Sapiens

recuperated,

So, monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe – and He’s evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief.

Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?

The ability to create an imagined reality out of words enabled large numbers of strangers to cooperate effectively.

Foragers usually didn’t waste much time thinking about next month or next summer. Farmers sailed in their imagination years and decades into the future.

Because the Sapiens social order is imagined, humans cannot preserve the critical information for running it simply by making copies of their DNA and passing these on to their progeny.

incriminating.

In contrast, an imagined order is always in danger of collapse, because it depends upon myths, and myths vanish once people stop believing in them. In order to safeguard an imagined order, continuous and strenuous efforts are imperative.

Sociological research has shown that the maximum ‘natural’ size of a group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals. Most people can neither intimately know, nor gossip effectively about, more than 150 human beings.