This is the wrong future!

I’m an angry old man. Well, maybe not angry so much as disillusioned. This is not the future I expected. It’s not the one I was promised by pretty much everyone from “futurists” to cartoonists to song writers. I’m not talking about space stations and Mars colonies and things like that, although their lack is disappointing, too. I’m talking about peace, prosperity, freedom, equality, justice…. Age of Aquarius type stuff, the dreams of John Lennon’s Imagine.

In the latter half of the last century, young, naïve idiots like myself truly believed that a new age of human understanding, progress, and cooperation was just around the corner. Humanity would finally realize that race, religion, nationality, gender, and things like that, really don’t matter very much. It wouldn’t be a case of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” It would be more like “don’t know, don’t care, not important.” Not to society in general, anyway. People are people. Black or white, gay or straight, religious or secular. All of them. All of us. Whatever differences we might possess are far outweighed by the things we have in common. The dawning of a bright new century would somehow bring a second Enlightenment that would leave all our petty biases, prejudices, and superstitions behind us. We would finally accept that working together to achieve common goals made far more sense than constantly arguing and fighting one another over relatively unimportant things, most of which boil down to matters of taste or opinion.

Obviously, that idealistic future didn’t happen. In some ways, it seems we’ve become even more sensitive to minor personal differences now than we were half a century ago, especially when it comes to matters of religion and gender. Perhaps this kind of sensitivity is a result of people grasping for some semblance of individuality in an increasingly homogenized world. Maybe it’s a cry for acceptance by those who feel that society has rejected them. I don’t know, but I find it disheartening. I shudder when voters rally to support a politician simply because he or she claims to share their religious faith. I don’t understand why anyone would be hypersensitive about gender pronouns. Neither a person’s religious beliefs nor their gender identity makes any difference to their ability to be a valued citizen. Any society that respects personal freedom should be equally accepting of all choices like that.

I now appreciate that there was no realistic way this kind of change could have happened. Not in half a century, at least. Human history, and probably human nature as well, is burdened by far too much irrational baggage for that. I understand that, now. But unjustified as it may be, I can’t seem to let go of the dream that somehow, someday, the bright future we imagined back when I was young might still happen. I’m not confident it will. I certainly don’t expect to see it in my lifetime, but I can’t seem to abandon all hope in it. So, yeah, I’m disappointed, but I guess I’m not entirely disillusioned after all. Maybe we can do better with the next century. I wish I could be there to find out, but countering the incredibly inconvenient and invariably terminal effects of aging is another thing we haven’t made much progress on.

Avery Slom

Rationality

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The title poses some very good questions, but does the book answer them? Well…

Steven Pinker is undoubtedly a brilliant fellow, and I loved his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, but Rationality reads more like a textbook on probability than a clear explanation of reason and critical thinking. Rather than introducing the subject in layman’s terms using specific examples, it starts off with definitions of rules of logic, graphs, and diagrams. That’s all well and good, but it’s a tad dry. The issue on the minds of many people, and the reason this subject is so timely, was/is what seems like a spreading plague of irrationality epitomized by the rise of Donald Trump. How were otherwise intelligent people lured into his delusions? Did they not notice that much of what he said made little or no sense, or did they simply not care? And if they didn’t, why not? What is going on in the minds of religious extremists and terrorists who believe that God wants them to hurt people? What draws people into giving any credence at all to ranting radio talk show hosts and internet conspiracy theorists? This book mentions some of these questions, especially in the final section, but I didn’t find succinct answers to any of them. Maybe there aren’t any.

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They’re Not All Racists

Recently, I saw a Facebook post by a lady who self-identifies as both a Republican and a Trump supporter. She said she resented being accused of being a racist because of her political affiliation. Not all Trump supporters are racists, she maintained.

Logically, I can agree with that. I am sure many Republicans don’t see themselves as racists, or as any of the other negative stereotypes that have increasingly become associated with the party, especially since Trump became its primary spokesperson. Republicans aren’t all racists, or sexists, or religious fundamentalists, or paranoid gun toting conspiracy theorists, and the many who aren’t understandably resent being grouped with those few who are.

