Yuval Harari of Hebrew University and author of Sapiens talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the history of humanity. Topics discussed include the move from hunting and gathering to agriculture, the role of fiction in sustaining imagination, the nature of money, the impact of empires and the synergies between empires and science.
Play
Time: 1:12:08
How do I listen to a podcast?
Download
Size:33.1 MB
Right-click or Option-click, and select "Save Link/Target As MP3.
Readings and Links related to this podcast episode
Related Readings
HIDE READINGS
About this week's guest:
Yuval Harari's Home page
About ideas and people mentioned in this podcast episode:
Books:
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Harari at Amazon.com. 2015.
"The Beginning of Money," Chapter 1, The Natural Law of Money, by William Brough. 1896. Library of Economics and Liberty.
Articles:
Capitalism, by Robert Hessen. Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.
Adam Smith. Biography. Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.
Web Pages and Resources:
British Museum
Israel Museum
Podcast Episodes, Videos, and Blog Entries:
Rachel Laudan on the History of Food and Cuisine. EconTalk. August 2015.
Alain de Botton on the Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. EconTalk. September 2010.
Frank Rose on Storytelling and the Art of Immersion. EconTalk. October 2011.
Gordon on Ants, Humans, the Division of Labor and Emergent Order. EconTalk. August 2007.
Wally Thurman on Bees, Beekeeping, and Coase. EconTalk. December 2013.
Paul Robinson on Cooperation, Punishment and the Criminal Justice System. EconTalk. August 2015.
Jonathan Haidt on the Righteous Mind. EconTalk. January 2014.
De Vany on Steroids, Baseball, and Evolutionary Fitness. EconTalk. March 2010.
Highlights
Time
Podcast Episode Highlights
HIDE HIGHLIGHTS
0:33
Intro. [Recording date: October 8, 2015.] Russ: Your book is about the rise and dominance of our species. It's a very ambitious book; it's a very provocative book. And you begin by focusing on our ability to imagine--to create stories and myths. Why is that important and how does that help us explain our history? Guest: Well, because humankind controls the world, primarily due to our ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers. If you look at all the huge human achievements, whether it's building the pyramids or reaching the moon, they are never the work of a single individual. They are always the work of many people cooperating. And we do that better than any other animal. And no other animal can cooperate so flexibly in such large numbers like human beings. And if you ask yourself what enables us to cooperate in large numbers--millions of people, strangers, coming together to work for a common cause, then if you dig deep enough, you always find fiction, mythology, story-telling at the basis of all large-scale human cooperation. You can never convince a chimpanzee, for example, to give you a banana by promising him that after he dies he'll go to chimpanzee heaven, and there receive lots and lots of bananas for his good deeds. No chimpanzee will ever believe that. Which is why chimpanzees don't come together to build a cathedral or to fight in a Crusade. Humans are the only animal, as far as we know, that can create and believe in such stories. Which is why humans are the only animals that build cathedrals and go on Crusades. And this is something you see not only in the religious sphere, but in all other spheres of human activity; also in politics; also in economics. Human rights are also just a fictional story that we have invented, just like the stories about God and heaven. They are not an objective, biological reality out there. If you take a human being and look inside, you find all kinds of organs and genes and hormones; but you don't find any rights[?]. It's not a biological reality that humans have rights. It's only in the stories that we've invented that humans have rights. And similarly, say, in economics, in money, business corporations, companies--all these things are also based on fictional stories that we've invented. This is why the imagination is so important. Russ: So, when you say 'fiction'--I'm a big fan of fiction, and my listeners know I'm a big fan of story telling. When you say 'fiction'--a less provocative but perhaps more accurate word might be 'abstractions.' Is that a fair reaction to your claim? Guest: Partly. But it's not always abstract. I mean, God or heaven, for people who believe in them, they are not abstract. They think heaven is a real place, above the clouds, where you go after you die if you were a good human. And Hell is also not abstract. It's a very real place, at least for the people who believe in it. And similarly, even something like money, the dollar bill isn't abstract. It's a green piece of paper which has no value in itself; but if you really believe in it, if millions of people believe that this green piece of paper is valuable, you can go to a complete stranger in a supermarket, give him this green piece of paper, and get in exchange bananas or apples or whatever. It's not an abstract concept, but a very concrete reality which is based however on human beliefs, not only physical or biological realities. Russ: So, just as a footnote to your earlier claim: I guess, although I think it's generally true that no other creature is going to cooperate sufficiently to get to the moon or to build a structure that's, say, 150 feet high, or higher, ants do cooperate. And bees to some extent. So there is some cooperation in the animal kingdom. But it's dwarfed by our cooperation, certainly. Guest: I think the main difference is that among ants and bees, the cooperation is very rigid. It's predetermined by their genetic code. Russ: Correct. Guest: And there is basically just one way in which, for example, a beehive can cooperate. And if there is a new opportunity or danger, the bees cannot reinvent those social systems overnight and start something different. They cannot, for example, execute the queen and establish a republic of bees, or a communistic fellowship[?] of bees. And humans-- [?] Russ: Or Disneyworld. They are not going to make a Disneyworld. Guest: Yeah. Humans can change those social systems extremely quickly, from one year to the next, without any change in their DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) simply by changing the stories in which they believe. Like in the French Revolution or the American Revolution, people didn't change their DNA. They just changed those stories in which they believed.
