Cogito, Ergo Sum #1

The History of Everything: Top 4 Takeaways from 𝘚𝘢𝘱𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘴

Cogito, Ergo Sum: I think, therefore I am. It’s a powerful sentence and my source of inspiration for a brand new 3-part series covering Yuval Noah Harari’s 3 books: Sapiens, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and Homo Deus. Are you ready to think? Let’s go.

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

Interesting and provocative. –Barack Obama

One of the best accounts by a Homo sapiens of the unlikely story of our violent, accomplished species. –The Washington Post

I would recommend Sapiens to anyone who’s interested in the history and future of our species. –Bill Gates

With some of the smartest people and most prestigious publications of the century praising the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, I knew I had to give it a read.

Frankly, I’d been told that I should read it so many times by friends and acquaintances that it was beginning to become annoying. Annoyed or not, I grabbed the book, sat down and read. Here are my top takeaways from the book that I think you should think about too.

1. Social Equality & Individual Freedom Are Contradictory

“Wait but aren’t those in developed countries living with both social equality and individual freedom?” I hear you ask.

Well, not really. Just take a look at the past year and it’s clear that inequality’s rampant everywhere. But it can help to think of this using a specific example.

Scenario: you’re a super-wealthy philanthropist, and along your journey, you’ve made friends from lower socioeconomic classes.

You want to have individual freedom in the form of low taxes so that you can donate more money towards social welfare. But you also want the government to spend more on said social welfare programs to help out your friends.

How could the government do that if everyone’s paying low taxes though? Hence, the contradiction.

You have social equality and individual freedom on a scale and no matter what, the scale will tip towards one at the cost of the other. Solving this issue would mean that democrats and conservatives could essentially become one.

Is this really a dichotomy or not? What do you think?

Some of you may be incredibly angry at this argument, and rightfully so. So it’s important for me to provide you with the counterargument as well.

One can argue that true individual freedom isn’t achieved if everyone isn’t equal. After all, how could you claim that everyone is free to do as they please if certain individuals or groups are bogged down by a lack of opportunities and discrimination? Are they truly free?

I don’t entirely agree with Harari here in that the two terms are entirely contradictory but he makes a great point when he says that “the entire political history of the world since 1789 can be seen as a series of attempts to reconcile this contradiction.”

No matter your thoughts on this dichotomy, it’s certainly one worth discussing.

2. Chaos, Chaos Everywhere

This is one of the simplest to understand yet most important concepts that I’ll be talking about: it’s the idea of level 1 vs. level 2 chaos.

Level 1 chaotic systems are by definition chaotic as you might’ve guessed and also don’t react to predictions about them.

The example used in the book is the weather. But really any chaotic system that is inevitable can be categorized this way too, like earthquakes for instance.

The really interesting ones though are level 2 systems. These ones are chaotic and react to predictions about them.

For example, history is a level 2 chaotic system. If someone used an algorithm to predict WWII, it’s likely that the Allies would’ve thought twice about the Treaty of Versailles and would’ve kept a close eye on Hitler.

It’s fascinating if you think about it; knowing that history if a level 2 system makes you feel so powerful yet powerless at the same time. Your actions can affect the entire world and yet you can’t predict how.

3. Science Means Admitting We Don’t Know Anything

Back in the day, there was wide acceptance that the entire truth and all that was important was already discovered. There was no need to discover the details of how viruses worked because that was peripheral knowledge that would have already been well known had it been important.

But modern-day science presented a different view of the world. It said that we are all ignorant about some of the universe’s most important and vexing puzzles and that we absolutely don’t know everything there is to know.

Everyone agrees that science has come an extremely long way since just a few centuries ago. A few months ago, the world was taken by storm when COVID-19 vaccines were approved and administered for the very first time.

But remove the word “COVID-19” and you’ll find that the very first vaccine was administered just over two centuries ago in 1796.

And yet no scientist nowadays believes that we know everything there is to know about diseases.

The truth is, in the grand scheme of things, we know very little. Outside of Sapiens, in TKS, I was introduced to the world of knowing what you don’t know.

It’s an absolutely crucial skill to have if you ever want to expand your horizons. But it’s also fascinating and crucial to realize that this skill was frowned upon not so long ago.

This is you and your understanding growing!

4. Peace Is Here To Stay

The fact of the matter is, violence is decreasing at an astonishing rate.

Taking a long-term view first, let’s look at our hunter-gatherer ancestors. The chance of a male being killed at the hands of the other could reach upwards of 60% in certain tribes and if lucky maybe 15% or so. In 20th century Europe and America, this percentage was at about 1%.

How about the Middle Ages in Europe? Well, you could get the death penalty for stealing bread so I think that answers our question.

Taking an even more magnified look now, the death rate was 65,000 deaths per conflict per year in the 1950s versus 2,000 deaths per conflict per year in the 2000s. (You can view the TED Talk I found these stats from here.)

Now taking a less Western view, let’s look at the Arab nations. As Harari states, “only once since the Arab countries won their independence has one of them mounted a full-scale invasion of another (the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990).”

And in Africa, even though conflicts and coups do still occur frequently, since winning independence, the number of wars has declined significantly.

Harari claims that…

Real peace is not the mere absence of war. Real peace is the implausibility of war.

And war has never seemed so implausible. Could you imagine Germany invading France tomorrow? Likely not. But after WWI, with the anger that ensued from Germany, invasion was certainly far from implausible.

How about regional conflicts that are currently raging worldwide? Harari further argues that they only prove his point in that they are the only exceptions. However, one might rightfully argue that as long as these wars and conflicts exist we can’t claim to have reached everlasting peace.

You may completely disagree with this notion and that is completely okay. The purpose of this article is to make you think, and if it’s done that, it’s done its job!

Let’s Recap

• Some believe that social equality & individual freedom are contradictory since having complete equality may mean fringing upon freedom and vice versa
• But one can argue that freedom isn’t achieved unless equality exists
• History is a level 2 chaotic system meaning it reacts to predictions about itself
• We really don’t know all that much from and the success of modern science is partly because we finally admitted that we’re ignorant of a whole lot
• Violence as a whole is in decline in the world and Harari believes that the ever-increasing implausibility of war that’s come alongside it means we’ve reached peace for now

We’ve come to the end of the 1st part of my Cogito, Ergo Sum series and I really hope you enjoyed it. Keep in mind that these are simply things I picked up from the book and they don’t all reflect my personal views.

Keep thinking and I’ll see you soon with the 2nd part.

Hey there 👋 Parmin here; I’m a 15 y/o student studying stem cells at The Knowledge Society 🧪 Everyday, I aspire to uncover the secrets of biology and learn something new! Make sure to follow me on Medium to hear about every new article I post, connect with me on LinkedIn, or contact me at parminsedigh@gmail.com! Also subscribe to my monthly newsletter to learn about every cool, new thing I’m working on ✍️