Sadly, this kind of cognitive pigeonholing is common. There is an unfortunate human proclivity to generalize a universal truth from a few (perhaps anomalous) examples. I imagine such behavior has evolutionary survival value. Think about it. While only a few types of snakes are poisonous, avoiding all of them makes it far less likely you will be bitten by one that is. We probably have a gene for this kind of thing. That doesn’t mean all snakes deserve to be shunned, although many of us do have an irrational phobia about them. It’s called ophidiophobia.

There doesn’t have to be a psychologically accepted term for an irrational fear for it to exist. There are people who fear butterflies, or trees, or speaking in public. Some people feel anxious around police, or protestors, or clowns. This kind of generalized anxiety may not be deserved, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real. There may sometimes even be a cause for it, some experience the fearful person had that traumatized them for life. Apparently, it doesn’t take much for people to build themselves a phobia, and it takes even less for most of us to make unwarranted assumptions and jump to unjustified conclusions. So, when we see video of a cop kneeling on a black man’s neck, or a picture of someone at a protest throwing a rock or breaking a store window, we sometimes must struggle to avoid thinking, “They’re all like that.”

Not so long ago, in an America that felt much different than the one we have today, I worked for the US Department of Defense. Ethics was a big deal back then. DoD employees were advised (formally and repeatedly) to avoid any possible semblance of impropriety. We were told to always be mindful about doing anything that might be misconstrued to imply corruption or favoritism. So, for example, when attending a meeting at a defense contractor’s facility, we could accept free cups of coffee (if such were available to their own employees), but a donut might be a bit too much. Being treated to a free lunch was right out. Someone (probably with an agenda) could claim we were accepting a bribe to award the company with a lucrative contract, or to overlook some deviation in the performance of one they already had. My point here is that, justified or not, impressions matter. The policy was meant to preclude any behavior that might, even inadvertently, undermine confidence in the integrity of the DoD. It was intended to minimize the chance of anyone having any reason to jump to the wrong conclusion. Because that’s what people do. They generalize from the specific to the whole. Whether we like it or not, we are often seen as representatives of some group. In my case, above, it was Defense Department employees. For a cop, it’s police in general. For a guy in a MAGA hat, it’s Trump supporters.

In most cases, these generalizations make no sense. People who are likely to be swayed by a free lunch are not predisposed to work for the government, and most people prone to excessive violence are not disproportionately inclined to flock to the ranks of the police force. But when it comes to Trump supporters, it’s a bit different. I think it’s safe to assume that anyone waving a Confederate battle flag and flashing a White Power hand gesture also supports Donald Trump. So, whereas all Trump supporters aren’t racists, it seems pretty clear that most racists are Trump supporters.

Yeah, but so what? That’s hardly Trump’s fault. He can’t control who likes him. And if a long-disfavored ideological group such as white supremacists suddenly finds favor with a major political party, there’s hardly any harm in it. It’s certainly good for the party, which can count on the racists’ votes, and it’s good for the racists because they get to feel that their movement has regained some measure of lost legitimacy. It’s just politics, after all, and, as the saying goes, politics makes strange bedfellows. You shouldn’t take political rhetoric too seriously. I have heard Trump supporters (well, one Trump supporter) make this very claim. Republicans in general are not racists, sexists, religious fundamentalists, or even gun owners. They only play some minimal lip service to these groups to gain their votes. And it’s not like it really matters. Legal segregation is never going to return, women aren’t going to lose the vote, and the Constitution isn’t going to be changed to impose a state religion.

Perhaps, but let’s go back to appearances again. How does it look when someone you don’t want to be associated advertises their association with you, like when the racist puts on his MAGA hat? Even accepting as true that racists, sexists, religious extremists, and armed survivalists combined do not make up the majority of the Republican Party, in the eyes of the public at large, they do represent it. When the guy flying the Confederate battle flag also has a Trump sign in his front yard, does that not give the impression of a link exiting between racists with Trump supporters? (This isn’t a hypothetical. There is a house on my street with both a large Confederate flag and a much smaller Trump 2020 sign in the front yard. It’s the only house in the neighborhood with either, and it has both. Granted, it’s a very small and nonrepresentative sampling, but it provides a 100% correlation. If you drew a Venn diagram to represent the two groups (racists and Trump supporters), it would be a single circle.)