6:34
Russ: So, that raises two questions. It's possible that some stories are better than others, or have some reality at their basis than others. But you begin by asking the question of where this human ability came from. And you have an interesting idea. Where did the return from storytelling emerge? How did it come to have value, evolutionary value? Guest: Well, we are not sure what gave Homo sapiens this ability. But with regard to the place and the date, we are quite sure it was in East Africa, about 60-, 70-, 80,000 years ago. Up until that time, human beings were not very significant animals. You had human beings of different species all over Africa, Europe, and Asia. But the most important thing to know about all these humans is that they were unimportant animals. They existed for at least 2 million years previously, and their impact on the ecological system, on the world, was not much greater than that of gorillas or of bees or jellyfish. And then about 70,000 years ago in East Africa we suddenly see humans starting to do very strange things, revolutionary things. They start to cooperate in larger numbers. We see the first appearance of art, of religion, of large-scale politics. And we see the spread of one human specie, Homo sapiens, from East Africa all over the world--first to Asia and Europe and then also to America and Australia, within a very short time, in evolutionary terms, at least. Humans from East Africa managed to cross the ocean and reach Australia about 50,000 years ago. And they managed to cross the Arctic Zone through the Bering Strait to Alaska and from there to the rest of the American continent about 15,000 years ago. Which are places where no previous human managed to settle. Russ: And as a result of that, as you point out, they had a rather devastating impact on the ecosystems that they arrived at. Guest: Definitely-- Russ: Or at least we think so. There are other theories--you mention them. There are other possibilities. It could be a correlation, not causation. But there's a correlation between human--it appears in the fossil record that the arrival of humans led to some large extinctions of large animals. Guest: Yes. Previously there was no real impact, big impact, of humans on the ecosystem. But about 50,000 years ago we start to see correlation between the arrival of humans to a new place and mass extinction of large animals in that place. First of all in Australia, where humans arrive, Homo sapiens arrive about 50,000 years ago, and within quite a short time after that, more than 90% of all the big animals of Australia disappear. In America, it's about 70% of all the large creatures of America disappear within about 2 or 3000 years from the arrival of humans. And 20,000 years ago, America looked like the Serengeti today in Africa, full of elephants and mammoths and mastodons and lions and horses and camels and many other large creatures that disappear--become extinct--within 2 or 3000 years from the arrival of Homo sapiens. And maybe most interesting of all, until the spread of Homo sapiens throughout the world, the world was actually home to many different human species. Just as today you have in the world many different species of bears: you have arctic bears and grizzly bears and brown bears and black bears. So, until, say, 60,000 years ago, you had many different species of humans. You go to different places in the world, you meet different species of humans, like the Neanderthals in Europe. And then when Homo sapiens spreads from East Africa, all the other human species disappear within a very short time. It was probably the most thorough and most important ethnic cleansing contain[?] in history, as Homo sapiens drive to extinction using more or less violence all the other human species around. Russ: It's a little hard to understand, both of those parts of the story--the devastation of other human species and the large megafauna. Because we didn't have very advanced tools at this point. We had very primitive tools. We didn't have a shotgun. We didn't have a cannon. What did we have at that point? Obviously we don't know precisely. But what do we think was the nature of human tools for violence at that point? Guest: As far as we know, technology was just stone tools and wood tools, and also the use of fire. But none of these were unique to Homo sapiens. Neanderthals also knew how to use fire and knew how to prepare and use spears and stone tools. The real advantage of Homo sapiens was in the ability to cooperate in large numbers. Whereas Neanderthals lived in small bands, maybe 30, 40, 50 Neanderthals cooperating, Homo sapiens could create networks of cooperation encompassing hundreds, even thousands of individuals. We have evidence from 30-, 40,000 years ago of trade between different Homo sapiens [?] which we don't see with Neanderthals. We have evidence for political connections. For example, we have tombs--burials--of chieftains from 30-, 40,000 years ago in which the chief, the big man or big woman, were buried with all kinds of artifacts--all kinds of beads and statues and bracelets and things like that. Which were probably produced by the combined effort of hundreds, if not thousands, of humans. So, these networks of cooperation were the big advantage that Homo sapiens had over all the other human species, as well as over the mastodons and mammoths and lions and the rest of the megafauna.
