Sapiens Part 2, Lesson #4: Collapse of Family and Community, the Rise of Human Cyborgs
3-7 Homework #6: Read Sapiens, pages 350-416, and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains the causes of the collapse of the family and the community.
3-12 Explain the collapse of the family. See Harari video “The Future of Humanity.” Homework: Write a preliminary or tentative thesis.
3-14 Look at students’ thesis statements. Look at 5 types of thesis statements. See Harari’s video “Why Fascism Is So Tempting.”
3-19 Peer Edit for Essay #2
Essay #2 Due 3-26-19
Minimum of 2 sources for your MLA Works Cited page.
Choice A
Watch Netflix documentary Ronnie Coleman: The King. Considered to be the greatest bodybuilder of all time, Coleman is now on crutches, faces a lifetime of excruciating pain, must take opioid pain medication, may have to be consigned to a wheelchair, and by most accounts the abuse he took to become a champion bodybuilder is the reason for his condition. The film celebrates Coleman’s life principle to persist in doing what he loves, but doing what he loves comes with a price: excruciating, life-altering injuries. Is doing what we love worth it? In this context, develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the notion that in order to achieve exceptional success, we are justified to make sacrifices of our body, minds, and souls. Is Coleman’s current condition justified by his success and his heroic drive to do what he loves? Answer this question and be sure to have a counterargument section. You need to cite two sources, the Ronnie Coleman documentary and Bourree Lam’s Atlantic article “Why ‘Do You What You Love’ Is Pernicious Advice.”
Option B
Watch Netflix Black Mirror episode “Nosedive,” and listen to the NPR Hidden Brain episode “Why Social Media Isn’t Always Very Social,” and watch Sherry Turkle’s Ted Talk video, “Connected, But Alone?” Then in the context of those 3 sources develop an argumentative thesis about the way the social media misuse creates psychological dissolution, depression, and thwarted emotional development.
Choice C
Take an episode from Hasan Minhaj’s Netflix news show Patriot Act and develop an argumentative thesis that addresses one of Minhaj’s topics.
Choice D
In Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, read Chapter 9 “The Arrow of History” and write an essay that applies Yuval’s notion of cultural inconsistencies and contradictions (164) to a contradiction you see in contemporary life.
Choice E
Based on Chapter 9 in Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, develop a thesis that argues that money is in many ways a form of religion.
Choice F
Based on Chapter 16 in Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, support, refute, or complicate Harari’s assertion that the free market is a dangerous cult that results in “Capitalist Hell.”
Choice G
Based on chapters 18 and 19 in Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, develop an argumentative thesis that addresses Harari’s notion of “imagined communities” and the human quest for happiness and meaning.
Choice H
Based on Chapter 20 in Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, develop an argumentative thesis about the viability of the “Frankenstein Prophecy.”
Choice I
Watch Yuval Noah Harari’s Ted Talk video “Why Fascism Is So Tempting” and write an argumentative thesis that addresses his claim.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHHb7R3kx40
Study Questions 350-416
One. Why did the Industrial Revolution cause the collapse of the family and community?
Family and community were replaced by the state and the market. Harari observes that a million years ago humans lived in small communities or tribes. Then the Cognitive Revolution and Agricultural Revolution came, and we still lived in our small tribes.
But with the Industrial Revolution it took only 200 years to “break these building blocks into atoms” (356).
These “building blocks” were nuclear family, extended family, and “local intimate community.”
In the last 200 years however the Industrial Revolution has giving the government and market “new powers” that make these forces greater than the family.
The government can intervene if parents aren’t performing due diligence with their children or, worse, committing abuse.
Children can legally divorce their parents.
The government can tell parents how and when to spank their children as these spankings can be caught on video.
Families can disperse to follow jobs in different geographical locations.
Schools can educate or indoctrinate children with values that conflict with the parents’ values.
Parental authority is no longer sacred.
Conforming to Family Vs. Individualism
The market with consumerism offers individual identity that may compete with family identity.
A daughter may come from a working-class family, go to college, “get woke,” and reject the family’s patriarchal system or some other system that conflicts with her new values that she learned in college.
A son may come from a working-class family, go to college and find interest in a career other than taking over the father’s business.
Children no longer let their parents tell them whom to marry. They “fall in love like in the movies” and pursue romantic dreams in spite of the growing divorce rate.
“Falling in love like in the movies” is a product of the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Cinema.
Insurance, Pension, Salary, Mortgage, Bank Account = New Parents
Our new sense of parental protection comes from our legal and financial entanglements in the realm of job, insurance, healthcare plan, mortgage, bank account, 401K. These entanglements replace parents as our primary obligation and sense of protection.
Two. What is the cost of individualism?
With the Industrial Revolution, we became less obliged to conform to family values and customs as we asserted our individuality, but this comes with a price.
What if we are confused about our identity?
What if our identity doesn’t work for us?
What if we go crazy? What is our safety net?
What if individualism gives us more space to go crazy?
What if we become isolated, living in an apartment and working in an isolated cubicle all day while failing to find romance on some Internet dating site while the years tick by and we eat Hot Pockets while nervously reading web articles about the end of the world?
What if we become alienated, anxious, misplaced misfits like those rejected toys on Misfit Island from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?
Yes, the markets give us individualism and freedom, but we are more vulnerable to a free fall with no one to catch us.
We are more vulnerable to loneliness and “not fitting in.”
