This enabled them to effectively aggregate and transmit large amounts of information about their physical world and their group relationships, and so create social constructs he refers to as imagined orders. The historian Noah Yuval Harari makes a similar argument in his captivating work Sapiens, describing Homo sapiens as having, some 200 thousand years ago, developed the capability for fictive language during what he refers to as the Cognitive Revolution.
This ability meant that relative to Neanderthals, for example, who had larger brains and were possibly smarter individually, Homo sapiens were able to spread new skills decisively faster across large groups. He cites work done by biologists and geneticists over the past half-century, for example, that indicates that Homo sapiens have followed an evolutionary path that favored selection for friendliness, a trait that led to the development of an extremely powerful ability for social learning. His hopeful history concludes with heartening examples of localities and businesses that have been organized around what he considers a more accurate, positive understanding of human nature, approaches that he proposes can serve as a basis for rethinking the structures and goals of our broader political and economic institutions.īregman opens by describing findings from a range of scientific disciplines that reveal that humans, far from being selfish by nature, have in fact evolved to value cooperation. More critically, he explores the impact this misunderstanding has had on how society has been structured, politically and economically, and points out the destructive consequences evident in our present-day world. Through startling examples, he demonstrates how this bleak view of human nature has led scientists, journalists, politicians and the general public to develop and propagate inaccurate interpretations of both historical events and psychology experiments.
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