Moving beyond humanity

WHEN THE Nazis overran France in the Spring of 1940, thousands of Jews attempted to cross the boarder south to Spain and Portugal. There was a major problem though: they needed visas, and the Portuguese government forbade its consuls in France at the time to issue any visas without prior approval from the Foreign Ministry.

Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese consul-general in the French city of Bordeaux during this period, defied theordersof theEstadoNovoregime, issuing thousands of visas to Jewish refugees, saving their lives.

the Israeli historian, Yuval Noah Harari, cites this episode as an example of how written documents can change the course of a life.

History, Harari writes, is predominately based around a web of fictional stories. While the primal abilities of individual humans has really not changed,narrativesthathumanscreatedtogivemeaningtotheirliveshas grown exponentially: most notably since writing emerged 5,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia.

“Writing habituated people to think in terms of the written word, and not in terms of what they had experienced in the world,” Harari explains, when we meet at his publishers office in central London.

“The written word therefore came to define reality. In a bureaucratic system, for instance, everybody knows that what is written on your form is far more important than reality.”

The first written Sumerian records were on mundane subjects, such as taxation and ownership of land. Within a couple of centuries, however, priests and rabbis began writing religious scriptures that defined entire societies.

These stories — so Harari’s argument goes — serve as the basic foundations for social cohesion in human societies.

Religion is a subject Harari spends considerabletimedissectingoverthe course of his new book.

He grew up in a secular family in Israel. Nevertheless, the historian still regards himself as a person with a strong spiritual dimension.

“Spirituality is when you raise these big questions, such as who am I? What is the meaning of life? And what is my place in the world?”

Religion, on the other hand, Harari posits, is anything that confers superhuman legitimacy on human social structures. It also asserts that humans are subject to a system of moral laws that we cannot change.

“Religion is very important to human society,” says Harari. “But the stories that stand at the bases of great world religions are just fictions. Mythologies, of course, are always essential. But they do not need to focus on God any more.”

This was the focus of Harari’s earlier book,

published in Israel four years ago, which became a best-seller when it was translated into English. It argued that liberal humanism is just another form of religion: where humanists worship humanity.

Harari concluded that book by looking into the future, claiming that homo sapiens is on the cusp of unprecedented change, because technological tools have given us the ability to dramatically reshape our species.

picks up where left off. But Harari spends considerably more ink this time discussing the future.

“[Humans]areintheprocessof trying to acquire abilities that traditionally were thought to be divine,” he says.“Soweare becomingbetterthan gods, because we can create living organisms according to our wishes.”

Harari talks in very precise, methodical sentences. He also likes to skip between historical epochs — from billions of years ago straight back into the immediate future — every few minutes: mixing up science, mythology and religion in equal measure.

“According to the Bible,” says Harari, “in the book of Genesis, God creates animals, plants, and humans, according to his wishes.”

“But now we are learning how to engineer and manufacture living entities according to our wishes.”

“In the 21st century, the main productsof theeconomywillnolongerbe just food, textiles and vehicles. They will be bodies, brains, and minds.”

Homo sapiens can now do something even the old gods couldn’t do,” says Harari, “create non-organic life”.

“For four billion years — whether you believe in evolution, or you

Who am I? What is the meaning of life?’