Homo Deus - Book Review

HOMO DEUS - A BRIEF HISTORY OF TOMORROW

YUVAL NOAH HARARI

A BOOK REVIEW

Can someone name a book in a blunder of paradox (History of tomorrow) and still add meaning to it? 

“Yes ”, says Yuval Noah Harari, politely and profoundly.

Frankly speaking, I am kinda bewitched and bedazzled by him, as I reach the climax of this “Monstrous” book. I prefer to call it “monstrous”, not for its volume or the pages, but for the ideas it has carried through, neatly engraved.

We all grew up, hearing stories from our grandparents or parents or the teachers. And it seems Yuval’s primary task here is to break our hearts in disproving all the stories or the beliefs or the imagined orders. 

In his last book, he had his axe on the religion (for those proud fanatics), Nation (for those nationalists and patriotisms ), money (for the greedy capitalists). Although, whether these imagined orders are for good or bad, would be a never ending debate for any prime time TV channels! 

In this book, he takes his turn on ourselves and questions the fundamentalism of our existence with questions like 

“ Are organisms (including us) just another “yes or no” algorithm?” , 

“ which is important? Consciousness or Intelligence?”

“Is there a thing called “Soul” really? If so, where?”

The last question, in particular, just almost collapsed my entire 30 years of belief. 

Well, what was he thinking, when he raised these questions of the millennium. He should be kidding, right? But then his explanations and illustrations and examples cannot be refuted or mocked at easily. 

In our quest for Immortality, Happiness, Divinity, we may end up, knowingly or unknowingly, in a bizarre new breed of superhuman - Homo Deus. This might look like a cheap science fiction for our generation and we might be tempted to say “Not in my lifetime, lets not worry!”. But then the fallacy of our bold venture into the unknown realms of our mysterious mind combined with the technological advancements at a breakneck speed has the potential for the perfect recipe of doom, beyond our wildest imagination!

Yuval is clearly, no believer of karma. But then, we might actually experience it for the sins of our ancestors like how we wiped out the neanderthals or how we killed the domesticated animals for our fantasies or how we ruin the lives of laboratory rats in the name of experiments. We might actually see ourselves as the victims, for a change, by the Homo deus. 

He has tried to study the human brain and mind and the consciousness in depth, which in turn is  one of the most mysterious and baffling concept, neurologists and scientists are still trying to unravel. That is one of the comforting thing we get from the book. 

He starts the book on a promising note and inviting us to an alluring prospect of Immortality, Happiness, Divinity in the near future for our species, although with some technical and capitalistic glitch.

But he ends the book with a fear gripping our adrenals, pumping the steroids into us and asks us “Fight or Flight?”

Alas, these are not prophecies, but mere predictions, after a thorough study of our evolution from an insignificant ape to the current position, we inhabit now. We might be just a process on to become something truly eternal and masters of the galaxy. Although, we can always prove ourselves wrong with our greed and gamble into the unknown.

So where are we heading?

This book is the only brilliant and original experience to know. At least for now.

This book doesn't provoke thoughts in your mind, it erupts volcanoes instead.