Sapiens: Can Humans Overcome
Suffering and Find True Happiness?
Derek
Beres Big Think (blog)
Time baffles us. While we can only live in the
present moment, our brains constantly reflect back and lunge
forward. Evolution has coded in us important unconscious reasons
for this. Yet when we bring time into consciousness, being present
with this moment now can seem a futile and impossible
endeavor.
Our ability to imagine the future has been a
crucial component of human, well, domination. Millennia-old Indian
writers called this force maya: We envision, then create
that reality. This skill makes us believe that anything forward is
progress; anything behind a primitive version waiting to unfold
into its full potential.
Yuval
Noah Harari disagrees
with this assessment. In his eloquent historical survey,
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, the Israeli history
professor writes,
We
moderns have an arsenal of tranquillisers and painkillers at our
disposal, but our expectations of ease and pleasure, and our
intolerance of inconvenience and discomfort, have increased to such
an extent that we may well suffer from pain more than our ancestors
ever did.
Harari is no Luddite; technology is no enemy
to our kind. Rather he takes an ethically minded gaze into the past
few tens of thousands of years to figure out just how we got
here. He argues that three major forces — capitalism,
religion, and industry — created what we are today. But unlike many
history books presenting facts and nothing more, Harari asks a
pivotal question: Are we happy?
Such a seemingly benign query. Of course we’re
happy! Or: Of course we’re not! Most likely a blend of these two,
depending on the day. Yet, as he points out, there is a huge
difference between individual happiness and group happiness, and
therein lies one of modernity’s great ails: the loss of the
tribe.
Before the Industrial Revolution, Harari finds
that daily life is comprised of "three ancient frames": the nuclear
family, the extended family, and the local intimate community. The
group took care of the individual; the well-being of the group
depended upon every member working together.
In
the age of individualism, much of this is lost. The elderly are
locked away in age-restricted homes, no longer providing input to
the community; the younger generations spend more time making eye
contact with their phones than with other eyes. The survival of the
fittest is the pleasure of my genes. We may have much more
now, but at what cost?
The need of one another, the need to be
together, is an integral part of our species. Babies separated from
their mother will suffer major distress, a common occurrence among
all mammals and many other species. A high percentage of Americans
today live alone, something new to our species. There’s a reason
why activists call solitary confinement inhumane. If the goal is
rehabilitation, don’t subtract the very foundation of their
humanity. We need one another.
One of the great insights in Sapiens
is Harari’s distinguishing between basic happiness — an ability to
feel content regardless of external circumstances — and the search
for pleasure. In his chapter on religion, he uses Buddhism as the
main vehicle to explore this riddle.
While Buddhism is sometimes called a religion,
it’s better understood as a psychological investigation. While
complex layers were added after the founder Gotama’s time, the
discipline itself is quite simple: We suffer because we’re ignorant
of the true nature of reality. We want things to be one way; when
reality proves us wrong, we become bewildered. There is a way to
not suffer, which requires letting go of mental and emotional
grasping.
In
Buddhist and Hindu terminology, the words nirvana and moksha —
liberation — imply a sense of ecstasy. This ecstasy is not the
pleasure of the senses, however; it is a deep awareness of one’s
sensations while moving from moment to moment, and within that
resides santosha, contentment. Harari puts it
beautifully:
If
you experience sadness without craving that the sadness go away,
you continue to feel sadness, but you do not suffer from it. There
can actually be richness in the sadness. If you experience joy
without craving that the joy linger and intensify, you continue to
feel joy without losing your peace of mind.
Our day to day often proves the opposite: when
we’re experiencing pleasure, we want it to be more intense and last
forever; when we’re sad, we feel as though the world should
indefinitely stroke its violin for us. And so with the importation
of disciplines like Buddhism and yoga — Gotama practiced yoga for
years, so there is a good deal of crossover — we’ve begun to look
inside as a means of overcoming suffering.
Harari notes that Buddha did, as modern
practitioners argue, state that happiness is independent of
external conditions. Yet this alone cannot defeat suffering, for
"happiness is also independent of our inner feelings." The
higher we place our feelings up a pedestal, the more we crave those
we want to feel. The vicious circle (samsara)
continues.
Can we be detached while also engaged? While
Harari has definite opinions on certain topics (animal welfare
being a welcome inclusion in this book), he does not blame those
three forces above for any wicked intent. They are merely part of
the ever-evolving narrative that created modern
societies.
Whether or not they provide happiness — not
pleasure, but a sense of inclusion in our, at times, fractured
cultures — is a storyline each of us has to write. While there are
no clear-cut answers, Harari offers plenty of sagely advice that
seems so basic yet often forgotten: Strive, but don’t cling; value
those around you, of every species; find contentment while shedding
the constant need for more.