I’m not claiming that there is a legitimate reason for suspecting someone is a closet racist simply because they identify as a Republican or even as a Trump supporter. I am simply attempting to explain why people might jump to this conclusion. It’s all about appearances. Right now, the Republican party appears to support racism, not only because of things Trump has said (e.g. his now infamous rant about Mexican immigrants), but also because some of the party’s more vocal members are overt racists. I believe the perceived association between Republicans and racist and other fringe groups will persist until such time as Trump and other party leaders strongly repudiate and take substantive actions against them. Until that happens, traditional Republicans may wish to ask themselves with whom they choose to be associated.

Fields of Blood

Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence by Karen Armstrong
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

It is commonly held that religions, especially monotheistic religions, have been and still are responsible for a great deal of violence and oppression. Crusades, jihads, inquisitions, and things of that nature are pointed to as examples. In this book, Karen Armstrong argues that it’s more complex than that. To demonstrate how, she presents a long and rather dry history of violence, which sometimes obscures the point I think she is trying to make. As best I can tell, her position is that it’s not religion per se that’s behind such things. Religion is just one aspect of culture, so pointing to religion alone as the culprit for any brutal or inhumane act is far too simplistic. Prior to the Eighteenth Century, there was no clear separation between what we now think of as religion and other aspects of a culture such as politics and customs. For much of human history, there wasn’t even a clear line between the natural and the supernatural in peoples’ minds. Kings ruled with divine authority, and angels and demons were as real as snakes and bunny rabbits. The United States was the first nation to intentionally and officially separate politics from religion, and even then, it did not excise religious influences from affairs of state. Humans being what they are, that would be impossible. But once we do, at least intellectually, define religion in such a way as to distinguish it from everything else, it’s still unfair to claim that religious motivations predominately lead to unsavory behavior. Although religious beliefs may motivate one person to hijack an airplane and fly it into a building, they may encourage another to acts of charity. Also, religion isn’t the only motivator for acts of inhumanity. Nationalism, ethnic identity, or political ideology can be equally responsible. The terror one person brings about for God, another may do for his people, his country, or for what he believes is the betterment of mankind.

Although I think the author is far too quick to dismiss religious motivations for certain historical acts of violence, her observation that religion can be a motivator for good as well as bad, and that beliefs other than religious ones can also motivate behavior (again, both good and bad) is unarguable. But all of this seems obvious. The real question, the interesting question is: what common traits do religion, nationalism, and ideology share that make them such strong motivators for extreme behavior? It’s a question this book does not pose.

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How to Invent Everything

How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler by Ryan North
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Suppose you rented a time machine and it broke down, stranding you in the past, possibly in the distant past. If you’re fortunate enough to find yourself marooned at some point after biologically modern humans first make their appearance (around 200,000 years ago), you may survive. After all, they did, which means there is at least somewhere you can find a suitable climate and things that you can, if hungry enough, safely eat. But since you’re accustomed to conveniences such as palatable food, clothing, and toilet paper, this survival guide ostensibly informs the reader how to build a semblance of modern civilization from the things around them in whatever time period they find themselves in, and hopefully do it much faster than it took originally (which was an embarrassingly long time).

To my mind, that’s the takeaway from this book. We think we’re smart (collectively, at least), and, with no sense of irony, we put the word sapiens in our species name (twice). But when we look back, that assessment seems far from obvious. Sure, our ancestors used cool things like fire and stone tools, even before they were actual humans, but it took people who were biologically indistinguishable from us almost 200,000 years to invent, well, pretty much anything else. For the vast majority of our species’ existence, we didn’t know how to grow food or make cloth or write, let alone know how to effectively treat or prevent illnesses. We’ve only gotten reasonably good at that in the last century or so. If humans are so smart, why didn’t we figure this stuff out earlier?

The book doesn’t really address that question, other than to imply that we may not be quite as smart as we like to imagine. But, with the information it does provide, the stranded time traveler can get civilization up and running in far less time. It would be interesting to run a simulation to see if that might be true. I rather doubt it, and that’s partly because of another important question beyond the scope of this otherwise entertaining and informative book. How would the stranded time traveler avoid being eaten, enslaved, burned at the stake, or otherwise inconvenienced by the first people he or she ran into? Prior to modern civilization, these were common ways of greeting strangers. But, if time travelers did survive, and if they could somehow get people to understand, believe, and follow them (probably in that order), and if they could then avoid the wrath of the chiefs, priests, kings, or emperors whose authority they might be undermining, then maybe they could avoid a few centuries of even millennia of cultural and technological stagnation. Maybe.

