Since the Cognitive Revolution, humans lived their lives as hunter-gatherers amongst other small groups of humans that formed a community. Once the Agricultural Revolution came about, humans established small settlements with larger groups of humans and started to domesticate plants and animals, making permanent settlements. Those permanent settlements helped humans get to know each other personally and helped humans believe in the well-being of settlements and citizens. As soon as the Industrial Revolution took place, the market and state became the heart of human society. Dependency on family and community started to deteriorate as the market and state became stronger because reliance on outside intervention, like a police force and banks, replaced the need to rely on personal relations with other humans to succeed. The market advertised freedom of choice and gave humans chances to be different from all other humans. The state and market became essential because humans gave more power to government establishments by relying on governmental interference on issues that were handled individually in the past and gave humans a sense of importance in a growing world. (Harari, 355-364, 382, 383).
Historians can play a very essential role when considering the future of human beings by simultaneously being optimistic and provocative to all humans, no matter where humans are from or what those humans do. Historians should be provocative in order to almost “scare” or “anger” humans into worrying and caring about the future of human-kind and Earth, because humans have virtually no time to stop effecting the planet. Optimism should also be used in order to instill hope into future generations of humans that will be dealing with the effects of a warming climate, so that future generations will not just give up instead of trying to save the human race and the “Pale Blue Dot.”