The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning by Jeremy Lent | Goodreads
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The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning
by
Jeremy Lent (Goodreads Author),
Fritjof Capra (Foreword)
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4.23 · Rating details · 102 Ratings · 20 Reviews
This fresh perspective on crucial questions of history identifies the root metaphors that cultures have used to construct meaning in their world. It offers a glimpse into the minds of a vast range of different peoples: early hunter-gatherers and farmers, ancient Egyptians, traditional Chinese sages, the founders of Christianity, trail-blazers of the Scientific Revolution, and those who constructed our modern consumer society.
Taking the reader on an archaeological exploration of the mind, the author, an entrepreneur and sustainability leader, uses recent findings in cognitive science and systems theory to reveal the hidden layers of values that form today's cultural norms.
Uprooting the tired clichés of the science-religion debate, he shows how medieval Christian rationalism acted as an incubator for scientific thought, which in turn shaped our modern vision of the conquest of nature. The author probes our current crisis of unsustainability and argues that it is not an inevitable result of human nature, but is culturally driven: a product of particular mental patterns that could conceivably be reshaped.
By shining a light on our possible futures, the book foresees a coming struggle between two contrasting views of humanity:
- one driving to a technological endgame of artificially enhanced humans,
- the other enabling a sustainable future arising from our intrinsic connectedness with each other and the natural world.
This struggle, it concludes, is one in which each of us will play a role through the meaning we choose to forge from the lives we lead. (less)
Hardcover, 569 pages
Published May 23rd 2017 by Prometheus Books
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What patterns of meaning structure your own life? Where did those patterns come from?
See 2 questions about The Patterning Instinct…
Mar 16, 2018Trevor rated it it was amazing
Shelves: economics, evolution, history, philosophy
It is funny how books seem to find me sometimes. I reviewed Small Change last week and then Aaron recommended I read Doughnut Economics. I can’t say the idea filled me with much joy – I had a horrible feeling it would be something like ‘economics meets Homer Simpson in this fun-packed…’ oh god, no, kill me now. But it proved to be one of the best books I’ve read in a while – she’s both super smart and intensely interesting.
Then during the week a friend of mine sent me an article by George Monbiot about Pinker’s new book on the Enlightenment and that then said that both Doughnut Economics and this book were well worth reading – actually, what he said was even better than that: “While Pinker is lauded, far more interesting and original books, such as Jeremy Lent’s ‘The Patterning Instinct’ and Kate Raworth’s ‘Doughnut Economics’, are scarcely reviewed.” And since I was really enjoying my doughnut book, I figured it was pretty likely I would enjoy a good pattern book too… Ironically enough, this one gets it title in part as a polemic with Pinker and his language instinct. Wheels within wheel, guys, it turns out it’s all just wheels within wheels.
I kept thinking of Hegel’s Philosophy of History while reading this. Not that this is really trying to stamp the final and ultimate true interpretation of the history of the world, but he is trying to show the kinds of patterns that underlie peoples’ understanding of the world and how these make for particular interactions between people and between people and nature. I can’t remember which of Foucault’s books says that we don’t do history so as to understand the past, but rather to understand the present – but that’s pretty much the point of this book too.
There’s a kind of subplot to this book, that you only really get at the end – and that is summed up by Gramsci’s most famous quote about being a pessimist because of intellect, but an optimist because of will. To misquote someone else mentioned in this book – only a fool or an economist could look at the world at the moment and not be terrified for our future. As Doughnut Economics points out, our current paradigm thinks it is perfectly fine that we need to have endless economic growth on a finite planet and since that necessarily means destroying the basis of human existence, our current paradigm is one that will ultimately lead to the catastrophic failure of our societies and civilisation – unless, of course, we make fundamental changes to how we live. But to do that we must make fundamental changes to how we think about and understand the world – probably the hardest part to the change. This book says that we have made changes as great as this as a species before – the problem this time is that we need to do it consciously and outside of our immediate self-interest – not something we selfish and greedy humans have ever proven particularly good at. (Did I mention pessimism of the intellect???)
Except that if there is one thing that looking at our history and archaeology as a species shows us is that humans have come up with a remarkable variety of ways of understanding the world, and that small groups of people determined to effect change can be devastatingly effective. I need to quote this bit, which he says just before he uses that famous Mead quote:
“Political scientists have studied the history of all campaigns since 1900 that led to government overthrow or territorial liberation, and they discovered that no campaign failed once it achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5 percent of the population.”
If that doesn’t give you optimism of the will, I’m not sure what will.
But this is just the last chapter or so – the rest of the book is a fascinating run through the history of humanity’s various understandings of the relationship between themselves and their universe. What is particularly interesting is the deep variety, but also the cross-fertilisation that has existed between these traditions.
