Like lots of you, I read Yuval Harari’s massive best-seller, Sapiens, about the history of our species. He’s a good writer and tells a good story. But I’m afraid too often the story he tells is presented as the only possible story. The facts the story is based on are fairly limited, and their interpretation is somewhat flexible. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong, just that it’s not the only story that can be told from those facts.
That is what got me thinking about this new book project. I thought a different story could be told about the history of our species that doesn’t ignore (or contradict) the well-confirmed science of our past, but at the same time shows something more inspiring. I started researching and became even more convinced that I was onto something.
In this series of posts (or are these supposed to be called “newsletters”?), I’ll chronicle the process of writing the book over the next year, but I’ll also try to reveal some of the behind-the-scenes workings of the publishing world. I’m not sure yet how often I’ll write… I can’t devote too much time to writing about writing when there is a good deal of writing itself to get done!
So when I can, I’ll take some text that has already been written and use it here. Today’s edition comes from the book proposal.
When you’ve already published a book with a publisher, the proposal stage is a little easier. I sent about ten pages of text outlining what I wanted to do. But most important in that is the first page that needs to hook them. I reproduce it below. I hope it hooks you too and you think this project will be interesting to follow. I’d be grateful if you’d forward it others you think would be interested (at some point I’ll write about the necessary task of writers to develop an audience!).
First page of the proposal for The Spiritual Journey of Homo Sapiens:
In 2015 the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari published his popular book Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind. Despite its diminutive sounding subtitle, it is a hefty tome that surveys the history of our species from humble beginnings as small groups of hunter gatherers, down through the scientific, industrial, and atomic revolutions. One of the themes throughout the book is to question whether all this progress our species has achieved is really worth it. Are we happier now with our iPhones and Netflix than we were 100,000 years ago back on the savanna?
It’s tricky to objectively measure and compare across cultures how happy people are today. Does the self-report of an American suburban 16-year-old’s sense of well-being measure the same thing as that of a rural octogenarian in Mongolia? If it is difficult to compare these today, how much harder is it to determine comparable measures of happiness for our ancient ancestors who didn’t leave many records?
Harari thinks not knowing how happy people were through the different eras of our species’ development is the greatest lacuna in our understanding of history. This is not just some curious question we want answers to for the sake of knowledge itself. Rather, he wants to leverage that information to make us happier today. For clearly he’s not very happy with how things have gone, and looking around at his fellow Homo sapiens, he doesn’t think the rest of us are that happy either with the world as we’ve made it.
But what if happiness — in that sense of subjective well-being that sociologists try to measure — isn’t the ultimate goal for our species? What if we were intended for something else? Something higher, something holier?
I’m not claiming happiness is irrelevant. I want to be happy too. And I’m not persuaded that technology has made us fundamentally happier. But I think there is a different story that can be told about the history of our species than Harari’s pessimistic account — one that starts earlier among our evolutionary ancestors and shows a different trajectory for our species. There is a fascinating story of the development of capacities and abilities that culminates in the remarkable creatures we are today, which are capable of not only happiness, but also freedom, moral responsibility, and love.
Maybe “culminates” isn’t quite the right word… I don’t believe we’re at the end of the story of humanity. We’re very recent arrivals relative to the history of life on our planet. And despite the doom and gloom of Harari’s assessment, I believe we are destined for greater things. And I believe that hearing a better story about our past can point us in a more hopeful direction for a better future.
This book tells that story.
I am so glad you are writing g this book! Your concept is very needed to ponder in this chaotic world!
I like page one.
Tell me more!
TAT