Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

This series of books by Yuval Harari discussed the history, present and future about human mankind.

I am very grateful to have read this series of books as it helps me distill and reason my thoughts in a new light..

1. Success is about what you have to offer and what the worlds needs, with luck.

Hard work and nurture plays a role. But more often it is coincidence and luck. If you have the characteristics to survive in a dessert but born in the sea, you are doomed to death.

We often see success as a biased retrospective study. You can ask Jack Ma how he become successful. But do you think the rest of the 7 billion people in the world, no one did what Jack Ma do? He is success because he did the thing he did at that particular period, at that particular circumstances.

Neil Armstrong was remembered because he is the first one to step on the moon. Do you think his other crew member did less training or work less harder than him?

2. Nature allows, human made rule forbids.

No body will give a damn about a person that can travels faster than the speed of light, but human set rules for things that human can do, but undesirable to the culture or society. E.g. New Chinese mother are bound to follow a set of rules that restricts a new mother in the first month after delivering a baby, and that period is called confinement period 坐月子。 In the past where clean water is inaccessible, and climate was cold, modern medicine has not reach the ancient China, following these rules reduce mortality rate of both new mothers and infants. Therefore even though the rules may make a person uncomfortable, it makes sense to follow.

However in the era after the development of modern medicine, clean water access and all other electrical and electronics that can regulate our environments (air-conditioner, hot shower etc), following confinement rules is overrated. Westerners never confine themselves after deliver a baby. Prince William and Kate stepped out their house to show their kids to the world after the baby is delivered within a day.

3. I invite you not to think things as "Right" or "Wrong".

When we talk about things in terms of right and wrong, we are looking things in a "preset judgement". However there is other ways to define things, I would prefer it to be "desirable" or "undesirable", "efficiency" or not, and "fit" or not.

If you define having affair is a "wrong" thing to do, why there are still so many people having affair in this world?

Humans may not build to be monogamous.

a. The feeling of a fresh relationship is more exciting than a fix or long term relationship.

b. This may be the mechanism for genetic diversity. To increase the chances of different individuals mating with each other to produce more offspring with different genetic makeup.

Thus our brains and emotion has give us better reward when we are seeking out new relationship instead of fostering an old or fixed one.

Having affair is considered "morally undesirable" as it disrupt a modern monogamy family institution. The family members that left out (abandoned spouse, children and other family members) will have less resources and support to survive. In the past where people living in the wild, it will be a life and death situation. That is probably why family members that left out in a broken relationship, they will feel a sense of betrayal and anger, and other negative emotions that come along.

Is there any possibility that many person in a community can live together polygamously and everybody is happy with each other? Maybe there is but it is not popular or not efficient. If it is more efficient than monogamous society to produce viable and quality offspring, then that will be our social norm.

However, things can always change if technology advance or cultural norm has shifted that we are able to dispose some of the non-effective things and become more efficient collectively.