Harari's "Homo Deus" theorizes mankind's endeavors in the 21st century, not so much as a manifesto but as a prediction of what we need to think about in order to change the direction we head into.
He first talks about the impediments to mankind's progress - war, famine and disease. Next, he talks about conquering those problems, and what mankind will turn our attention to - specifically divinity, immortality and bliss.
He then turns to evolution and the existence of God, and describes the concepts as being mutually exclusive. Then he talks about consciousness, the soul, and whether or not animals have either.
The following chapter discusses the artificial constructs that allow mankind to co-exist - money, religion and nationalism, which is repeated from Harari's last book "Sapiens".
Next, he discusses global warming, economy vs. the environment, and how the rich suffer less than the poor when either the economy of the environment suffer.
In the following chapter he talks about Humanism in it's different sects.
He talks about liberalism, socialism and evolutionary Humanism... where the latter is described in terms of Nazi-ism, which I find a little strange that the Israeli author finds some agreement with.
The latter part of the book discusses dataism vs. humanism, and how homo sapiens will be taken over by dataism, and how mankind will transform. He says this not as a premonition, but as a warning about where homo sapiens will evolve given our current direction and reliance on technology and social media.
It was interesting and food for thought.
No comments:
Post a Comment