Of course, this isn’t really a survival guide, or even a book on how to build a civilization from scratch. It’s an overview of human progress that highlights some of the key ideas, discoveries, and inventions that made modern civilization possible. It does a fine job with that.

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Empty Planet

Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson

Birth rates are falling. In many countries, fewer children are being born than are needed to replace the previous generation. (The replacement rate is 2.1 – each woman, on average, would need to have 2.1 children to maintain a population at its current level.) In some nations, the populations are already falling. In others, the populations are being bolstered through immigration. That seems to be the central point the authors are making in this book. Immigration can offset the declining birthrate of the native population and allow nations to maintain robust and even growing populations and economies. Nations that severely restrict immigration, such as China and Japan, are likely to find themselves in a world of hurt as their populations age and they are left with too few people of working age to support or care for their senior citizens.

That’s all true and fairly obvious. Immigration has long been a proven means of creating and maintaining a vibrant economy, although it takes a special kind of society to embrace it. Those that are especially xenophobic cannot, but nations like the United States and Canada, which are defined as as being nations of immigrants, may do well…at least for a while (unless they screw up by closing their borders).

But immigration is not a long term solution because, as the authors point out, the declining birthrate is a global phenomenon. As societies become more urban, educated, secular, free, gender-equal, affluent, and healthy, they have fewer children. And although there are no guarantees, it seems reasonable to expect that these kinds of societal advances will continue to be achieved by nations around the world. This may take longer than the authors seem to envision. Societal change can be slow. There are even people who cherish traditions that enforce ignorance, superstition, and oppression and are willing to go to extreme measures to preserve them. But these are exceptions, and eventually, and not all that far in the future, the global population seems likely to start falling.

This, of course, has all sorts of implications, both good and bad. Pollution is likely to decrease. The number of fish in the sea is likely to increase. But the world economy may suffer from lack of workers and consumers and, as may all of the old folks who are dependent on them. Innovation may slow because of fewer young minds working on fresh ideas. This book doesn’t go into any detail about the cultural and technological changes that might mitigate such problems, but I can imagine several, which is why the prospect of a declining population wouldn’t bother me even if I were young enough to still be alive to witness it.

All in all, this is highly readable book about an important issue. I recommend it.

It’s Better Than It Looks

It’s Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear  by Gregg Easterbrook

From the title, I expected this book to be much like those by Steven Pinker, showing how human life has steadily improved from generation to generation, about how we’ve reduced things like hunger, disease, poverty, crime, and war by implementing the ideas of the Enlightenment. There is some of that in these pages, but Easterbrook isn’t really looking at the broad scope of history here. He is more focused on today, or at least on the last century. His main point is that things today (in general) are far better than politicians, social media, and most news reports might suggest.

Humans, he states, are predisposed by their evolution to suspect threats and be wary of the unknown. Even though most shadows are harmless, treating all as if they are bears hiding in the bushes has survival value because, every once in a while, there really is a bear. Politicians and the media exploit our inherent fears (sometimes intentionally) for their own benefit. His take on how current politicians have done so abound.

This isn’t an objective or scholarly work. There is little statistical data, no graphs, no detailed analysis, and the author freely shares his personal opinions and value judgments (such that Western ideals are moral and that a well regulated market economy is the economic ideal). Despite these differences, he comes to much the same conclusions as Pinker does in The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined and in Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Things aren’t only not bad; they are better than they ever have been. That doesn’t mean we don’t have serious problems. Disease, crime, poverty, and hunger have been reduced, but they haven’t been eliminated. Challenges such as climate change and wealth disparity certainly need to addressed, but history shows that humans are quite good at overcoming challenges. There is every reason to expect that we’ll meet those of today as least as well as we have met those of the past.

Enlightenment Now

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

Since our emergence as a species, we (humans) have faced a great many challenges. We may not be entirely rational creatures, but we are clever, and we are capable of rational thought from time to time, and because of this, humanity has progressed. Our collective ingenuity has been remarkably successful in solving a great many problems, and there is every reason to expect that we will continue to do so.

As with Steven Pinker’s earlier book The Better Angels of our Nature, this one documents human progress. Our lives are far better (on average) than those of our ancestors. Sadly, many people don’t realize this and fail to appreciate how the change in thinking we call the Enlightenment allowed us to successfully combat disease, famine, and poverty.

