JUNE 3, MONDAY

Fundamentalism

Yuval Harari sees humans from a biological perspective. Humans are the way they are because of the chance incremental changes brought about mutatation of DNA which led, by chance, to our large brains and cognitive abilities. In order to function cooperatively we dream up forms of order which he calls myths. Religion is one imagined myth that unites a group, but so is money and Capitalism and patriotic nationalism and mathematics and all of the science. The over all myth that humans develop is culture. Culture is the way that we connect, but culture is imagined by humans as the bubble in which they live which gives them meaning and identity. But in the wider universe culture is just a man made dream with the things we consider fundamental: God, the dollar, the benevolent American empire, the English language all being things that humans dreamed up which will vanish when humans vanish. Dreamed up culture enriches us and gives us meaning and at the same time is the cause of tremendous violence to other humans and animals and all of nature.

So one of his basic points is that there is nothing fundamental, nothing absolutely real, from the perspective of the wider universe about what humans have imagined. I’ve suspected this but in my confusion have been uncertain. He is neither uncertain nor confused. Humans dream up cultural conventions including an absolute belief in God or gods or animating spirits but these dreams are simply life giving and supporting illusions.

His book illustrates this. For thousands of years hunter gatherers were animists, believing in a huge variety of local spirits. Then with the agricultural revolution and the gathering of humans in larger communities and even empires religions became more and more universal, finally claiming to be absolutely fundamental for all humans, from many gods to one god. Yet clearly from his perspective no religion are universal and no beliefs fundamental they are all a dream that binds communities together and give humans meaning, not universal meaning, simply human imagined meaning. These days we have other imagined ways of believing such as the belief in the value of money, the belief in the Capitalist system, the belief in science that serves the same purpose of uniting humans into cooperative groups. But they are all human inventions and have no wider reality.