My main ambition as a historian is to figure out what's really happening in the world, instead of the fictions that humans have been creating for thousands of years in order to explain or control what's happening in the world.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the historian's quest to uncover truths about the world, distinguishing them from fabricated narratives.
In this quote, Yuval Noah Harari reflects on the role of historians in society, highlighting their ambition to uncover the reality of human experiences rather than the false stories that have persisted throughout history. He suggests that throughout time, humans have constructed narratives to explain complex realities and exert control over their circumstances, but true understanding comes from a pursuit of factual histories that reveal what is genuinely occurring in the world.
In practice
This quote could inspire students in a history class to think critically about historical narratives.
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.
When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
Moreover, I consider that Carthage should be destroyed.
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
All is disgust when a man leaves his own nature and does what is unfit.
There is no reason to believe that the people who staff the managerial and professional positions in our service institutions are any less qualified, any less competent or honest, or any less hard-working than the men who manage businesses. Conversely, there is no reason to believe that business managers, put in control of service institutions, would do better than the 'bureaucrats'. Indeed, we know that they immediately become bureaucrats themselves.
To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.
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