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Cognitive Revolution
Harari thinks that around 70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens (the human species that became humanity’s ancestors) evolved a unique ability to imagine and believe things that aren’t true, including myths, stories, legends, religions, ideologies, and more. He calls these “imagined orders.” Human beings, Harari says, invent such stories—which effectively tell people how to behave in society—and follow the rules because they think the stories are true. In a sense, when humans do this, we collectively believe in the same fictions. Most animal species tend to form small societies (perhaps up to 150 at most) because an animal can only know and trust a limited number of beings. Imagined orders, Harari thinks, enable humans to trust other humans because they believe in the same stories and follow the same rules, even if they don’t know them. This trust enables humans to cooperate with strangers on a colossal scale, never before seen in history.
Imagined Order Quotes in Sapiens
The Sapiens quotes below are all either spoken by Imagined Order or refer to Imagined Order. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 2
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Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths.
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In what way can we say that Peugeot SA (the company’s official name) exists? There are many Peugeot vehicles, but these are obviously not the company. Even if every Peugeot in the world were simultaneously junked and sold for scrap metal, Peugeot SA would not disappear. It would continue to manufacture new cars and issue its annual report. […] Peugeot has managers and shareholders, but neither do they constitute the company. All the managers could be dismissed and all its shares sold, but the company itself would remain intact […] In short, Peugeot SA seems to have no essential connection to the physical world. Does it really exist? Peugeot is a figment of our collective imagination.
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Chapter 6
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Hammurabi’s Code asserts that Babylonian social order is rooted in universal and eternal principles of justice, dictated by the gods.
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Chapter 8
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The imagined orders sustaining these networks were neither neutral nor fair. They divided people into make-believe groups, arranged in a hierarchy. The upper levels enjoyed privileges and power while the lower ones suffered from discrimination and oppression. Hammurabi’s Code, for example, established a pecking order of superiors, commoners and slaves. Superiors got all the good things in life. Commoners got what was left. Slaves got a beating if they complained.
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Chapter 10
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People continued to speak mutually incomprehensible languages, obey different rulers and worship distinct gods, but all believed in […] gold and silver coins. Without this shared belief, global trading networks would have been virtually impossible.
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Imagined Order Term Timeline in Sapiens
The timeline below shows where the term Imagined Order appears in Sapiens. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 6: Building Pyramids
...and they stop working if people don’t believe in them. Some aspects of an “ imagined order ” can be enforced by coercion (like laws and punishments). Overall, however, Harari thinks that...
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Chapter 8: There is No Justice in History
Harari revisits imagined orders , saying they make humans cooperate in large numbers, but they’re “neither neutral nor fair.”...
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Chapter 9: The Arrow of History
...a global scale), so Harari thinks humanity is tending towards unity by consolidating many different imagined orders into fewer ones. To Harari, the idea of separate, “authentic” cultures is a bit misleading....
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...the Cognitive Revolution enabled Homo sapiens to do so. He thinks three global ideas (or imagined orders ) began to circulate among humans around 1,000 B.C.E.: money (enabling global trade), imperialism (fueling...
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