and therefore are not necessarily supportive of democratic ideals. Millennials may in fact reject stories that support notions of democratic ideals and equality.
Shared stories or “imagined realities” make humans cooperate toward common goals and have the effect of making Sapiens dominate all other species on the planet.
This is why we cannot overestimate the effects of “legal fictions” or “imagined realities” on the Apex Predator status of Sapiens.
One of the biggest effects of legal fictions is trade. We trade objects based on the object’s value, and the value is based on some story.
Apple computer is a story about creativity, hipster coolness, and innovation.
Rolex and Mercedes are stories about achieving the ultimate in success of “making it.”
Such stories existed tens of thousands of years ago for jewels, spices, fabrics, precious metals, etc.
Trade established the need for trust and trade stimulated world travel, further propelling Sapiens toward world domination (36).
Shared imagined realities also created culture. In fact, culture is defined as a shared imagined reality and the ways this shared imagined reality manifests itself.
Before the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens were defined by biology but after the Cognitive Revolution Sapiens were defined by imagined realities, which comprised of their culture.
Six. How does the pre-agriculture period affect Sapiens today?
Harari observes that “nearly entire history” of Sapiens is pre-agricultural society, also known as foraging society or hunting and gathering society.
This historical period defines who we are today.
After foraging, Sapiens lived for 10,000 years in Agricultural Age: farmers and herders.
For only 200 years, we have lived in Industrial Age: urban labourers and office workers.
Our gorging gene is traced to our need to eat before competing predators could eat our kill and our discovery of sweet fruit. Of course, now we’re maladapted to all the calorie-dense food produced in the Industrial Age.
We may be slighter dumbber with slightly smaller brains than foragers because foragers had to have everyday survival skills and know how to work in the environment whereas we can be lazy slobs, turn on a light, turn on a computer, flip a switch, order a pizza, and watch Netflix (49).
In many ways, foragers had a “more comfortable and rewarding lifestyle” than industrial Sapiens. In affluent societies today, people work 45 hours a week with little free time and few friends, are full of stress, and overworked to deal with declining real wages. In developing countries, people today may work 80 hours a week and are essentially work bots.
In contrast, foragers had leisure time with one another and worked maybe 3-6 hours a day (50).
Foragers had a more diverse, nutritious diet as opposed to a diet of monocrops, same crops, and same food for farmers. Today, we load up on processed food and sugar.
Of course, Harari points out, foragers often led short, brutish lives, often rife with infanticide and similar atrocities, but on balance their lives could be richer and more affluent than the lifestyles of those in Agricultural and Industrial Periods.
Seven. Why is human visitation to Australia one of the “most important events in history”?
We see how destructive Sapiens are to ecosystems living apart from human contact.
We see Sapiens as the “deadliest species in the annals of planet Earth” (64). Within a few thousand years, all of the continent’s giant animals became extinct.
Sapien colonization on any new landfront is a massive disaster. Sapiens leave mass destruction in their wake.
We too often abandon morality when we live under the rule of the Zero-Sum Game.
When we live for Zero-Sum Game, we become lobsters, for better and worse.
Balance Your Inner Lobster with Your Moral Sense
Adapted from Jordan Peterson Uses Lobster Society to Give Us 5 Essential Life Lessons
Rule 1: Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back
Jordan Peterson's book 12 Rules for Life has a famous chapter comparing lobsters to humans. Peterson’s view of competition is dark and realistic, and it is the basis for his claim that we need to be self-reliant and abandon all naivete about our plight in this world.
Deeper Meaning
Peterson's analogy makes us realize what we’re up against in a world of competition, and he makes us identify negative feedback loops that make us prey to predators, and he helps us replace those negative feedback loops with positive ones in order to help us succeed in life.
Life Lesson #1: Our Territory Determines Our Quality of Life
Jordan Peterson observes that lobsters have survived for 350 million years, far longer than dinosaurs and humans, and that their survival instincts can give us some essential life lessons.
Competition for Territory
Like lobsters, we compete for territory because territory (zip code, if you will) determines our quality of life.
The rich live in premium locations and enjoy longest, healthy lives. The poor live in high-stress areas and live shorter, more sickly, more brutal lives.
I live in Torrance, about a mile and a half from the beach, and you can live 7 miles from here in the city of Wilmington, which is close to oil refineries known to produce spikes in asthma, heart disease, and cancer.
If you live a mile or closer to the freeway, you have increased risk for cancer, heart disease, and dementia.
Like lobsters, we compete for where we will live. We compete for territory.
Life Lesson #2: The world we live in a zero-sum game.
Zero-sum game means that if you win the game you will have wealth, resources, good health, and top-ranking social hierarchy.
If you lose in the zero-sum game, you will suffer poverty, deprivation, sickliness and low-ranking status for overwhelming majority. The crisis of being poor is the poor have the worst healthcare, but the poor get struck with the worst diseases.
