The Industrial Revolution brought industrial time tables, urbanization, disappearance of peasantry, rise of the industrial proletariat, empowerment of the common person, democratization, youth culture and the disintegration of patriarchy (p. 355). The state and market became the central aspect of human culture due to the Industrial Revolution. There was a collapse of family and community, Harari focuses on, that put almost all power to the market and the state for human reliance; there was a shift of community help and family consolation to power within governments, banks, insurance, police, etc. (p 356-359). There are vast commodities that came with the industrial revolution. These include more “we’re on the same page” societies, a government which cares about you as an individual even if your family doesn’t, a freedom to make personable decisions. State and market are to blame for these great shifts. There is a reason we moved in this direction, why great minds came together to decide this was the way to go. We had the technology, transportation, and communication to get where we are today. Beside the expense of lessening the importance of community and family based societies, why not?
Historians do a great job at painting a relatable story from our pasts as humans to our present day living – they can describe what we lived in, what we dealt with, alongside monetary and physical comparisons between past and present. But, their role for considering our future might be as it always seemingly has been: a teller of history. After reading this last part of Sapiens and realizing how fast-paced our world has moved in the past two centuries, it would be hard for a historian relying on history alone to give a good prediction of exactly what the future will be like. I just can’t imagine historians two centuries ago to have accurately predict what turned out to be our world today, especially in a means to help us mitigate many issues we have faced in the past two centuries alone. Therefore, I think historians will play a smaller role in considering the future of mankind due to the exponential growth of industry, technology, and population.