Rohit Patnaik's Key Ideas from Sapiens
by Yuval Noah Harari

Humans didn't domesticate wheat. In terms of evolution, it is wheat that domesticated humans. Humans became slaves to crops, tending to them every day, increasing their population, even at the cost of their aching backs.

If an employee of Apple dies, Apple hires another employee. Even if the CEO dies, Apple still employs another CEO and continues to exist. It is a separate entity, which exists only in the collective imagination of people. Only another imagined entity can completely kill Apple, such as the Law.

Discrimination was a chance event, which got worse with time with the help of human constructed myths. But no matter which era we find humans in, men always had more privilege than women.

Everything possible in nature is natural by biology, unnatural is a human construct. Is it natural to be homosexual? If it exists, it is natural; unnatural is defined by humans.

Freedom or equality; we can't have both. If a free market exists, then some people will become wealthier than others. If everybody should be equal, then some freedom has to be taken away from the market. A free market leads to inequality, sometimes even in unfair ways. Is it bad? Is it good? The only thing we know, it works.

Before the Industrial Revolution, human civilization was fuelled by food. Every product produced on earth was produced from human effort. But after the industrial revolution, we made nature do the work for us, in the form of engines and machines by utilizing energy from coal.

We think that we make our own decisions, we are in control over everything. But imagined entities and ideas such as capitalism, nationalism, and religion are bigger forces that govern human civilizations, fuel wars, and protect themselves throughout centuries; humans, in a way, are just their medium of propagation.