13:41
Russ: So the puzzle though, is: We understand from our own modern experience that cooperation can be--it's not really cooperation; often in large-scale projects, it's coercion. You have slave labor-- Guest: Right-- Russ: that's used through much of human history that's used to create grandiose achievements for the leaders. For true cooperation, it's hard to understand how anything large--hundreds, thousands--could be sustained through cooperation. Because--you know, as an economist, I tend to think, 'What's the incentive? Where is the, what's the glue that gets me to go along with this grand project?' Whether it's a war? Right? And in the modern era, if you don't fight, the government puts you in jail. Or they shoot you. It's very effective, as you point out, as long as there's a sustained belief in the nation-state and certain sets of ideologies, or as you call them, fictions. But: How would you do that in primitive times? What do you think--what could we imagine sustained large-scale cooperation in a world with primitive tools? Guest: Well, partly it was utilitarian aims. Let's say, the Neanderthal band controls good hunting fields, good hunting territory. So, several Sapiens bands come together and expel or kill the Neanderthals in order to take over the territory. And then they have a bigger and better territory in which to hunt and to gather their food. So you certainly have material incentives for at least some kinds of cooperation. And the same is true of trade. There are obvious material benefits for the ability to trade between different groups. But then, at least as far as I'm concerned, the chief issue is, again, the issue of telling stories-- Russ: Explain that. Explain why--and you make this claim in the book--you say, 'Trade may seem a very pragmatic activity, one that needs no fictive basis.... The fact is that no animal other than Sapiens engages in trade, and all the Sapiens trade networks about which we have detailed evidence were based on fictions.' So, why isn't it sufficient just to say, 'You have something I can benefit from; let's make a deal?' Guest: Because the problem is you need to trust the other guy. This is why it is so difficult for example for chimpanzees to trade with one another. If it was simply a question of the material benefits, then why other animals don't trade is a very difficult question for biologists. But the thing is, you need--if you go, say, in the jungle, and you suddenly see a stranger, so in order to trade with this stranger, you don't know who it is; you don't know whether you can trust him; you don't know whether he is going to cheat you or maybe kill you and take the value of what you want to trade with him. It's very difficult. But if you have some kind of common religion or ideology with that stranger, if there are things both he and you, you both believe in the same things, then this can form the basis for a mutually beneficial relationship. And we see this in anthropological studies, for example, that when people from two different bands or tribes meet, they often try to look for a common ancestor, or for a common, let's say, protective spirit. That, even though it's complete fiction, it's complete mythology, once they find such an ancient common ancestor, then it makes them kin. Makes them family. And this gives them the basis to trust each other. Now, it may sound farfetched. When we think about some people in the jungle tens of thousands of years ago, but we are doing the same thing today. For example, with money. I go to the supermarket. I meet a stranger. How can I trust him? Well, I take out this green piece of paper, which has a mythical ancestor on it. Could be a Lincoln or Washington or Grant or somebody like that. Russ: He's not that mythical, probably. He probably did exist. But go ahead. The mythical part, the ancestor part. Go ahead. Guest: It's mythical because it's not probably my great-grandfather or your great-grandfather. And we share the same kind of ancestral figure that in the case of these tribes-people was served by, probably also in their case there might have been 500 years previously a common ancestor. All people really have common ancestors, at least if you go back to Africa 70,000 years ago. But the thing is, that you need to find some basic story which you tell children from an early age to believe in, and to trust. And if you find such a story, then even complete strangers can cooperate. And again, we see today, in our modern economies and modern states, with national ideologies or national mythologies. And also with the economic stories that we share. If you think about money again--it's the best example. Modern money has no value in itself. But as long as everybody believes in the same authority--let's say, the Federal Reserve in the United States--and everybody trusts the stories that are told by the Federal Reserve and by the Treasury and by the President, then this trust enables them to trade effectively. At the most basic level, I think all money is made of trust. It can be in physical terms money can be gold or silver or paper or even electronic data. But at a deeper level, all money is made simply of trust.
20:07
Russ: I want to talk about that. I just want to say, first, I'm not convinced by your trade story. Guest: Okay. Russ: I'm not convinced an ancient people were able to trade much. Because I think you are right: I think they had trouble trusting each other. And I don't think ideology or fiction or myths or common ancestors helped them much when in the hunter-gatherer phase of existence. And probably widespread trade certainly--and widespread cooperation--took a much wider range of not just ideology, but also as you point out in the book-- Guest: That's true-- Russ: money. Guest: if [?]