Sapiens

The Cognitive Revolution

• Homo sapiens succeeded through cooperation enabled by shared myths and language.
• Cognitive changes allowed the creation of imagined realities like religion, corporations, and nations.
• These shared beliefs enabled large groups to function beyond natural group size limits.
• Sapiens outcompeted other humans not through strength, but through communication and flexibility.
• Foragers were more skilled as individuals, but modern humans dominate collectively.

The Agricultural Revolution

• Farming increased population but worsened individual well-being - “history’s biggest fraud.”
• Small choices led to irreversible societal shifts, binding humans to hard labour and inequality.
• Humans built imagined hierarchies (e.g., nobility, gender roles) to manage complex societies.
• Writing and record-keeping changed human thought from holistic to bureaucratic.
• Myths of equality and freedom coexist with real-world inequality and control.

The Unification of Humankind

• History moves toward global unification through money, empires, and religion.
• Money is a universal trust system; empires spread culture as well as domination.
• Religious ideologies - monotheistic and polytheistic - help justify political and moral orders.
• Humanism replaced gods with the sacredness of Homo sapiens, in liberal and socialist forms.
• Science now questions human uniqueness, linking behaviour to biology and memes.

The Scientific Revolution

• Science thrives by embracing ignorance, testing ideas, and applying them to gain power.
• It is deeply intertwined with empire and capitalism - funding, exploration, and expansion.
• Capitalism reframed greed as socially beneficial and drove global economic growth.
• The Industrial Revolution was really a revolution in energy and productivity.
• Consumerism and capitalism reinforce each other - elites invest, the masses buy.

The Future

• Human happiness depends more on expectations and meaning than on wealth or comfort.
• Buddhism and science both challenge the pursuit of feelings as a path to happiness.
• Human-engineered evolution may soon replace natural selection (via bioengineering, AI).
• Ethics and identity will be challenged by enhanced bodies, brains, and artificial minds.
• Scientific projects for health or longevity justify disruptive innovation - whether we’re ready or not.