Quotes About Society

We believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society. Imagined orders are not evil conspiracies or useless mirages. Rather, they are the only way large numbers of humans can cooperate effectivelyy.

politicians.' It is much easier to live with the fantasy, because the fantasy gives meaning to the suffering. Priests discovered this principle thousands of years ago.

This is why cynics don't build empires and why an imagined order can be maintained only if large segments of the population – and in particular large segments of the elite and the security forces – truly believe in it.

How did it happen that in the one species whose success depends above all on cooperation, individuals who are supposedly less cooperative (men) control individuals who are supposedly more cooperative (women)? At present, we have no good answer.

The proponents of this 'ancient commune' theory argue that the frequent infidelities that characterise modern marriages, and the high rates of divorce, not to mention the cornucopia of psychological complexes from which both children and adults suffer, all result from forcing humans to live in nuclear families and monogamous relationships that are incompatible with our biological software.1 Many

what life was like in the millennia separating the Cognitive Revolution from the Agricultural Revolution.

A diferencia de las leyes de la física, que carecen de inconsistencias, todo orden creado por el hombre está repleto de contradicciones internas.

Writing and money made it possible to start collecting taxes from hundreds of thousands of people, to organise complex bureaucracies and to establish vast kingdoms.

Even universities and laboratories need religious backing. Religion provides the ethical justification for scientific research, and in exchange gets to influence the scientific agenda and the uses of scientific discoveries. Hence you cannot understand the history of science without taking religious beliefs into account. Scientists seldom dwell on this fact, but the Scientific Revolution itself began in one of the most dogmatic, intolerant and religious societies in history.

replication of cultural information units called 'memes'.

How did Homo sapiens manage to cross this critical threshold, eventually founding cities comprising tens of thousands of inhabitants and empires ruling hundreds of millions? The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation

In medieval Europe, aristocrats spent their money carelessly on extravagant luxuries, whereas peasants lived frugally, minding every penny. Today, the tables have turned. The rich take great care managing their assets and investments, while the less well heeled go into debt buying cars and televisions they don't really need.

Legends, myths, gods and religions appeared for the first time with the Cognitive Revolution.

Uma das poucas leis férreas da história é que os luxos tendem a se tornar necessidades e a gerar novas obrigações. Uma vez que as pessoas se acostumam a um certo luxo, elas o dão como garantido.

Because the Sapiens social order is imagined, humans cannot preserve the critical information for running it simply by making copies of their DNA and passing these on to their progeny. A conscious effort has to be made to sustain laws, customs, procedures and manners, otherwise the social order would quickly collapse.

In the coming decades, it is likely that we will see more Internet-like revolutions, in which technology steals a march on politics.

The ancient Chinese believed that when the goddess Nü Wa created humans from earth, she kneaded aristocrats from fine yellow soil, whereas commoners were formed from brown mud.

The human collective knows far more today than did the ancient bands. But at the individual level, ancient foragers were the most knowledgeable and skilful people in history. There is some evidence that the size of the average Sapiens brain has actually decreased since the age of foraging.5

because whereas religion asks us to believe in something, money asks us to believe that other people believe in something.

This network of artificial instincts is called 'culture'.

Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural.

The Agricultural Revolution was history's biggest fraud.

In the twenty-first century we might witness the creation of a massive new unworking class: people devoid of any economic, political or even artistic value, who contribute nothing to the prosperity, power and glory of society.

De la misma manera que la cultura medieval no consiguió casar la caballería con el cristianismo, el mundo moderno no logra casar la libertad con la igualdad.