Three. What is an “imagined community”?
Imagined communities, Harari writes, are substitutes for the nuclear family. They “are tailored to national and commercial needs. An imagined community is a community of people who don’t really know each other, but imagine they they do.”
Consumerism and political beliefs can constitute our imagined community.
You may belong to a political or activist group on social media.
You may belong to the a consumer group like the BMW Club or the Breitling Club or the Paleo Club or Raiders Nation or Beyonce Fan Club.
Benefit from Rising State and Diminished Tribe: Less Violence
We have less warfare. In small tribes, we were more likely to wake up with a knife at our throat. Now we have more protections from the state (367).
Nations need strong economies. Strong economies need trust in the future. Trust in the future requires stability. War leads to instability. Therefore, nations have an incentive to avoid war.
Four. Are we happier since trading in our families for the nation state?
We have escaped the brutality of tribal warfare with spears, knives, and torches. We don’t have to hunt or toil for our food. We have the freedom to be individuals. But is this enough to be happy?
We have many challenges to our happiness:
One. Structural inequality continues to grow in areas of education, housing, healthcare leading to a shrinking middle class.
Two. A shrinking middle class leads to a kind of anxiety that makes populations elect racist nationalist demagogues in high political positions, which exacerbates class and political warfare.
Three. Young people have a gun to their head to go into college debt with fewer good job prospects and a high probability of having to live with their parents well into their thirties.
Four. Constant schooling and working overtime makes people too tired for friendship and romance so they capitulate to posting a few pics on Instagram.
Five. Constant schooling and working overtime just to stay afloat makes people sleep deprived.
Six. Because of the rising cost of housing, having a college degree may not be enough protection from homelessness and a dangerous lack of medical coverage.
Seven. Because of rising automation, more and more jobs are disappearing, which may usher UBI (Universal Basic Income) and render individuals meaningless and irrelevant to society.
Eight. Due to time constraints, more and more people rely on social media to build a sense of connection and self-esteem when studies show that social media activity can actually cause serious disconnection and fragmentation of self.
Nine. Society is becoming more polarized with fake news being embraced as real news and people becoming polarized and siloed in their social media groups, resulting in distrust and possible violence.
Ten. Harari cites studies that show a link between money and happiness (381) and if fewer and fewer people have money, then there will be less happiness, not because money is intrinsically good, but because having money can create a buffer between people and fear and anxiety.
Eleven. Social media, TV, movies, and consumerism create inflated expectations for happiness and an unrealistic portrait of what defines the Perfect Self. When we fall short of this perfection, be it making money or achieving physical beauty, we may fall to self-loathing, self-hatred, self-rejection and feel like we are failures. Unrealistic expectations lead to unhappiness. This problem is explained in Will Storr’s book Selfie.
Some Good News
Humans have always adapted to their environment. We acclimate to the limitations of our world. It may take time, but we tend to adapt.
Information is available. We just need focus.
Wisdom is out there. There are teachers, mentors, and thinkers. We can find them.
Problems are cyclical. The pendulum swings in one direction, then its opposite.
Five. Is there a connection between meaning and happiness?
Materialistic notions of happiness reduce the definition to pleasure. But citing Nobel Prize economist Daniel Kahneman, Harari observes that “happiness is not the surplus of pleasant over unpleasant moments. Rather, happiness consists in seeing one’s life in its entirety as meaningful and worthwhile.”
Happiness is us evaluating the direction and narrative of our lives. Do we find a cord or through-line of meaning within it?
Apparently, being consumers of mindless pleasure results in emptiness, nihilism, despair, and moral dissolution.
As Viktor Frankl famously quotes in Man’s Search for Meaning, Harari provides the same quote from Nietzsche: “If you have a why to live, you bear almost any how.”
Six. Is meaning absolute?
Harari argues that meaning is both relative to culture and an illusion albeit a helpful illusion.
Harari writes: “As far as we can tell, from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan . . .” He continues to write, “Hence, any meaning that people ascribe to their lives is just a delusion.”
For Harari, all meaning is equally delusional whether it be humanistic, religious, nationalistic, intellectual or capitalistic. If you find meaning in child rearing, scientific exploration, religious piety, military sacrifice, greed, conformity, and so on, it’s all a delusion.
But this delusion is necessary, Harari ponders, to be happy.
Seven. Is happiness limited to those with a capacity for delusion?
No, according to Harari. Knowing how we are hardwired and acting accordingly will promote happiness.
For liberals, we are entitled toward pleasure and self-fulfillment.
For Christians, we are like heroin addicts addicted to base forms of fleshly pleasure and we need spiritual guidance to usher us toward more exquisite delights of holiness.
For Buddhists, we are prisoners of desires based on illusions, and we must dissolve these delusions to find nirvana.
New Agers repackage Buddhism by making the same claims but executing one’s quest for nirvana in a luxury spa or vacation with likeminded New Agers in the Bimini Islands.
Eight. What turning point of Sapiens does Harari observe at the book’s end?
He writes that Sapiens used to be bound by biologically determined limits, but now we are transitioning by breaking the laws of natural selection and “replacing the with the laws of intelligent design.”
Intelligent godlike beings will design humans in the future, Harari speculates. Biological engineering, A.I., and algorithms will alter human beings more than natural selection.
We may become cyborgs, the fulfillment of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Prophecy.
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