This is a brutal principle. A winner in some category of life, reproductive success, the arts, business, home ownership in premium coastal locations comes with someone else paying the price.
Luxury Hotel
Someone enjoys staying in a luxury hotel in Hawaii that costs thousands of dollars a night.
Someone cleans the bathroom of that luxury hotel for minimum wage and lives in brutal conditions to make sure that hotel customer has the best and cleanest amenities.
If you get the bad end of the stick, the world doesn’t care because the world’s default setting is to ignore you and assign you zero worth. This brutal condition compels us to take responsibility for our own station in life. If we don’t fight for our territory, like the lobster fights for his, we are doomed.
Life Lesson #3: We exist in a pecking order that affects our serotonin levels.
We are in a constant competition for resources in a fight to win ranking on what Peterson calls a “pecking order” for quality of life and reproductive success.
Pecking order, largely based on income, for humans, determines neurochemistry, which elevates serotonin in lobster victory and elevates octopamine in defeat. These hormones affect body language, either bold and proud or cowering and ashamed.
This body language propels us into a perpetual feedback loop, leading us to Life Lesson #3.
Life Lesson #4: Our success or failure in life depends on what kind of constant feedback loop we set into motion.
Our social status ranking affects others’ perception of us, and how we see others perceive us affects our hormones, and our hormones, manifest in body language, affect how people perceive us, so that we exist in a constant feedback loop.
High serotonin levels make people attracted to us, which in turn elevate our serotonin levels even more, creating a positive feedback loop.
The converse is also true: Low serotonin levels make us repellent to others, which in turn lowers our serotonin levels even more, creating a negative feedback loop.
Bullied People
Peterson uses example of an adolescent who was bullied and who reacts to life’s challenges based on being a bullying victim. He becomes fragile, whiny, and helpless with low levels of serotonin, making him more vulnerable to further bullying, which reinforces his negative view of the world.
His groveling, defeatist body language, cowering before some catastrophe, sets him up as a victim for future bullies.
Unloved Depressed People
Depressed people feel useless. A lot of depressed people never received love as children. They grow up with low levels of serotonin. They give depressed vibes to others who turn away from the depressed who in turn feel unloved, a perception that makes them even more depressed, and so the negative feedback loop continues.
The can continue to lead a miserable life defined by this negative feedback loop, or they can do something about it by creating a positive feedback loop.
How is this achieved, and do you really want to achieve this? If you do, please listen:
Principle #5: You Are Responsible for Creating a Positive Feedback Loop
Taking care of yourself, your fitness, your nutrition, your sleep, your limited screen time on social media, your body posture, to name some examples, can create a positive feedback loop. Respecting yourself causes others to respect you, which in turn reinforces your self-respect.
“People, like lobsters, size each other up” (40), so you need to take care of yourself.
Self-care is the first step in the road to achieving a positive feedback loop.
The Obvious Isn’t the Commonly Practiced
Taking care of yourself may sound obvious, but most people don’t take care of themselves.
Here’s an example: Up to 30% of people never fill their doctors’ prescriptions for their illnesses. Another 50% who do fill their prescriptions don’t follow the instructions.
Most people follow prescription instructions for their pets more than they do themselves.
We can conclude that most people like their pets more than they like themselves.
They may not even be aware of how they abuse and neglect themselves in a sign of zero self-worth.
You have to want to value yourself and you have to show this through self-care.
Examples of Self-Care
Social Media Excess
By posting too much on social media, you’re advertising your loneliness and neediness. You’re making yourself appear like a weak lobster in the social media universe, and others will avoid you, causing you to feel rejected, ensuing more feelings of loneliness, neediness, and depression, which will create a negative feedback loop.
Defend your honor and your self-respect by cutting back on social media, achieving excellence in your fitness and studies, and creating a positive feedback loop through those pursuits.
Diet and Exercise
Defend your honor and your self-respect by no longer larding your diet with excessive sugars and processed foods and getting “punk fed, which will result in metabolic syndrome, dyspepsia, fatigue, and diabetes, having the cumulative effects of being a Weak Lobster. Instead, eat whole foods and find exercise that you enjoy doing consistently so that you show yourself and others that you care about yourself so that you can create a positive feedback loop.
College Studies
Defend your honor and your self-respect by “going all in” your college studies instead of approaching college with a sullen, half-hearted, slovenly cowardice that tells yourself and the world that you’re too scared and weak-hearted to be successful.
In the realm of social media, diet, exercise, and college studies, you need to cultivate Lobster Strength and Dignity to protect your territory.
Serotonin Affects Your Personality
Self-care increases your serotonin levels.
Jordan Peterson reminds us that physical and attitudinal changes mentioned in the above examples don’t just hormonally alter our body and change our body language; they change our spirit and psychology in a way that steers us toward success.
