The key ideas

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Yuval Noah Harari, 2015

Today food kills more people than war. For the first time in history, famine, plague and war have retreated, and Harari asks an awkward question: what do people start to want once the old disasters are over? A book about humanity's three new dreams, and about what happens to us when machines begin to understand us better than we understand ourselves.

Who it is for

For anyone curious about where the world is heading and what it means for ordinary people, and ready for questions that come without ready answers.

We have rid ourselves of famine, plague and war, and found that we do not know what we want next.

What the book is about

For thousands of years, humans had three enemies they could do nothing about: famine, plague and war. They came the way a storm comes, and all you could do was pray. Harari opens with a claim you want to argue with: at the start of the twenty-first century, all three retreated for the first time.

They did not disappear. They retreated far enough to stop being fate and become problems to solve. And that raises a question nobody had to ask before: what do people want once the old disasters are over?

In Sapiens, Harari told the story of where we came from. Here he looks ahead, but he does not guess. He shows which forces are already at work today and where they might lead.

Ahead of you: why medicine has not made us live much longer, why plenty does not bring contentment, where the lawn in front of the house came from, and what happens when a program knows you better than your husband or wife.

Idea 1. Today you are more likely to be killed by what you eat than by someone who wants you dead

Harari drops a line worth stopping for: sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder. It sounds like a paradox. In fact it is arithmetic.

In 2012, about 56 million people died worldwide. About 620,000 died at the hands of others: 120,000 in wars and another half million from crime. About 800,000 died by their own hand. About one and a half million died of diabetes.

Now add it up. All human violence on the planet killed fewer people than a single disease that most often comes from overeating. Hence Harari's second line: for the average European or American, Coca-Cola is a far deadlier threat than Al-Qaeda.

That is why the heading is no exaggeration. Gunpowder stands for those who want to kill you. Sugar is something you buy of your own free will and carry home. For the first time in history, the second kills more people than the first.

Harari adds an important caveat himself: he does not say the disasters are over. The numbers are from 2012, and since the book came out there has been a pandemic and new wars. His point is different. Famine and plague are no longer a mysterious force from above. They have become problems with solutions and with someone responsible for them.

What this means for you: once a disaster becomes a problem, it loses its aura of fate. And a solved problem always leaves an empty space behind it, and the question "what next?"

In a medieval village, after a bad harvest, people went to church and prayed for rain. Today, after a bad harvest, people look for whoever failed to keep a reserve, build a storehouse or bring in grain. The event is the same; the attitude to it is the opposite.

The main change Harari notices happened not in the world but in our heads: disaster turned from a verdict into a problem. That is exactly why, for the first time, humanity has room for new desires.

Read in Livria

About the author

Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli historian and a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He became famous for Sapiens, his book about humanity's past. Homo Deus is its sequel, only this time about the future.

All books by this author: Yuval Noah Harari

Terms from the book

  • Jolie
  • homo sapiens
  • Algorithm
  • diabetes
  • Al-Qaeda
  • Consciousness
  • Homo deus: The book's title and the author's image: a human who has gained powers once attributed to gods. Not a scientific term.
  • Humanism: A worldview that puts the human being, human feelings and human choice at the center. Harari examines it as a system of belief; this is his own interpretation.
  • Experiencing self: A term from the book: the part of us that feels what is happening, moment by moment.
  • Narrating self: A term from the book: the part that turns what we lived through into a story and makes decisions based on it.
  • Genetic test: An analysis of a person's DNA that shows which diseases they are more likely than usual to develop.
  • Dataism: Harari's word for a worldview in which the value of anything is set by what it contributes to the flow of data. It is his construction, not an existing doctrine.
  • Useless class: The book's term for people whose work the economy may no longer need because of automation. A scenario from the author, not a forecast with a date.

All terms

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