. I mean, trade, at that time, trade was small scale and rare. And cooperation, also--it's not that they lived in a common city. No. Maybe once or twice a year they came together for a big hunt or a big festival. And that was it. The cooperation networks were much, much more limited than today. You are definitely right. Russ: But, let's talk about money. Because money, I think, is--I think a lot of people have a misunderstanding of where the value of money comes from. I think you have it almost 100% correct, and I think you have an insight that is, that is very, very deep about money and I want to get to. So, it is certainly true--what's great about your book--there are many things I don't like about your book, I don't agree with; they are speculative; they are interesting, but I don't agree with them; they didn't convince me. But there are many things that make me think. There are a couple that are really special. One is this one that we all live with fictions. We all have religions. It's very hard for each of us to accept that. We all think, 'Well, my religion is the right one'--whether it's an actual religion, so-called actual religion, or atheism or whether it's liberal democracy as you point out or capitalism; we all have human rights; we all have certain things we just sort of accept. There are many things we question, but deep down, we have a bunch of things we don't like to think about too much, and we just sort of accept. And your book challenges those, and I'm sure offends a lot of people. But that's okay; it's good to be challenged. But the money part is very deep. Because most people think, 'Well, there is value to money. There used to be--because it used to be backed by gold.' And it's no different today. 'Backed by gold' doesn't have any meaning whatsoever. It's still a trust system. What the 'backing by gold' did was make it more probable that you could trust it, as long as there wasn't a lot more gold discovered. And so I think people don't like paper money. They want real money. There's no such thing. Guest: Hmmm. Yeah, I definitely agree. Gold, just like paper--I mean, you can do more things with paper than with gold. Today in electronics maybe you can do something with gold. But for most of history, gold was a completely valueless metal. The only things you could make from gold were artifacts with cultural value, like jewelry or statues or crowns. You couldn't make a sword or a plowshare out of gold. It's a very soft metal. It's not good-- Russ: It's useless. Guest: The only value, again, is people trust it. They trust it because the King and the Priest say we should trust it. You see, the King, and he has a gold crown; so you develop these kind of special hold[?], special liking to gold. But really it has no value. Russ: The deep part, the love that you point out, is that a lot of people say what you just said and they say, 'Well, gold has some value because it can be used for jewelry.' But the truth is it's the opposite: Causation probably goes the opposite direction. The reason we like gold jewelry is because it's money. That's a very deep point. I think you're right. I never thought about it. I think the idea that what we want to show off with happens to be gold isn't because gold is inherently beautiful. We do think it's because now, but that's only because we've come to think of it as valuable. But it's like you said--it's just a soft, yellow metal. Guest: Mmmhmm. Yeah. And if you look today, most of the money today in the world is just electronic data. Russ: Yep. Guest: If you take all of the real dollar bills and the paper and the nickels and all of that, it's less than 10% of the dollars that are on your computers. Russ: But the only part I want to push back on--I think there's a little more to story, which is: Trust--again, I'm not sure. Part of it is trust. But part of it is, I would say it a little bit differently. Maybe, expectation. So, I'm willing to accept a dollar if I expect other people to take it. Guest: Yes. Russ: That trust can disappear. If the sovereign inflates the currency and makes its value fall steadily--which has happened many times in human history, by both kings and democracies and other forms of government, I stop trusting it. Guest: Yes. Russ: It's not a pure myth, in the sense that it's something, I'd like to believe it. But once I see that it doesn't work, I drop it very quickly. So the trust is somewhat fragile. The other point I think to make is that, at the national level, it's not just that the king's crown is gold. It's that the king takes his taxes in gold. And once I know that I can pay my obligations to the sovereign, whether it's the government or the king, whether it's a democracy or the king, in, say, dollars, then I'm much more confident--and realistically so--that it will be accepted more widely. So, it's not pure trust. It's not just--I'd say it a different way: It's not blind trust. Guest: Oh, definitely. When I say 'trust,' I don't mean 'blind trust.' Trust is something that you need to work very hard in order to build. People are obviously not fools. You can't just go and say, 'This is now valuable' and everybody will believe. You need to do a lot of things, whether it's ceremonies or whether it involves coercion. For instance, you see that in modern empires, when the Europeans reach Africa and they want to convince the local population to start using money, to start using paper money that the imperial empires print, what they do is they demand that the local population pay taxes with money. And then the local people, they need these pieces of paper, because this is the only way they can pay their taxes. And if they don't pay their taxes-- Russ: they're in trouble-- Guest: they use violence. So this creates the initial trust, in a way, or the initial need. For these valueless pieces of paper, you must have that, in order to pay your taxes. And this is how they start building the trust, or the need, for these pieces of paper.
27:11
Russ: So, I want to go back to the timeline. We were talking about primitive human beings. I want to fast forward about 50,000 years and get to the agricultural revolution. And you argue that agriculture was really not a very attractive transition. You called it 'a trap.' Why was agriculture a trap? What's wrong with it? Guest: Well, for the human collective[?] it was obviously a huge step forward, because without agriculture, you couldn't have cities and kingdoms and empires and so forth. But if you look at it from the viewpoint of the individual and not the king or the high priest, but the ordinary peasant, then you find that in most agricultural societies, especially early agricultural societies, the life of the average individual was actually much harder than the life of hunter-gatherers previously. First of all, on the most basic level, our bodies and our minds evolved for hundreds of thousands of years an adaptation to living as hunter gatherers. To go to the woods and look for mushrooms and climb trees and run after rabbits and things like that. But then, most peasants, what they do all day are very different things. They have to work in all kinds of jobs, like plowing the field or grinding the corn or bringing water from the river--jobs which are much