Reading rejuvenates our soul. I am feeling recreated as I am reading one of the interesting books that I have come across recently, Homo Deus, written by Prof. Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the sensational book ‘Sapiens’. Actually, I feel ‘Homo Deus’ is like a sequel to ‘Sapiens’. In ‘Sapiens’ the author had explained in a crystal clear scientific way about the evolutionary stages of human species. It gave me a lot of clarity about us – humans, our evolution, the concept of religion, rituals, god, languages, ethnicity, etc.
In this new book, with the available collective human intellect (as the author specifically underlines available knowledge) he tries to explain briefly the history of tomorrow and where we are heading towards through the current inventions and research aspirations. In a crisp and summarizing way, he throws light on what changes will happen in the next 100 or 200 years. He advises that the intensity of changes will be high and the Homo sapiens will evolve to the state of Homo Deus. In Greek, Dues means God. Homo sapiens will slowly take over the role of a supreme creator, and eliminate the need for supreme power.
As the author points out, our ancestors, thousands of years back as ‘Hunter Gatherers’ had not realized their impact on the ecosystem. So they had treated other living creatures as equal to themselves. They felt animals, plants and other unknown things are on par with humans. They understood that they were a part of a larger structure. It is very obvious in their rituals too.
But during the agricultural revolution, humans have realized that they can impact the ecosystem to make it comfortable to work for the benefit of them. They have done farming, domesticated plants and animals to work for them. Then their thought process decided that the interaction is only between humans and a supreme power ‘God’. Everything else around in this world is created for the benefit of humans only. It is evident from the concept of most of the religions evolved during that time like Judaism followed by Christianity, Islam and in Hinduism, etc. These religious scriptures portray God’s instructions and revelations guiding humans utilize things around in the ecosystem and concludes everything else other than humans are created to be utilized by humans.
But the era of the scientific revolution brought ‘Humankind’ to the center of human aspirations thereby slowly and completely eliminating the supreme creator – God. Scientific researches are now focused towards eternality of life. Death is considered just as a technical fault.
But, are we really going to replace things in the natural order of birth? Most scientists say that the recent researches in Cell Biology, Nanotechnology, Biochemistry, etc. are focused towards it. How soon we will be the self-sufficient creators? No one knows.
As the author says each invention in every scientific field gives totally different dimensions and possibilities as well as challenges. It can be sooner or later, but we are already in that road of realizing eternality, where heaven and hell are just abstract concepts.
As of now, we can’t accept this future phenomenon fully. How could we replace God?
But if some 3000 years before if you have told an Egyptian, the world will be administered and ordered without Pharaohs’ rule; most probably he or she would have not accepted it and though you have gone mad. But where are we now? No Pharaohs. Not even Kings. We are in Democracy (at least we are told so) insisting each individual has the right to live in his own way.
We need to realize, Human evolution had seen lots of changes. In the entire evolutionary history, change is the only thing which remains constant.
So the next evolutionary change is, replacing Homo sapiens by Super Humans, who will call themselves as Homo Deus. But we can’t judge how long will it take to or whether nature will allow us to reach that point or not. But it is quite interesting to have such a lateral view about life and our society.
This book will make you curious and change your dimension of how you see things around you. So if you are a book lover, buy it and read it. If you are a self-lover, who wants to know more about yourself and ourselves, this is an outstanding choice to read. Don’t postpone. Somebody said ‘Smallest of action is always better than the noblest of intentions’. Because Human evolution shows us, things were there before thoughts.
We evolve by doing.
Thanks for reading. Your comments are welcomed.
RIYAZ AHMED.K 