Why we do what we do
I was quite startled by a programme on the radio, especially the following transcribed excerpt. It’s a tiny fraction of a heavy book—literally*. I picked it up in the bookshop: not bedtime reading without strong arms.† Yet in a few words it covers pleasure, happiness, the meaning of life—and how to make the most of it even if there is no meaning. It goes a long way to explaining religion and addictions, while offering no explanation as to why we have reached this point in our history, in this world of palpable imbalances. Enough to think about without bothering to read the other 115,000 words. See what you think. I could say a lot, but at this stage will leave comments to you, and to the Malinke tribe in the video embedded below
“There is also a biological reason why growing power does not translate easily into greater happiness. Our mental and emotional world is governed by bio-chemical mechanisms that were shaped by millions of years of evolution. Our happiness is not determined by our wealth or political rights. Rather, it is determined by a complex system of neurons, synapses and biochemicals. According to biologists, nobody is ever made happy by winning the Lottery, buying a house or even finding true love. People are made happy by one thing and one thing only: pleasant sensations in their bodies. Unfortunately, for all hopes of creating Heaven on earth, our internal biochemical system is programmed to keep happiness levels relatively constant. Pleasant sensations are only momentary rewards that soon subside. For Evolution has no interest in keeping us pleased. It is interested only in survival and reproduction. Since our biochemical system has not changed significantly in recent millennia, there’s no reason to think we are much happier than our ancestors. Compare a modern London banker to his forefather, a mediaeval peasant. The peasant lived in an unheated mud hut overlooking the local pigsty; while the banker goes home to a splendid penthouse with all the latest technological gadgets. Intuitively, we would expect the banker to be much happier than the peasant. However, when the mediaeval peasant completed the construction of his mud hut, his brain secreted serotonin, bringing it up to level x. When in 2014, the banker made the last payment on his wonderful penthouse, his brain secreted a similar amount of serotonin, bringing it up to a similar level x. It makes no difference to the brain that the penthouse is far more comfortable than the mud hut. The only thing that matters is that at present, the level of serotonin is x. Consequently the banker would not be one iota happier than the peasant.
“No movement without rhythm”--click for documentary video ‡
“So if happiness is based on feeling pleasant sensations, then in order to feel happier, we need to re-engineer our biochemical system. If happiness is based on feeling that life is meaningful, then we need to delude ourselves more effectively. Is there a third alternative? One interesting alternative has been suggested by Buddhism. According to Buddhism, all feelings, whether of pleasure or of meaning, or of anything else, are just ephemeral vibrations that disappear as fast as they arise. If five minutes ago I felt joyful and purposeful, that feeling has now gone, and I may feel angry or bored. If I identify happiness with particular feelings, and crave to experience more and more of these, I have no choice but to constantly pursue them. And even if I get them, they immediately disappear and I have to start all over again. This pursuit brings no lasting achievement. It creates only stress and dissatisfaction. However, if I learn to see my feelings for what they really are—ephemeral and meaningless vibrations—I lose interest in pursuing them and can be content with whatever I experience. For what is the point of running after something that disappears as fast as it arises? For Buddhism, then, happiness isn’t a particular feeling, but rather the wisdom, serenity and freedom that come from understanding our true nature.
“If this is so, then our entire understanding of the history of happiness might be misguided. Maybe it isn’t so important whether people’s expectations are fulfilled; and whether they enjoy pleasant sensations. The main question is whether people know the truth about themselves. What evidence do we have that people today understand this truth any better than ancient foragers or mediaeval peasants?”
*Transcribed from Radio 4’s “Book of the Week”, for Friday 12th September 2014. Excerpt starts at 05:10 and ends at 10:51. It was taken from a serialization of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari. The link expires in a few days’ time. You may therefore find it more convenient to download a copy I made of the excerpt itself, here.
†The solution is to buy it as an e-book, less heavy on the pocket and arms, & very readable.
‡Alternatively you can watch the same video on YouTube, after you’ve got through the adverts.