more difficult for the body, and much more boring to the mind. In exchange for all this hard work, peasants usually got a worse diet. Hunter-gatherers subsisted by eating dozens of different species of plants and animals and mushrooms and fish and whatever. Peasants, in contrast, say in ancient China, they ate rice and rice and rice. It was a much more monotonous diet, a much [?] in vitamins and minerals and so forth. In addition, peasants suffered far more from infectious diseases because most infectious diseases came from domesticated animals and spread in the unhealthy, unhygienic conditions of early[?] villages and towns. Hunter-gatherers suffered far less from infectious diseases. And one last important point is that, whereas hunter-gatherer societies were relatively egalitarian--there were no huge differences between rich and poor--with the arrival of agriculture you also see the rise of steep social hierarchies, of exploitation, of small elites of kings and priests and bureaucrats, exploiting the masses of the population. So, for the collective and for the elites, agriculture was a very good thing. But for the average peasant in ancient Egypt or medieval Europe, agriculture was a much less positive development. Russ: And you also argue, because you have to if you are going to push that argument, that you need an answer to the question of why people didn't just leave the farms and go back to hunter-gathering--if it was so miserable. And you give an answer to that. Guest: Yeah. There are several answers. First of all, you had many more people. Agriculture supported demographic growth. You had many more people living on the same territory. Each person perhaps lived a harder life, but you had many more of them and you simply couldn't go back without most of the population dying from hunger. Which nobody would volunteer to die of hunger in order to go back. Secondly, you have the coercive power of the elites, which now control society, and wouldn't let it happen. And finally, with the transition to agriculture, most of the skills that people needed in order to live as hunter-gatherers disappeared. So it's not like you are a peasant or you are worker and you can simply go to the forest and start living as a hunter-gatherer. You'd probably die very quickly. If I, today, for example, try to leave my job as a university teacher and go to live as a hunter-gatherer, I would be dead within a week or two. Russ: So, the part I disagree with--and I think there's some obvious uncertainty about this--the part I really like is this idea that we went from a relatively unhierarchical--I think, because we've got to be careful here because we don't really have great evidence on what hunter-gatherer hierarchy was like. And I've got some information on that I want to mention in a second. But that, it seems to me, that part I agree with: That certainly when we went from smaller groups to larger groups, the ability of the elites to control larger groups of people through force is an important change in human wellbeing that it's taken a long time to make some progress against. And I would argue we have made progress, [?] time to agree; I'll talk about that next. But, the point I want to emphasize is that: Hunter-gatherers had a very tough life. Now, you suggest that they don't work very hard. And they had a lot of time for leisure. I think that's a very uncertain proposition. There's a lot of evidence that to sustain enough protein to keep a human being alive takes a lot of time. And many of the studies of hunter-gatherers exist and at least primitive people who are still around, require a huge amount of work. It's a lot of berries. It's a lot of berries to keep a person going. So, you want to hedge that at all? Guest: Yeah. I think the main point is not to say that hunter-gatherer had an ideal existence. This is not the point at all. The point is that peasants have an even harder existence. Russ: no[?]-- Guest: The main issue is: What is general[?] of the peasants? Not: What is the situation of the hunter-gatherers? I think there are some romantic views about hunter-gatherers, depicting their life as ideal, as living in paradise. And this is obviously far-fetched. The life of the hunter-gatherer could be very hard. But life as a peasant, in ancient China, was even harder. And that's the main point.
33:44
Russ: Yeah; I'm not--I don't know. I take the point that they are both pretty hard. So, that's--it raises the question that I alluded to a second ago, which is this question of progress. You are not much of an optimist: you don't see much of a--I hope I'm being fair to you in the book--you don't human wellbeing improving over time in any fundamental sense. Is that a fair summary of what you believe? Or is that unfair? Guest: No, it's fair. I think humans have an amazing capacity to acquire power. But they are not good at all at translating power into happiness and into wellbeing. At least until I think the early 19th century, you don't see any correlation between power and wellbeing. If you use all kinds of objective measurements, like life expectancy, child mortality, and things like that, you don't see any correlation between power and wellbeing. Over the last 200 years, for the first time in history, we start seeing some correlation. But again, the trend is not just one-dimensional. There are also some very problematic things happening over these last 200 years, which makes it difficult to argue that we've finally solved the problem and that now we have a very clear and direct correlation, and that every increase in power necessarily makes humans better off than before. Russ: Yeah. I guess the other way to think about it is we don't know whether the last 200 years or so is an anomaly or not. But my cherished fictions--I have many--give me hope. But I'm probably just fooling myself. I'm going to read a short quote here that I'll let you riff on and talk about, again, so you can annoy some of our listeners. Here's what you say; you say,
For instance, the most cherished desires of present-day Westerners are shaped by romantic, nationalist, capitalist and humanist myths that have been around for centuries. Friends giving advice often tell each other, "Follow your heart." But the heart is a double agent that usually takes its instructions from the dominant myths of the day, and the very recommendation to "Follow your heart" was implanted in our minds by a combination of nineteenth-century Romantic myths and twentieth-century consumerist myths.
