One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and spawn new obligations.

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.

Imagined Order

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.

Ideas

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.

Natural

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.

Discrimination 

The power of fiction and gossip led humans to collaborate on a massive scale. But beyond a group of 30 people, we cannot completely understand other people. Hence, humans have an evolutionary tendency to gossip about other people, to find out if they are safe and could be trusted.

Gossip

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.

Energy

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.

Evolutionary Success

In the food chain, humans were supposed to be on the level of monkeys. The ability to adapt without any change in the DNA is what made humans superior to any other animal. But such a sudden rise in the food chain without proper evolutionary development led humans to be always afraid and insecure in the back of their minds, similar to how monkeys are afraid of their predators.

Food Chain

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.

Capitalism

Great book, a must-read for anyone who wishes to understand humans. 

New York Times BestsellerA Summer Reading Pick for President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.”One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us?Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become?Featuring 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrations/diagrams, this provocative and insightful work is sure to spark debate and is essential reading for aficionados of Jared Diamond, James Gleick, Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and Sharon Moalem.

Understand yourself and those around you.

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Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli public intellectual, historian and professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of the popular science bestsellers Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.