34 Comments:
I read your posts because:
1. They are not 455 pages long,
2. They provide food for thought,
3. Your compassionate nature is never absent from them.
Grrr. My Raptor brain needs a bigger raptor. .... meh, or heh.
I think a lot of things result in a trade off. With new comforts come new sources of dis-satisfaction. As they say over on the Twitter "#firstworldprpblems"
That should be "problems."
I'm very tired from ... doing whatever my own personal modern equivalent of making a mud hut is, I guess. Does working an extra ten hours on my day off count? Sounds less messy, at least. I'm not big on getting muddy.
Davoh, your Raptor brain is wrapped in a Sapiens brain. I learned today from the book that Australia was the first place Homo Sapiens went beyond Eurasia. In a chapter headed "The End of Sloth" which I suspect of being a pun but I haven't got far enough to test this surmise, he commences with this sentence:
"The extinction of the Australian megafauna was probably the first significant mark Homo Sapiens left on our planet."
Megafauna? The previous chapter ends with these words:
"There are certainly good reasons to believe that if Homo Sapiens had never gone Down Under, it would still be home to marsupial lions, diprodotons and giant kangaroos."
So now you know where the bigger raptor went. ("Tie me kangaroo down, sport" says the man I might have met as a boy in Bassendean, about 1945.)
Yeah, Bryan, first-world problems. indeed. The Sapiens book is convincing me that I'd sooner be a hunter-forager (up to and including the middle stone age) than a farmer (neolithic). Our brains are apparently better adapted to the former than the latter. Farmers had to work longer hours with less varied diet, less fun all round. As for your extra ten hours on your day off . . .I know, I've done it too, it seems virtuous and justified by the money. But then we watch the Malinke tribe taking all that unnecessary exercise on their days off, and wonder which makes more sense . . .
?? I replied to Ellie's comment first, I don't know where it went. Here's another try:
Ellie, thank you. I'm grateful for encouragement and understanding which inspire more effort. This is a team thing, and a discussion group too!
However, I do recommend the full 455 pages of Harari's book about "Sapiens". I've never come across anything so free of clichéd ideas and expression which is so pleasantly readable. He helps you see our species in a new light, & that really is an achievement.
One of the most refreshing aspects of Sapiens is the author’s frankness in talking of fictions and delusions, where delusions are fictions that you believe in. For him, the turning point in the story of humankind is the Cognitive Revolution. This separated us from the earlier homo sapiens as well as the Neanderthals and other homo species. The essence of the Cognitive Revolution is being able to process fictions: to think them and speak them.
A fiction in his terms is not necessarily false, but something other than a perceived fact. The statue of a lion-headed man, which can be dated to 40,000 years ago, is evidence of this developed ability.
Delusion is the basis of “belief”, but without it we would have developed no more intelligence than a chimpanzee, says Harari, in effect. On this basis cynicism against religious belief can only be the pretension of a privileged minority who are shielded from “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” by enough education, health, wealth & status not to think they need divine protection. They defend their own delusion and call it reason or science, oblivious to its arrogant elitism; or else they invent a materialist post-Marxian Utopia.
This is some of what I deduce from Harari’s arguments, though still only 15% through the book.
I think the significant thing regarding this business of fiction and delusion lies in our, possibly unique, ability to consider possibilities, this ability to distance ourself from what IS and to consider what might be or could be. The ability to ask questions also falls under that same category. They say that although many primates have been taught sign language, none of them have ever asked a direct question. Some say it's because they can't comprehend that someone else might have information that they don't possess, but it could also be that they just lack the basic ability to understand questions. Even the most rudimentary child's question such as "Where is my ball?" requires the ability to step back and process that the fact that the ball is not there, that It's supposed to be there, and that it might be somewhere else.
Of course this always brings me back to my perpetually favorite subject of dreams. Animals may not ask question, but it's said that they dream. And isn't dreaming one of the most fundamental way that we play with fictions and delusions? Or is it different for amimals? Is is just memories that they dream of? Or could it be that dreaming is a kind of biological gestation out of which these abilities eventually develop into more finely honed intellectual tools?