You want to talk about that? Guest: Yeah, I'll be happy to. Many of the things that people today consider as necessities were, until a very short time ago luxuries that they could easily live without. And many of the things that people really desire--like going on vacation of [?]--there is nothing natural about wanting to go on vacation of [?]. Most people in history didn't think about it. Chimpanzees or cousins, you don't see any other [?] chimpanzee male using his power and authority in order to go on vacation to the territory of the neighboring chimpanzee band. I mean, basically, you don't have within yourself a box with all kinds of special emotions and sensations and on the box you have a big warning: 'Open only when you are in Paris. Unless you get to Paris, you'll never experience these sensations and emotions.' It doesn't work like that. Basically, anything you can experience in life, you can experience wherever you are at the present moment. So there is nothing, as I said, natural or obvious about wanting to travel [?] the world. Russ: But you suggest that travel is like a trick. That I've been tricked into wanting to travel. Guest: Yes. Russ: So, how do you make that argument? Explain that to me. Guest: You see again and again on television, in movies, you get a lot of messages that you need to travel. That travel is important; it will be good for you; you will be happy; unless you travel you won't be happy. And when you hear it so many times, from an early age, you become convinced that this is true. And let's say, I don't know, a married couple have a crisis in their relationship. So, the husband or wife would suggest, 'Okay let's forget a minute about all these problems[?], go to Paris.' This would solve a problem. Why? 'Because I saw so many commercials and so many films in which a problem in a relationship was solved by traveling to Paris that I believe in it.' Russ: So, I'm going to turn it around. That's stupid. I certainly agree. And a previous EconTalk guest, Alain de Botton, makes the great point that when you travel you escape much of your environment, but one part that you can't escape is you. When you are in Paris, you are with yourself. That might the best best travel, when you can leave yourself behind. But that's not an option, at least in present day technology. So, let me flip it around. So: I was in Jerusalem last April. And I had a glorious trip. I saw things--in fact, I was in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, which has many of the, some of the artifacts you mentioned earlier. And it was exhilarating to see it. I was in London last fall--and we are going to talk about empire in a minute--I'm in the British Museum, and I saw some extraordinary things that I had only read about that were amazing, like the Rosetta Stone, the Elgin marbles, the Cyrus cylinder. It's fabulous. Was I just a pawn of consumer myths, that I would go and have a good time? Did I really not have a good time? Guest: No, I don't hope to take it[?] to the other extreme and say to you that travel is bad, and that you actually have bad experiences by traveling. Travel can certainly be very inspiring and a very pleasant experience. What I'm saying is the deep consumerist myth is that you must have it. You cannot really be happy and content unless you travel. This is the issue: that people confuse what is basically unnecessary luxury with the kind of basic need. And this is something that develops with time. You see a trajectory throughout history that luxuries tend to become necessities with the passing of time; and people become convinced that they cannot live without them. And this is especially problematic today, because if you think about the standard of living of the common American, if every Chinese and every Indian and every African had the same standard of living as the average American today, the global ecology would collapse. There is no way, at least under present technological capacities, there is no way that Planet Earth can provide all the Chinese and Indians with the same standard of living as Americans. So, if all these things, like big houses and SUVs (Sport Utility Vehicles) and vacations abroad and so forth---usually they are really necessary for humans to be happy, then we are facing a very, very stark choice between keeping billions of Chinese and Indians unhappy and destroying the planet. Russ: Yeah--I don't think that's the--I'll leave that alone. It's an interesting point. It's as you said--at current levels, it would be difficult to imagine. Difficult to achieve.
41:32
Russ: But of course, in 1800 or 1850 and even 1900, as you said, there are going to be 7 billion people. And even fewer of them are going to be in poverty than now--certainly as a percentage and after a while in absolutely numbers--it would be impossible. But of course, as you point out many times in the book, we are a very imaginative species and we come up with some very good things. But I want to move on. I want to talk about empire and science, which you have some very interesting observations about. Let's start with two myths that you disagree with: two arguments about empires that you think are wrong. One, and this, I'm quoting you: "Empires do not--I'm quoting you as listing the myths; you don't agree with this: "One, Empires do not work. In the long run it is not possible to rule effectively over a large number of conquered people. Two, Even if it can be done, it should not be done because the empires are evil engines of destruction and exploitation. Every people has a right to self-determination and should never be subject to the rule of another." And you push back against both of those views, which is very contrarian and very interesting. So, talk about why you think those two commonly-held views are not correct. Guest: Well, the first view, that empires don't work, it's simply wrong when you look at the facts. For the last, at least 2000 years, empire has been the most successful political system in the world. Most people for the last 2000 years lived in empires. And most empires did not collapse because the subjected people revolted. Some of them lasted for centuries. And when they eventually collapsed it was often because either of external invasion or because the elite itself fell out and started to have internal conflicts. So, it's not true that empires don't work. As for the moral[?] value of empires, this is of course a much more delicate and complicated issue. We don't have much time, so I will only point out that most of contemporary culture is an imperial legacy. So, if empires are evil, it means that most human culture today in the world today is evil, or the product of evil. To give just one obvious example, most people today on the planet talk and think and dream in imperial languages--languages which were created and spread, sometimes with violence, by empire. Whether it's English, French, and Spanish, or Arabic, Turkish, Russian and Chinese--Han Chinese--these are all imperial languages. Similarly, if you think about religion: Most of the religions in the world were spread by empires. So, [?] Christianity spread first by the Roman Empire, and later by the Spanish and Portuguese, the French. So you have people throwing off at certain points the yoke of the empire, the political yoke. But they go on believing in the religion of the empire. And they go on using the language of the empire. And you can say much the same thing about cuisine, architecture, legal concepts, and so forth.
