Even what people take to be their most personal desires are usually programmed by the imagined order.
Interpretation
Our desires are often shaped by societal influences rather than being entirely personal.
This quote by Yuval Noah Harari suggests that even our innermost desires are not entirely our own; they are influenced and shaped by the societal structures and norms that we grow up with. It highlights the complex relationship between individuality and the collective beliefs and values of society, urging us to reflect on how our aspirations and wants might be constructed by external factors rather than being purely inherent to us.
In practice
In a discussion on consumerism, one might use this quote to illustrate how marketing shapes our desires.
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.
Man and the animals are merely a passage and channel for food, a tomb for other animals, a haven for the dead, giving life by the death of others, a coffer full of corruption.
The good society is marked by a high degree of order, justice, and freedom. Among these, order has primacy: for justice cannot be enforced until a tolerable civil social order is attained, nor can freedom be anything better than violence until order gives us laws.
If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.
When one feels no shame in telling a deliberate lie, there is no evil, I tell you, he will not do.
People profess to have certain political positions, but their conservatism or liberalism is really the least interesting thing about them.
There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain
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