Animals are the main victims of history, and the treatment of domesticated animals in industrial farms is perhaps the worst crime in history.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the suffering of animals throughout history, emphasizing the cruelty found in industrial farming practices.
Yuval Noah Harari's quote draws attention to the plight of animals as they have been consistently oppressed and exploited throughout human history. He specifically emphasizes the horrific treatment of domesticated animals in industrial farms, suggesting that this systematic cruelty represents one of the greatest moral failings of our civilization.
In practice
During a speech on animal rights, one might use this quote to emphasize the moral implications of our food systems.
We control the world basically because we are the only animals that can cooperate flexibly in very large numbers. And if you examine any large-scale human cooperation, you will always find that it is based on some fiction like the nation, like money, like human rights.
I titled the book 'Homo Deus' because we really are becoming gods in the most literal sense possible. We are acquiring abilities that have always been thought to be divine abilities - in particular, the ability to create life. And we can do with that whatever we want.
The notion of superhumans is using bioengineering and artificial intelligence to upgrade human abilities. If they use the power to change themselves, to change their own minds, their own desires, then we have no idea what they will want to do.
Techno-humanism aims to amplify the power of humans, creating cyborgs and connecting humans to computers, but it still sees human interests and desires as the highest authority in the universe.
The most important question in 21st-century economics may well be, 'What should we do with all the superfluous people, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better than humans?'
Take Google Maps or Waze. On the one hand, they amplify human ability - you are able to reach your destination faster and more easily. But at the same time, you are shifting the authority to the algorithm and losing your ability to find your own way.
Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.
Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
How is it that we have created an economic system that tells us it is cheaper to destroy the earth and exhaust its people than to nurture them both? Is it rational to have an pricing system which discounts the future and sells off the past? How did we create an economic system that confused capital liquidation with income?
Those who make some other person their job... are dangerous.
To get rid of an enemy one must love him.
A man making the confession of any creed worth ten minutes' intelligent talk, is always a man who gains something and gives up something. So long as he does both he can create: for he is making an outline and a shape.
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