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Scottish - Neanderthal or Homo-sapien?
Bryan, I've noted the comment you removed, from the email which Google sends me automatically. I would have been surprised if you hadn't written words to that effect. However there was a duty as I saw it to summarize the author in question. I remember you were not terribly fond of John Gray's Straw Dogs, and wondered what you might think of Sapiens, which in every way is a vastly superior book. All I can see is that Harari is the prophet in question this time, and I am merely his messenger. Shoot me if you must, but I admire your restraint in annihilating your comment.
Especially as we have an opportunity to join in harmony on this question of dreaming animals. Scientists could if sufficiently motivated carry out experiments to find out what dogs and cats dream about, via the twin techniques of brain scans and analysis of body movements, comparing them in wake and sleep.
Now that I'm further through the book, I can report that Harari hints that things went downhill very rapidly when Man started agriculture. I can't wait to read what he thinks of the Industrial revolution or the world today. Like Gray but much more smooth, cogent and persuasive.
Cindy, I think that is the purpose of the referendum, to discover the answer to your question. So we will know tomorrow morning.
I tend to feel now that we will all regret the outcome, whichever side wins. A can of worms has been opened.
It must be bad form to respond to deleted comments, perhaps even to mention their content. However, I owe the world an explanation for my remarks on “arrogant elitism”.
A main theme of Harari’s book is to explain how homo sapiens achieved its “cognitive revolution”. He explains how groups of hunter-foragers (they are far more skilful than mere “gatherers”) become agriculturalists. Now they have land to defend, so chiefs tax them and employ armies. Now they can trade with other people far away. To have any kind of organization co-ordinating a group of more than say 50 persons, you need a unifying principle. He quotes the Hammurabi Code and the American Declaration of Independence as contrasting examples, and adds:
“The social norms that sustained them were based neither on ingrained instincts nor on personal acquaintance, but rather on belief in shared myths.”
In my brief remarks I necessarily curtail his 456 pages of fact and surmise, and am still only a quarter of the way through. But it’s plain that he takes the view that we are dependent on belief in shared myths for any social cohesion at all.
To undermine belief in Christianity, therefore, you must offer alternative myths, for example the myth that science, capitalism, representative democracy and “liberty” together offer the best option for the pursuit of happiness. I call it “myth” not to suggest it’s false but merely unprovable.
What I impetuously described as “arrogant elitism” was attempts by the well-heeled and well-educated to “defend their own delusion” by attacking Christians for theirs. This is not to propose that science, capitalism, representative democracy or the ideal of liberty are delusions in themselves individually. Of course they are very useful. But this is Harari’s point. Delusions (i.e. myths) are useful. In fact, they are essential, he argues, for any form of co-operative human activity beyond small groups who know one another personally.
This, I should point out, is a clarification for the world, in clarification of my hasty remark earlier. It is not an attempt to continue a non-existent argument with BMW!
This is where I feign ignorance and say "What comment are you talking about?", and then in the confusion I steal a bunch of donuts and sandwiches from the buffet table ;D
This is where I feign not to notice they have disappeared.
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OK, I have one drawer where I keep my silverware and another where I keep my financial data. I find it useful to keep them in separate places because neither is very helpful in performing tasks for which the other is suited.
I appreciate science for explaining natural phenomena and developing technology. It is not so good at helping me learn to engage in mutual forgiveness which could lead to the brotherhood of man. In fact science doesn't even recognize that the brotherhood of man is something worth seeking. Science is a tool to be put to use in the service of humanity. If we have no 'theory of humanity' which includes a spiritual nature of which we all partake, science is left adrift without mooring or direction.
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I thought we had healed our past rifts. I think your last four comments cover old ground. I'll merely say that I mean no disrespect to science, & hold no brief for religion. I just want to respect and think well of people, and understand why they are so passionately attached to their beliefs. I do recommend you read Harari's book. Much better than Gray's.
If you want to delete any comments, do so, and I can "make them go away" as if they had never existed. But it's up to you.