45:19
Russ: A part I found particularly interesting is your observations and details about how science and--let me say it a little bit better. And I'll let you say it better. The modern willingness to admit ignorance was an enormous scientific breakthrough. Explain that. And then explain how that combined with empire and the science. Guest: Okay, I'll try. Russ: I know; it's a tough one. But it's well said in the book. Hard to do on one foot. But take a shot. Guest: I'll try. Most pre-modern cultures were convinced that they have answers to all the important questions. Like, if you think about medieval Christianity--the Christians in Europe believed the answers to all the important questions of life are in the Bible. Or, in the writings of the Church fathers. So, if you start with the idea that we already have all the answers, this obviously doesn't give you much of an incentive to look for new knowledge, because what's the point? We already have all the answers, all the important knowledge. Maybe we can discover something new, but if it's not in the Bible, then by definition it's not important. If it was important, God would have told us this piece of information in the Bible. Then you have the scientific revolution and the most important discovery of the scientific revolution was the discovery of ignorance--of the fact that there are many important questions which we don't know the answer to. The answers are not in the Bible; they are not in the Quran; they are not in the Confucian Analects: nowhere. We simply--nobody knows the answers to these questions. And this gives you the incentive to start looking for new knowledge. And the idea is, if we find new knowledge, maybe we can solve problems which at present seem to be impossible. And what we see over the last few centuries is that we [?] the discovery of completely new knowledge enabled humans to solve all kinds of problems which were previously thought to be insoluble--impossible to solve. For centuries, people believed, for example, that plagues were just a part of the natural order of things. Maybe if God wants, there won't be any plagues, but this is up to God. There is no way that humans can find the solution to all the plagues by themselves. But over the last century or two, science has managed to overcome most lethal infectious diseases that humankind faced. So that today, more people, for the first time in history, die from old age diseases than from infectious diseases. And the same is true of famine. For centuries, millennia, people thought that famine is just a part of the world. Only when the Messiah comes, there won't be famine. But today, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little. Humankind has managed to overcome famine, not by Divine assistance but by discovering new knowledge. Russ: And talk about the way that science and empire--the discoveries of science were tied in to the discoveries of empire. Guest: Yeah. We tend to think that science is good and empire is bad. But for most of the last 500 years, science and empire were two sides of the same coin. The European empires could not have spread and conquered the world without the help of modern science. And vice versa. Modern science was developed to a large extent thanks to the efforts and the investment of the European empires. Not only in Europe--obvious case is like geography, which was developed mainly thanks to the contribution of the empires, but also even if you think about Charles Darwin, people often don't remember or don't think about it. But Darwin, when he went on the ship Beagle around South America to the Galapagos Islands, and the evidence, the facts that he witnessed caused him to start formulating the ideas that eventually became the theory of evolution. This voyage was not a scientific expedition. It was a military expedition. It was a ship of the British navy, of the Royal navy, sent to map the coasts of South America in preparation for war. And the captain took Darwin along on this expedition. And you see it happening again and again, this combination of science and empire. Basically they share the same desire, the same mindset, which we can call the mindset of exploring and conquering: the idea there is something out there beyond the horizon and we should explore it and conquer it. And, conquering both in the military sense, but also in the scientific sense: that we study things not just in order to know, but in order to control them, to manipulate them. But this is the deep connection between science and empire over the last 500 years. Russ: I also would argue--you don't say this in the book; and I want to defend religion here for a minute, and the Divine. Science has its own religion. Which of course is that things are discoverable. And they are. And that's a remarkable thing; we just sort of take it for granted; we assume that that's the way the world is. But it doesn't have to be that way. And that is really--why that is, is an unanswerable question. But it's a remarkable thing that allows us to extend our control that wouldn't have to be that way. But it evidently is. Guest: Definitely. And of course there could be some things which are undiscoverable; but for obvious reasons, we haven't discovered them. Russ: Well, we know some things are undiscoverable. It's a paradox that science has informed us about what we don't know. The first minute, minuscule, nano-nano-nanosecond of the Big Bang is veiled from human knowledge, at least as far as we know. That's at least the belief of science right now. I guess it could change. Guest: Well, for now. Things could change. And you have many examples of the last 500 years of all kinds of questions which people thought we'll never find the answer to that one-- Russ: Correct. Guest: and then within a hundred or two hundred years, we've got the answer. Russ: Yeah. Someone was telling me yesterday how bad voice recognition is. We'll fix that. That's an easy one. The real--perhaps the world can be divided into those who think that everything will be discovered and we'll master everything, versus those--and I would put myself in this latter camp--who argue that there are certain mysteries that we will not every uncover. I want to just talk about the British Museum for a second. I mentioned earlier, I was in the British Museum, and I couldn't help but be struck by the fact that human knowledge and how stuff had been accumulated--through plunder and theft and misguided self-righteousness. As you point out many times in the book. And I was reminded of the scene in the movie Life of Brian, where people are complaining about the Romans: 'Well, what have the Romans ever done?' 'Well, they gave us the roads.' 'Other than that.' 'Well, they gave us water and aqueducts.' 'But other than that?' 'Well, the schools.' So, it's an amazing thing. We don't like to think about it, but of course many aspects of civilization, that we call civilization, came from empire. And in many ways to me the British Museum is the church of that religion. It is awe-inspiring to see what human beings were able to achieve and collect, often through not-so-attractive ways. But it's amazing it's there. And the British had an unimaginable curiosity that you chronicle in the book. Any time they went somewhere, they tried to figure out what was going on. For selfish reasons, often. But sometimes it was a mix, right? Guest: Yeah, definitely. It's not that the view of empire is all evil. It's very problematic, because this implies that most of modern culture and most of science is evil. Russ: Yeah. That's hard for a religious--our myths, our fictions--that's not--we don't like that idea.