Sometimes the author’s anger and frustration bleed through in his writing, but I can’t blame him. I often feel the same at how selectively unappreciative people can be for the benefits provided by modern life and of the Enlightened principles that so greatly helped us achieve it. We are safer, smarter, wiser, healthier, better fed, and lead longer lives. War, crime, disease, hunger, and many other ills, some natural and some self-inflicted, are continually in decline. Our ancestors struggled hard to get us to this point. They bravely questioned tradition and prevailing superstitions to understand the world as it really is. In many ways, they succeeded, and they made our lives better. The least we can do is recognize their achievements.

Hogfather

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett ~ A Fine Fantasy for the Holiday Season

The midwinter holiday on Discworld is Hogswatch rather than Christmas, and the Hogfather is the Discworld’s version of Santa Claus. He climbs down chimneys, gives presents, says, “HO-HO-HO,” and drives a sleigh pulled by four flying pigs. Many children of the Disc believe in him, which is why he exists. (This is a fundamental characteristic of the magical system in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books.) Belief causes the thing believed in to exist, and when belief stops, that existence stops. Teatime, an assassin retained to do away with the Hogfather, plans to exploit this metaphysical law to accomplish his assigned task, but first he must break into the Tooth Fairy’s castle and get control of the teeth stored there. With them, he can influence the belief of their former owners through sympathetic magic. (That’s something of a spoiler, but if you haven’t read this yet, you may be thankful for it.)

Hogfather was the first Discworld book I ever read. This was back in 1999, I think. It could have been 2000. I’m not sure. I didn’t buy it. The book was given to me, not so much as a gift, but as a case of, “Here, I’m not going to read this again, but you might like it since I know you like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

A few months later, I decided to give it a try. I didn’t know what to make of the book at first. It wasn’t like anything I had ever read before. I recall thinking when I was about halfway in that I wasn’t sure I liked it. It was obviously fantasy, but it wasn’t like the epic fantasy stepchildren of Lord of the Rings or the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, which dominated the fantasy genre at the time. Those stories seemed to make a concerted effort to portray their fantasy settings as ‘real’ places, and they were chocked full of dragons, evil warlords and their minions, and powerful magic. Their plots often boiled down to simple, and often bloody, contests between good and evil. The reader didn’t have to think much for most of these. They offered an entertaining escape from reality, but not much else. The plots were often a bit like sporting events in which one side is ‘good’ primarily because it’s from your hometown (although there’s a good chance none of the players are). In some, the biggest difference between the protagonist and the antagonist was the point of view that dominated the story.

In any case, that was the kind of fantasy novel I was used to. Hogfather is none of the above. It’s not even like the Hitchhiker’s Guide, but the person who gave me the book was right in one regard. If you like the Hitchhiker’s Guide, there is a good chance you will like Discworld. Both are satirical, funny, incredibly clever, and mind-bending.

But, back to what I was saying. Halfway through my first reading of Hogfather, I was confused. This book was far more complex than it seems at first glance. There was certainly more to it than the fantasy stories with which I was familiar. The setting was comprehensible but bizarre. I mean—really—a flat world carried on the back of four elephants standing on a turtle? Come on! The plot confused me, and there were subplots and multiple points of view presented by an omniscient narrator. There were even footnotes! This wasn’t like watching a sporting event or a cartoon. I had to pay attention. This book was trying to make me (*gasp*) think! To be honest, I wasn’t sure I was up to the challenge.

Then, about halfway through, I got it. I can’t recall exactly what scene or phrase caused my epiphany, but I finally caught a glimpse of what this story was doing, and it floored me. The author wasn’t trying to draw me into the story to the point of total immersion. The setting was absurd because I wasn’t supposed to believe it was possible. The story was fiction, and I wasn’t being encouraged to suspend disbelief to the point where I felt for a moment that it wasn’t. There’s a kind of honesty to that that I still find refreshing. Yes, the story is set on a fantasy world starring a recognizable parody of Santa Claus and an anthropomorphic personification of Death, complete with black cloak and scythe, but it’s not ABOUT them. It’s about us!

But at the same time, this ridiculous setting was rich and textured. It was unbelievably believable. And the characters, although they seemed exaggerated caricatures at first, had surprising depth and personality. I recall thinking that this Terry Pratchett fellow must be some kind of genius.

I’ve read all forty or so Discworld books since, all them at least three times, and I still think this is true.

