Let’s change history

According to Harari, the state and the market became the central aspects of human culture due to a marriage to the idea that the individual’s wants were more important than the family or community. “The state and the market approached people with an offer that could not be refused. ‘Become individuals,’ they said. ‘Marry whoever you desire, without asking permission from your parents. Take up whatever job suits you, even if community elders frown.” (Harari 402) Once this was achieved, this individualization of people made it so that people are more dependent on the state and market than their families.

Historians are helpful when we consider the future of homo sapiens. If we can study how things were, we can change the future to be more like the parts of the past that worked. Theoretically, if sapiens have been continually restructuring their society with new imagined realities, with careful planning and creativity we can restructure it in a way that will maximize the benefits. “Traditionally, the social order was hard and rigid. ‘Order’ implied stability and continuity. Swift social revolutions were exceptional, and most social transformations resulted from the accumulation of numerous small steps. Humans tended to assume that the social structure was inflexible and eternal.” (Harari 408) With the swift revolutions that have happened in the modern age, it shows that the social structure is actually amenable to change. We can harness this likelihood to change in order to use it to our advantage, creating a society that functions in a way that maximizes the quality of life for all of its members.