Harari points out that human culture became centralized around market and the state because of how humans started to make their own boundaries and then claim those boundaries as their own land and naming the owned or even conquered land. This action started to force humans to live in states that were controlled by a ruling government. With this power, the government controlled the market and made laws to make sure the market worked in their favor. With most humans living around or in a government controlled area, market and state became the central aspect of human culture. With the government controlling so much of the market, politics started to be involved in the market. This allowed certain corrupted people of the government to take advantage of the market and swindle themselves up to luxury, through politics and the laws of the state of market.
I think historians should play the role that they have always have, and that is writing down the history of this world and its inhabitants because without history, future generations would have no clue on how they got there and how the world ended up to their lifetimes. Without historians, we would have no clue about our history. Historians could be less bias in their history telling compared to how a lot of the history we are taught, is one sided and does not tell the full history behind the event. Historians will always have an important role to play in the future and for the future generations to come.
I like that you point out that historians should be less biased in their history telling, so much history has been effectively “erased” by failure to tell it. I would also argue however that historians should not only tell stories and document them but analyze them and put them into current and future contexts like Harari does. It’s easy to read a history book and think to yourself “ah, this will never happen again,” or “that was so long ago, things have changed,” if it’s presented as just a story. If it is put into context and critically analyzed it becomes a tool to use for the present and the future rather than an anecdote.
I think you’re right that the role historians have always and still do play is incredibly important. Because of historians writing down our history and telling the story of what happened, we today are able to understand how we’ve come to be as we are now, but you’re right that we’ve lost quite a bit of that because of the bias past historians have put into their writings. If we as historians can quit writing our own bias into the history we’re making today, it will be a lot easier to understand what happened in the future. This way people who read the history will be less likely to write off what happened and will maybe even be able to put our history into their context in the future.
I agree with you opinion about the role of historians. I think it is extremely important that historians continue to document major events so that future generations can understand what has happened to get society to where its at. I also agree that historians need to be as unbiased as possible so that students of history can learn the truth of all that has happened. Even today, we as a society have issues dealing with biases in history teachings. We can see in history books in different parts of the country, some parts of history are written about in many different ways, some of which leads to differing opinions that have happened during events such as the civil war. Overall, I agree with you points, and I hope to see historians continue to document events in the most unbiased ways possible.
Awesome summary of Harari’s points, it’s interesting how we all interpreted how and why the state and market became central to human culture even through reading the same book. It definitely shows individualism (and the right to be) as also discussed in his book. What I have been contemplating is the common belief that the state as well as the market are given/allowed their power by the people. Which makes sense in at least democratic/republic free-market countries in which there are elections and consumer driven economies. If this is the case, how do we truly know which came first, the people/culture wanting government and markets or government and markets shaping said culture?