54:46
Russ: Let's talk about capitalism. This show is called EconTalk, after all. You are critical of Adam Smith, I think a little unfairly--well, I think, unfairly. But talk about your view of capitalism and its mythologies. Guest: Well, I think the basic story of capitalism--which might be true; I'm not saying it's false, but it's just the basic story of capitalism--is that economic growth is the most important thing in the world, and anything worth having, you must have economic growth in order to have it. It doesn't matter if you want democracy or human rights or equality or anything. You have to have economic growth in order to get it. And on the individual level this is tied with the story that says [?] that if you have any problem in your life, you must buy something: the solution is probably to buy something, to consume more stuff. And in order to buy more things, we need to produce more things. Which brings us back to economic growth. So I would define capitalism as the religion or ideology which thinks that economic growth is the most important thing in the world, because it's the key to everything else, whether it's happiness or justice or freedom. You can't have any of those unless you have economic growth. Russ: So, how did that idea come to be? I think you are onto something. I don't see it quite as bleakly as you do in various parts of the book. But how did that idea become our religion--to the extent that it is? Guest: Well, first of all we have to emphasize that it's a very--to us, it seems quite natural because we live in a capitalist world. But most people in history couldn't grasp such an idea, because growth is, in a way, stands in contrast to the basic experience of the world. And to our evolutionary legacy. Most of existence is zero-sum games in which your profits are my loss, and vice versa. And for most of history, people thought that the only way for one person to become richer is for another person to become poorer. The only way for one kingdom to be more prosperous is for another kingdom to become more miserable. But then came along Adam Smith, and others of course--and I think their idea here was not just an economic revolution but also an ethical and religious revolution--they had the notion that everybody can profit at the same time because the entire--if the world is a pie, the entire pie can grow simultaneously. I can have a bigger slice of the pie not by taking something from you, but simply by making the pie larger so that everybody will have more at the same time. This was an amazing insight which at least until today has proved itself. The world has been growing; the economy has been growing. Maybe not everybody benefited. Certainly not the other animals. But if you look only at humans then this idea, that everybody can have more at the same time, so far has proven itself to be correct. But it's a very, very difficult idea to grasp and to convince people to believe. Which is why even today, there are many people who don't accept it and don't understand it. Russ: Don't you think we have--I hate to say it--a biological urge for more? Guest: Yeah. All animals have a biological urge for more. And this is not something which is strictly unique to Homo Sapiens. For most of history, societies were built on the assumption that, yes, individuals always want more. And we have to discipline individuals. We have to make them resist this temptation. Because the only way to create social harmony is for people to settle for what they've already got, and not want more. The revolutionary idea of capitalism is that: No; we not only don't have to discipline people and to make people settle for what they have; it's just the opposite. We have to encourage people to want more and more all the time, because this is the driving force behind economic growth. The greatest threat to the economic system is if people settle for what they've already got, and not want more than they have. If this happens, then growth stops. The entire capitalist system will collapse because it can't go on unless the economy keeps growing indefinitely. Russ: I don't know if that's true. I don't think we need to keep growing. I think we could certainly have a healthy economy. It's where religions don't always work well together. Right? We have one set of religions that says, the consumerist religion, that says: If you have more you'll be happy; you want this new gadget, etc. And we have this other, more traditional religion that says: Be happy with what you have. Adam Smith wrote a book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, that basically said wanting more is a mistake; you are not going to be any happier. Most religions--many, many religions, traditional religions--argue that wealth is either bad, or certainly not good. And you know--it says in the Talmud: 'Who is rich? He who is happy with his lot.' And that's a tough sell. It's a tough sell in the modern world. We all understand that. We all have, I think, a basic, fundamental, biological drive to have more. But I think that doesn't, as you point out in the book, doesn't necessarily make us happy. And I think the challenge of being a mature adult, whether it's a spiritual person or not, whether you are religious in the traditional sense or not, is to have some perspective about what real satisfaction, where it comes from. Guest: You know, I think that the ethical revolution of capitalism was that it reversed all these age-old maxims and the wisdom. It basically tells people, it's good to want more. Greed is good. Wealth is good. The most ethical people in society are exactly the ones that increase economic productivity. And in a very deep way, what capitalism says, is that egoism[?] is altruism. It's not bad to want more and to try to advance yourself. And it's usually not put in such stark terms. But I think this is the essence of the moral revolution that capitalism has brought about. And it should be said that compared to most other religions, capitalism actually lived up to many of its promises. You have all these religions that promise you paradise in the afterlife; and you know, who knows whether it's true or not. Capitalism promises a sort of paradise here on earth. And again, compared to most other religions, it provides a lot of its promises.
1:02:54
Russ: Well, but as you point out, we don't get a lot happier as we get richer after a certain minimum point--probably. The part I think is true about that capitalist religion is that it's better to see your children survive childhood. It's better to see your children survive into adulthood, because you are living longer. And there's no doubt a relationship between life expectancy and health and quality of life and wealth. It's very hard to sustain long-lived healthy people without wealth. And one of the appeals of growth is this idea that we'll be able to live even longer. Maybe that's a mistake. But I certainly--it's certainly the case that it's a complicated story, right? Capitalism has got many good things about it; and it's got many things that are corrosive and destructive to the soul, if you are not careful. You can be lured into doing some very unhealthy things if you are not careful. Guest: Um, yeah. I think capitalism is, in this sense, maybe the most successful religion in history. It's the only religion in which everybody believes--Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus--everybody believes, to some extent. Russ: The Buddhists, not so much. As you point out, though. Guest: Not the religion. But you have many Buddhist countries which in effect adopt the maxims, the practices of capitalism. And so at the same time it's a force for immense good and a force for terrible things. [more to come, 1:04:34]