SAPIENS EXTRACT

 

All other animals use their communication system

only to describe reality.

Humans, in contrast, use their language not merely to describe reality,

but also to create new realities, fictional realities.

Take for example our legal systems. Today, most legal systems are based on a belief in human rights. But human rights are a fiction, just like God and Heaven. In reality, humans have no rights, Cut open a human, and you won’t find there any rights. You'll find kidney heart DNA ... The only place where human rights exist is in the stories we invent and tell one another.

The same mechanism is at work in politics. Like gods and human rights, nations are fictions. You can see it, touch it, smell it. But the india or Israel are not a physical reality. You cannot see them, touch them or smell them. They are just stories that humans invented and then became extremely attached to.

Indeed, money is probably the most successful fiction ever invented by humans. Not all people believe in God, or in human rights, or in the United States of America. But everybody believes in money, and everybody believes in the dollar bill. Even Osama bin Laden. He hated American religion, American politics and American culture - but he was quite fond of American dollars. He had no objection to that story.

To conclude, whereas all other animals live in an objective world of rivers, trees and lions, we humans live in dual world. Yes, there are rivers, trees and lions in our world. But on top of that objective reality, we have constructed a second layer of make-believe reality, comprising fictional entities such as the European Union, God, the dollar and human rights.