That should have been five comments. I'm also aware that you may have been responding to Ellie's comment. Personally I see no need to delete anything, but I don't want to dig us deeper into dispute by responding further.
Deleted comments. I trust they are preserved I your emails, if you wish to give them any further consideration. I stand by what I said for the most part. I just don't like getting I to these things any more than you do. I don't like the way they escalate. I don't the way it sets my nerves on edge. I don't like the way my mind starts grinding over the words like typewritten text that gets burned into the back of my retina through fatigue and exhaustion, just rehashing sentences and phrases over and over and over. In short, it puts me in a bad mood despite myself. It distracts me from focusing my energy on happier more worthwhile pursuits. And I also don't want to hijack the conversation here, so on top of everything else, I feel like I'm being a jerk as well.
Dear Bryan, currently they are preserved as emails. The problem is, I greatly respect your point of view, but often feel obliged to defend my own as I think you have misrepresented it, or misunderstood it. For which I don't blame you. I feel a jerk too, and curse myself lightly for not learning; for thoughtlessly parading my latest enthusiasm and attempting to represent idea expressed in 455 pages in less than that many words.
But . . . BUT! the confession becomes more abject at this point. After expressing enthusiasm for said book after reading only 25% of it, and recommending it to you and any reader who passes through, I discover with horror, I think from about 32% onwards (that's the trouble with Kindle, you can't just flick through the pages) that I'm recoiling from the words of this author Harari: disliking his tone and content in equal measure. It is vexing. But then it serves me right, because he impersonally does to me what I (very personally because we know one another well enough) do to you again and again. Causing serious upset.
This is a mirror to me, illustrating how ugly my behaviour can be. Please accept my apology. I can imagine you curious as to what upset the author has caused. But at this stage I can't work it out. Never mind. The thing is, he's just an author. He didn't ask me to read his book. I can stop now, and have more space in my life. On the other hand I feel I have betrayed you, and intend to leave this comment undeleted by way of amends for countless examples of poor behaviour in the past, all committed with that deadly weapon, the keyborad.
The keyborad has the look and feel of a keyboard, but is characterized by seeming to go off by itself, like a loaded pistol in the hands of Oscar Pistorius.
".... but is characterized by seeming to go off by itself, like a loaded pistol in the hands of Oscar Pistorius."
Geez, I almost spit my coffee everywhere when I read that.
At least I see I'm not the only one who makes typos.
(And yes, now you do have me curious about this author. I'm like an old, goofy dog. I go where the trouble is at.)
Good, I'm glad you are curious, because now I've got to 40%. For a whole 10% of the book he was off on a rant. I can try to summarize that rant and what set him off. He starts by asking himself a question:
"Is the division into men and women a product of the imagination, like the caste system in India and the racial system in America, or is it a natural division with deep biological roots? And if it is indeed a natural division, are there also biological explanations for the preference given to men over women?"
From this point on, he’s, off, imposing his present-day liberal values (which his reader doubtless shares) on examples from every culture and age, including our own. You wonder who he is talking to, why he is being so strident. He says there are two things: sex and gender. Sex is the biological difference between male and female, which he reduces to two distinguishing features which have never changed within our species:
(a) women have wombs
(b) men have XY chromosomes.
He asks us to consider the attitude to women in ancient Athens, compares it to that in modern Athens. This leads him to contrast Greek attitudes to homosexuality, then and now, with comments like: “In fact, though, Mother Nature does not mind if men are sexually attracted to one another.”
You may think this is an odd statement coming from a scientist, to talk about Mother Nature’s preferences. Yuval Noah Harari isn’t a scientist though, but a lecturer in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, whose “research focuses on macro-historical questions such as: What is the relation between history and biology?” “What Mother Nature does not mind” still seems an odd turn of phrase for a history academic. On a hunch I return to his Wikipedia article. It ends: “He lives with his husband in moshav Mesilat Zion near Jerusalem.”
