In Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari argues that advances in technology and science can make humans divine. However, his approach to dividing the line between fiction and reality with the concept of suffering is highly subjective and calls for a deeper exploration of the relationship between fiction and reality.
In the title of Homo Deus, “Deus” is the word for God, and Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the book, argues that humans are trying to move beyond Homo sapiens and become gods. He argues that rapid advances in technology and science, and the rise of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, are bringing us closer and closer to doing things that we previously believed only gods could do. Soon, Yuval Noah Harari argues, humans will become gods. However, in this blog post, I’m going to challenge Yuval Noah Harari’s claims by digging deeper into his many claims, both fictional and real.
Before I get started, I want to clarify that I am not trying to refute his claims as pure nonsense; his arguments were refreshing to me, and I felt that reading his book awakened another dormant sense in me. His writing started with a novel idea and was full of original thoughts that I hadn’t seen in other books. However, as I read, I felt that his language was too strong, and it made me think deeply. I think it’s important to recognize that it’s just one person’s point of view and to think deeply about it, rather than accepting his arguments as necessarily correct. Therefore, the purpose of this article is not to argue that Yuval Noah Harari is wrong. It is to point out that Yuval Noah Harari’s argument is just one point of view, and that there are others. I encourage readers of Homo Deus to explore different perspectives on a topic and to form their own opinions based on them.
I would have loved to argue all of the many points that Yuval Noah Harari makes, but the book is huge. I think it would be superficial to criticize too many topics, so I’m going to focus on the parts of his argument that are fiction and reality. Yuval Noah Harari first mentions fiction and reality in the third table of contents, “The Human Spark”. Then, in the fourth chapter, “The Storytellers,” he elaborates on the idea of fiction and reality.
Yuval Noah Harari says that gods, nations, and corporations, such as Jesus Christ, the French Republic, and Apple, have been a very important part of human history. It wouldn’t be human history without money, religion, countries, and corporations. However, these are fictions created by humans, not things that actually exist. History, he argues, revolves around a web of fictions, not of our own making.
The first point I want to make is about the boundary between fiction and reality. Yuval Noah Harari points out how fictional things have changed the real, citing the rating system, the Bible, and money as examples, and argues that fiction is both useless and necessary. He argues that fiction is necessary for human society to function properly. However, he argues strongly that fiction should not be allowed to harm the real, and that we should not lose our sense of the real. Finally, he warns that when we forget about fiction and lose our sense of the real, we end up trying to make a lot of money for corporations or start wars to protect our national interests. The author concludes by arguing that the things we create to help us cost us our lives.
First, I would like to ask Yuval Noah Harari about the exact difference between invisible fiction and reality. In the book, there was this statement. “How do you know if an entity is real or not?” It’s very simple. You can ask the question. “Can it feel pain?” In other words, money, God, the state, and corporations are fictional because they don’t feel pain, but a soldier wounded in war, a starving farmer, or a mother cow who has lost her calf are real because they feel pain. This struck me as a bit odd: Is the only way to distinguish between fiction and reality is to check whether they feel pain? The concept of pain that suddenly appeared while talking about fiction and reality confused me. I think this is not because people are real and nations are fictional, but because nations are a word that encompasses people who belong to nations. In other words, it is not a difference between fiction and reality, but a difference in scope. We say we drove a ‘car’, not that we drove a ‘ride’. We say that a ‘flower’ is beautiful, not that an ‘organism’ is beautiful. Therefore, it is not appropriate to introduce the concept of pain to distinguish between fiction and reality. It is also not for Yuval Noah Harari to decide whether Zeus feels pain when his temple is burned, or whether a nation feels pain when it goes to war. If people who believe in Zeus feel pain, and people who belong to a state feel pain, can we say that Zeus and the state also feel pain? The act of introducing the concept of pain to validate an argument is highly subjective. If we call it common sense, I think we need a new definition of common sense.
This naturally leads to the question, “Could fiction be real?” Money may be a fictionalized value attached to a real thing called paper. But what if money is real? If that’s a little difficult, think of God. You might think that God is a fictionalized product of the faith of believers. But what if God actually exists? It’s one of those topics that scientists and religious people debate all the time, but no one has been able to prove it, so the debate has been going on for thousands of years. The vast majority of religious people believe that God does exist. According to one report, 83.6% of the world’s population is religious. Of course, not everyone who is religious believes that God exists, but it’s clear that a huge number of people do, which means that this book, which categorically states that God is not real, is only one idea among 16.4% of the world’s population. More specifically, it’s the opinion of just one science-loving, religion-hating person out of 8 billion people in the world. Just as we can think that God is real, I think we should consider that the things that Yuval Noah Harari says are fictional, such as money, countries, and so on, might be real.
Finally, I wonder if, as Yuval Noah Harari says, it is futile and pointless to sacrifice the real for the fictional. If you think he is right, think about the lives of those who sacrificed their lives for their country. Was the independence movement, the democratic uprising, and other fictionalized movements of our ancestors really futile and foolish when they gave their real lives, family relationships, and everything else for a fictionalized country? I think absolutely not. I believe that the act of giving real life for an invisible fiction has value, and I believe that the value we get from invisible fictions is just as valuable and huge as the value we get from real life. Of course, the real is more important than the fictional. But I disagree with Yuval Noah Harari that it is only a means for human society to function well and is otherwise useless. I believe that invisible fiction is not only necessary for human society to function well, but also indistinguishable from the real world.
I’m afraid that each of my arguments may seem too similar because I started from a single idea, but if I’ve conveyed the essence of my thoughts on the boundary between fiction and reality, I think I’ve achieved my goal. The next point I’d like to make is about the most prominent of the fictional/real divide: the divide between science and religion.
Science and religion are inseparable. The relationship between science and religion can be divided into three main categories. There are three main schools of thought on the relationship between science and religion: the conflict theory, which states that science and religion are inevitably in conflict; the separation theory, which states that science and religion are unrelated; and the harmonization theory, which states that science and religion are complementary. What I want to explore is the conflictual view of science and religion. This is because Yuval Noah Harari takes this position in his book. Science and religion have been fighting for thousands of years. Examples include the Inquisition in early modern Europe and the modern-day court battles between evolution and creationism. Galileo Galilei was a strong advocate of Nicolaus Copernicus’ heliocentrism because he found scientific facts that contradicted the heliocentric theory that the Christian church had previously supported. The church felt that Nicolaus Copernicus’s cosmology threatened Christian doctrine and banned it. The Inquisition vigorously suppressed proponents of geocentrism. Also, Protestant creationism and Charles Robert Darwin’s theory of evolution have been battling it out for centuries, and we still don’t have an answer. Science and religion have always been at odds with each other.
As I read the book, I realized that Yuval Noah Harari’s argumentation process was flawed, and his strong language was intended to instill fear in people. Of course, the development of technology and science, the emergence of artificial intelligence, and the progress of the fourth industrial revolution are very important things in human history. I agree with the author that this is an important time for humanity to think about. However, the author’s language is too strong, and I’m worried that some people might take his arguments one-sidedly, which is why I’m writing this blog post. I hope that readers of Homo Deus will not take his ideas and arguments at face value because they are novel, but will look at the same phenomenon from different perspectives and form their own opinions. I want them to think about it.
