Yuval Noah Harari is perhaps the most knowledgeable modern philosopher alive on Earth. I owe him all the credits for having made me fall in love with reading books. Ever since I picked his first book, "Sapiens - A brief history of humankind",I couldn't lay my hands off it. I found Sapiens to be a book that explains complex issues in a way which can actually be understood and comprehended by most people. And it does that in a beautiful way. It begins with a very interesting presentation of early human history and development of early human species culminating in our eventual dominance – Homo Sapiens.
He doesn’t assume you know nothing but he treats you in a way that he assumes you know and understand a lot, and that attitude defines the book. It is one of those books that when you read you feel your IQ sky-rocket. The book also tested my thinking and provoked new trains of thoughts that radically changed the way I perceive the world.There are way too many lessons from this book and his following book, "Homo Dues - A brief history of tomorrow"is equally compelling, however, the fact that Sapiens was a 10 year effort and Homo Deus being a 2 year effort clearly shows up.
The most fascinating realization dawned at me when Harari beautifully explains how humans have built our ecosystem on the premises of fictional realities that we have built and continue to trust upon; fictional realities such as Money, Religions, Nations and Corporations. Some of his popular quotes that narrate this point of view are:
“Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have thus been living in a dual reality – On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations and corporations. As times went by, the imagined reality became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as United States and Google.”
“Unlike lying, an imagined reality is something that everyone believes in, and as long as this communal belief persists, the imagined reality exerts force in the world. […] Most millionaires sincerely believe in the existence of money and limited liability of companies. Most human-rights activists sincerely believe in the existence of human rights.”
His TED Dialogue was equally mind blowing, to say the least.
https://www.ted.com/talks/yuval_noah_harari_nationalism_vs_globalism_the_new_political_divide