Everybody since the '60s has been saying the nation is a fiction - the nation is an imaginary unity - but people didn't connect the dots and say all human endeavours sprang from the same principle.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that nations are constructs of human imagination and that all human actions are rooted in this shared conceptual framework.
Yuval Noah Harari emphasizes the idea that nations, while often viewed as real entities, are actually imagined constructs that unify people under a shared narrative. This perspective encourages a deeper understanding of how human endeavors and social structures are interlinked by the principles of shared beliefs and collective imagination, highlighting the importance of narratives in shaping our realities.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about national identity in a sociology class.
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.
I wasn't sleeping on the streets at night. Of course, there were a lot of good people sleeping in the streets. They weren't fools, they just didn't fit into the needed machinery of the moment. And those needs kept altering.
When it appears that there is no choice, some form of illusion is operating.
They don't ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.
When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.
Healthcare should be a human right and not a commodity for sale.
Above or Love, Hope, Hate or Fear, It lives all passionless and pure: An age shall fleet like earthly year; Its years in moments shall endure. Away, away, without a wing, O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly; A nameless and eternal thing, Forgetting what it was to die.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.