Respond to a Challenge; Don’t Brace Yourself for Catastrophe
Making the above changes is the first step in “responding to a challenge rather than bracing for a catastrophe” (40).
Your Posture Changes Your Psychology
Peterson calls his lobster chapter “Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back.”
To stand up straight with your shoulders back is not just a physical posture; it is a position you take with your mind to defend your honor and self-respect. Such a posture is the first responsibility: To take charge of how you react to a world rife with challenges, competition, and evil.
To stand up straight with your shoulders back makes you attentive to others so you can read social cues and respond appropriately.
To slouch like a sad sack sends your brain signals deep inside your head so you become oblivious to the outside world around you and clueless you become a victim.
Reject Victim Mentality by Taking Responsibility for Protecting Your Self Interests
Reject the victim mentality and replace the victim with a more heroic version of yourself. This is the essence of Peterson’s message in this chapter.
Review of Lobster Society in the Human World
One. Understand that the world’s default setting is to ignore you, so that you are responsible for carving out your own territory.
Two. Understand you can redirect your negative feedback loop through self-care and create positive feedback loop that will point you to success.
Three. Understand that you can only rely on yourself to create a positive feedback loop. There is no guarantee that you will find a mentor or benevolent human being to guide you.
I never had a mentor, and I had to find my own way, but I do two mentorships at my college.
I do Puente and Project Success. Recently, I’ve mentored a student who got into Berkeley law school, a student who got into Morehouse screen writing program, a student who got a civil engineering job, and a student who got an electrical engineering job.
I give myself zero credit for these students’ success. They saw the stakes that were before them, they rose to the occasion, they fought through adversity, poverty, unsupportive parents, moving from their native country, and even depression.
But they made it because, even though they didn’t know it, they followed the principles of lobster society.
The lobster has survived for 350 million years for a reason: Its instincts are correct because the lobster has a proven track record, so we’d be wise to learn from those instincts.
Living Like a Lobster Is Only Half the Answer
The lobster by itself is not a teacher of salvation. The lobster is only part of a healthy human being
Lobster competition in world of social media tribalism and structural inequality has resulted in a loss of balance.
Knowing that we compete against one another is a brutal reality that we should understand.
A Moral Sense
However, our Inner Lobster needs to be balanced by our Moral Sense, which consists of moral laws, empathy, cooperation, and universal humanitarian values.
When we fail to achieve a balance between our Lobster and our Moral Sense, we endanger ourselves.
Too much Inner Lobster makes us vulnerable to the barbarian throng: “every man for himself,” “dog eat dog,” “fight tooth and claw,” “only strong survive in the jungle,” and so on.
Living in a world ruled by the barbarian throng is a world gone to chaos.
Too Much Morality?
But living too much on the Moral Sense side of the equation makes us weak, passive, and naive to external invaders, predators, and clever enemies. We must have some of the Alpha Lobster’s defensive instincts and swagger to protect ourselves.
So a balance must be achieved for our self-preservation.
In America, the balance is out of whack:
One. Rapid globalization scares the hell out of us.
Two. Rapid automation scares the hell out of us.
Three. Structural inequality making it more and more impossible for regular folks to afford housing, healthcare, and education scare the hell out of us.
Four. White people, especially of an older generation, are scared that America doesn’t look as white as it did when they were young so that racist political demagogues appeal to these white people’s worst instincts. Racism, including racist hate crimes, are on the rise.
Five. Social media generates news algorithms based on their personality profiles that silo social media users into isolating political bubbles so that they hear only what they want to hear based on cognitive biases.
Six. Americans are more and more divided along political lines to the point that a recent poll shows that more parents fear their children will marry someone of the “wrong political persuasion” over a different religious faith.
Seven. Americans no longer see their fellow Americans as sharing a common goal but as enemies who must be destroyed through trolls on social media or even worse methods resulting in what some are calling a “soft civil war.”
Eight. A lot of social media trolls are connected to Alt-Right racist and nationalist movements, and these trolls, which would be laughed at as a fringe movement just 10 years ago, feel empowered as they see mainstream politicians pushing for their cause.
Nine. National unity and shared purpose has taken a back seat to Zero-Sum Game: winners and losers.
Ten. Critical thinking, civil discussions in the marketplace of ideas, is no longer the priority: It’s now blood sport: Kill your enemy because their loss is your gain.
Lobster society has taken over critical thinking and our Moral Sense.
With the loss of critical thinking, with the loss of national unity, with tooth-and-claw Zero-Sum Game being the top priority, America exists in a state of huge chaos and instability. Hate crimes are on the rise. Racism is more flagrant and outspoken to the degree that one of my African-American students recently had “KKK” spray painted on his car in the parking lot of this college.
We are in trouble.
The Lobster without moral balance is an ugly creature hellbent on destruction.
We need our Inner Lobster, but we need it to be balanced.
If time, show video:
YouTube Ted Talk Video: Harari’s “Why Humans Run the World”
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