Fair enough. He has a personal angle to promote into a partially hostile world. He wouldn’t get away with such naked polemic in a PhD thesis, I suspect, but this book is his baby and he can say what he likes. I just wonder at his judgment, interrupting the flow of provocative ideas with forty pages of standard Western liberal orthodoxy. His proposition is that “natural” and “unnatural” have no place in biology, but come from Christian theology.
Most of the examples he puts forward concern cultural distinctions made about men vs. women, blacks vs. whites and so on; distinctions justified in their time theologically, politically or scientifically according to prevailing doctrine. His style becomes flippant & condescending, as if explaining simple facts to a non-attentive student. My thought was “Yuval, you only have two classes of reader. The first accepts what you say with a weary & impatient sigh, knowing it already, taking no issue with it. The second, perhaps a member of some fundamentalist religion, will hate what you say, if he reads the book at all. Fine, it’s your best-seller but you’ve spoiled it for me.”
But then at the end of this rant he moves back to his main theme, the broad sweep of history, and he gets on to the subject of Empire, the bad aspects and the good, why they have become inherent in human life. I’ll give him another chance and plough on.
That phrase about "the racial system in America" caught my attention. If he's speaking historically about slavery or Jim Crow, then yes, I concede that point. But -- and I may be pardoned for taking this out of context -- he's sounds as though he's talking about some contemporary situation. Now, racism is a thriving concern in the U.S. (as it is in many places I'm sure) -- I won't deny that -- but to suggest that there's some institutionalized racial "system" in place, comparable to the caste system, that's just completely unwarranted slander and I get the sense that he threw that in there just to get his digs in.
But again, I may be taking that in completely the wrong way. At any rate, it's a head scratcher.
No, he does it a lot, throwing out defamatory statements unsupported by any explanation or reference.
Elsewhere he says that “The British conquest and occupation of India cost the lives of millions of Indians, and was responsible for the continuous humiliation and exploitation of hundred of millions more.”
I have found one source which would support his claim: see http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/aug/24/india.randeepramesh. It’s a disputed source. He should have referenced it. My respect for Harari as historian and writer has dwindled drastically.
It's funny. I've run into that same sort of thing before with books, as I'm sure you have. Little things here and there make you perk up your ears, and then you get deep into the book and they come right out with some full blown agenda that they've just been building to and insinuating. It's very frustrating. Reading a book is such an intimate thing. You're basically letting another person's thoughts into your head. And the idea that someone would use that space in a way that ... well at least in a way that STRIKES you as underhanded at the time, it's unnerving.
Yes, I haven't gone through the whole book from start to finish, but I jumped to the last two chapters, from which the BBC extracts were condensed. He covers a great deal of ground but ultimately does it superficially, just raising provocative ideas, not thinking them through.
Example: in his last chapter he talks about genetic engineering, cyborgs etc. "Mother Nature doesn't mind", I suppose. Somewhere near the middle he talks about "The Gilgamesh Project" with open-minded approval. Gilgamesh in the eponymous myth is king of Uruk, & seeks the secret of eternal life. What is this "project"? 3 seconds research on Google yields this article, whose plaintive author records how he was ostracized as a medical student:
“With multiple awards to his name for cancer research, this childhood prodigy was silenced when his forbidden science began closing in on the secret of eternal life.”
Yes, Andrew Sokar wanted to do his own research project in medical school, to "unravel the mystery of the ages", & find medical ways to overcome not just cancer & other diseases, but the ageing process itself, so that a person might live on indefinitely---unless kindly Fate intervened, and he was run over by a bus.
"Mother Nature does not mind . . .", says Harari. No, she disposes her inexorable will dispassionately, and shows us who's in charge: this little creature called homo sapiens, with his overweening hubris, or the totality within which we are forever entangled. Let reader decide!
Yes, you read a book, or even something on a blog, and you let another person's thoughts into your head. I'm open to all sorts of novel ideas from someone else's thoughts, or my own, so long as they are tempered by humility and awe. I don't believe in God, but I do put a little faith in Mother Nature, & her ability to rein in humans who get too big for themselves. This faith may be a delusion but it gets you through the attacks of pessimism, when they strike.
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