We did not domesticate wheat; wheat domesticated us.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that human civilization is shaped more by the domestication of crops than the other way around.
Yuval Noah Harari's quote highlights the profound impact that agricultural practices, particularly the domestication of wheat, have had on the development of human society. It suggests that rather than humans controlling wheat through cultivation, it is the demands and necessities of wheat cultivation that have shaped human behavior, social structures, and the course of history. This idea challenges traditional views of human agency in the development of civilization.
In practice
In a lecture on the development of society, I might say, 'As Yuval Noah Harari put it, we did not domesticate wheat; wheat domesticated us.'
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.
We who follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad feel that when you try and pass integration laws here in America, forcing white people to pretend that they are accepting black people, what you are doing is making white people act in a hypocritical way.
That seems to me the greatest American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it.
Nothing is miserable unless you think it so.
Every person you meet is waging his or her own war against a callous universe that is plotting against them.
The self is like a pimping blackmailing chauffeur who gets you from here to there on word lines.
Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.
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