Hogfather, like many of the Discworld books, is multifaceted. Here are a few things I noticed:
• It is, of course, a parody of the Santa legend.
• It’s a cultural satire about our traditions and philosophies.
• It’s a not-so-thinly veiled criticism of holiday commercialism.
• It’s a morality tale about duty and the importance of family ties.
• It’s a philosophical statement on the nature of humanity.
• It contrasts rational and irrational ways of thinking.
• It provides a brief comment on emergent artificial intelligence.
• It’s a fantasy story that pokes fun at fantasy, while, at the same time, explaining why fantasy is both meaningful and necessary.
• Oh yeah, and it’s funny.

If you have not read any Discworld books yet, you should. Actually, my advice is to read them all and then to reread them. When reading Hogfather, one key point to remember is that time is not necessarily linear where Death (the Discworld character) is concerned. It can be frozen, and causality can work in reverse. The future can change events in the past or cause them not to happen at all.

Hogfather, however, is not the Discworld book I would recommend to newcomers to the Disc. Yes, it was my first, and each book can stand on its own, but Hogfather is a tough go without the background provided by some of the others. I hesitate to recommend any particular Discworld book to start with. I’ve seen some forums in which people can become quite heated about this, believe it or not. I highly recommend all of them, but I will say again that Hogfather probably shouldn’t be your first.

If you are familiar with Discworld, but have not yet read Hogfather, I suggest doing so now. It’s a great book for the holidays. If you have read Hogfather before, it’s a great one to reread for the Holidays.

HAPPY HOGSWATCH, EVERYONE! HO-HO-HO!

 

~*~

Related Links:
-An earlier version of this review was posted on the D.L. Morrese website in 2014. https://dlmorrese.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/hogfather-for-the-holidays/
-Some wonderful quotes from Hogfather: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/583655-hogfather
-My Problem with Terry Pratchett: https://dlmorrese.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/my-problem-with-terry-pratchett/

~*~

P.S. Hogfather became a made-for-TV movie in 2006, and is now available on DVD. I have a copy. Here’s a trailer…

Homo Deus

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari

Advances in human knowledge and technology are rapidly changing our society. What we value and what we believe are all in transition. That’s nothing new, of course. Our concept of the universe and of our place in it has changed throughout time—from trembling in awe at the power of thunder gods to challenging the heavens in rocket ships. In the near future, however, we may not only change how we see ourselves; we may change what we are.

This, I think, is the point Yuval Noah Harari, a lecturer in history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is trying to make in this book (which, by the way, is beautifully produced, with thick, glossy pages and color pictures). By speeding through history, he attempts to show that people have often shifted their beliefs, priorities, and goals, which he attributes to changes in ‘religion,’ a term that I think he uses far too generically. (He did the same in his previous book, Sapiens). For Harari, ‘religion’ refers to not only theistic religions, but to things that I would call ideology, philosophy, paradigm, or theory. Nazism, fascism, communism, capitalism, humanism…pretty much any overarching idea that provides a template for human understanding is a religion. I think his historical analysis suffers by conflating them. There are important differences, not least of which is how susceptible they are to revision in the minds of their subscribers. Some of these can change far more easily and quickly than can others. It is not until page 182 that he provides his definition: “Religion is any all-encompassing story that confers superhuman legitimacy on human laws, norms and values.” Personally, I think he should have used a different word.

He also applies seemingly broad definitions for words such as ‘worship’, ‘spiritual’, ‘dogma’, and ‘divinity’. Whether he uses religious terminology to annoy traditional theists or simply for the shock value, I’m not sure, but it may be a bit of both. What his ultimate (and laudable) goal seems to be is to get readers to question their assumptions.

He eventually describes a new, rising ‘religion’ that he calls Dataism. This one manifests itself as a ‘worship’ of data. We create it, share it, and depend upon it. Under this ‘religion’, the value of data supersedes previous values of privacy and free will. Well, perhaps.

As an analysis of history or as a futurist prediction of things to come, I found this book just so-so. But then I tend to read a fair amount in both subjects, so there wasn’t much new here for me. Harari does close with three questions, though, that I think are worth pondering:

1. Are organisms really just algorithms, and is life really just data processing?
2. What’s more valuable – intelligence or consciousness?
3. What will happen to society, politics and daily life when non-sentient conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselves?

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My Review of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1252063767