This book is quite strongly influenced by Jared Diamond’s Germs, Guns and Steel – but he argues with that book as much as he promotes it as being essential reading (something I would do too – and by the way, this book ends with an annotated bibliography, what a bloody useful thing that is). In some ways this book is similar to Diamond’s, but less about how civilisations rise and fall and prosper or struggle due to their environmental circumstances, but about how their fundamental philosophical patterns of thinking impacts how they engage with the world and therefore how they will interact with other civilisations and so on. So that the philosophical and spiritual traditions that started in India, China, Greece or Palestine all expressed different relationships to knowledge and different expectations based on either harmony with or stewardship over the world. So that Eastern ways of understanding the world stressed relationships and interconnections, while Western notions stressed a kind of hidden eternal truth that needed to be uncovered and that then granted access to ultimate control. So, one tradition sees humanity within the world, and the other as humanity outside the world – this is, of course, a gross over-simplification, and one the book adds much more nuance to.
As is stressed repeatedly here – the metaphors we used as a civilisation reflect how we frame the world and therefore also how we interact with it. In the Western framing those metaphors too often involve constraining nature, subduing it, and ultimately replacing it with the power of reason. This is reflected in our religion which stresses that in the beginning was the word and that the word was God – it is reflected in some of us desiring a time in the not too distant future when we become ‘post-human’, when our brains will be uploaded to a computer and we become immortal.
But not all human philosophical traditions have the same desires as the current and dominant Western one. Rather, many other traditions stress the interconnectedness of the universe and also the communal nature of human societies. One of the more interesting observations in this book – and I don’t know how true it is, as my understanding of non-Western traditions is far too limited – but he says that while other traditions have sectarian wars and so on, generally these did not end up in acts of genocide – in the way the Old Testament demands from the Jews as they conquer those tribes already in the ‘holy lands’. Such single-minded certainty of the need to eradicate all other voices is a particularly Western affliction and one that is at odds with humanity’s ongoing survival and that of our civilisation.
This is an interesting book for many reasons – it gives a nice series of thumbnail sketches of some of the most important philosophical and spiritual traditions. It explains how these helped develop the social psychology of the peoples of the nations that have been held under the sway of these traditions – and it therefore gives some hope that maybe, just maybe, understanding that since such a variety philosophical traditions have existed and that they are human inventions we have developed to help us understand the world, and since it is becoming increasingly clear these aren’t working particularly well at the moment at helping us understand and be in the weld, that maybe, just maybe, we will find the courage to change how we understand the world and change how our societies interact with the world before it is ultimately too late.
Intellectually, I don’t see all that much hope of this happening, of course, but then, if only 3.5% of us can find the will, change is inevitable.(less)
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Nov 05, 2017Emma Sea rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Excellent book, for all it was a little heavy on the generalizing in places. Lent also doesn't address the fact that Neo-Confusionist stability relies on humans accepting their place and fitting in i.e. it sucks to be a woman, a minority, a human with an intellectual or physical difference, a member of the non-elite. Feminism grew within the Western individualistic framework. Can you have personal freedom within an interconnected web that emphasizes the overarching importance of society vs the individual? Still, I definitely rec this for everyone interested in the possible directions for our culture over the next 80 years.
Kindle book finishes at 62%, the rest is references. (less)
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Sep 01, 2017David rated it liked it
Shelves: 21st-century, academic, cultural-history, history, science
Although Lent attempts to connect the scope of this book with that of Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel it ends up being nothing more than a contemporary Leftist attempt at Cultural Determinism. Not to say this is entirely incorrect but this approach has a tendency to unmoor events from an external reality and objective facts. The reason this is a bad approach is that subsequent academics and political demagogues can further remove humanity from a shared experience in the name of Utopian idealism and could visit the suffering of Soviet Russia and communist China (not to mention the French Revolution) upon the world yet again.
Though Lent is serious minded, this book is little more than jumped up cultural determinism and may be safely avoided by all serious students of the human condition: in the same way as the Frankfurt School, Critical Theory, and Cultural Marxism may be.
Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars (less)
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May 12, 2018Tom LA rated it it was ok
Listened to audiobook, but I couldn’t get further than 50%. I found it too repetitive, bland, and not really bringing anything of substance. Like another reviewer said, the author has a strong bias for cultural determinism, and he’s writing with an agenda. What you get is a lot of anthropological and sociological topics with a vague “the ancient past was golden, today all is shit” overarching narrative. No, thanks.
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May 18, 2018Jim Angstadt added it
The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning
Jeremy Lent (Goodreads Author), Fritjof Capra (Foreword)
In spite of a foreword, preface, and introduction that take 32 pages, I had a mistaken impression of what this book was about.
Part 1, "Everything Is Connected", was a fascinating discussion of how the prefrontal cortex grew in early man to meet changing needs. This growth included an increase in size, and, more importantly, an ability to handle abstract ideas. The author continues with the shift from hunter-gatherers to an agriculture basis, discussing the rise of a hierarchical model and an increase in anxiety due to a sometimes uncertain future.
Thousands of years pass. Now the focus in on the notion of dualism, a contrast between the western concept of opposition and the eastern idea of harmony. 130+ pages later, I was numb, and thinking of DNF.
In the third major part, the author applies dualism to the conquest of nature. In a methodical and un-hyped discussion, he addresses many of the environmental issues that we currently face. One can now see how the concepts of dualism have given us a frame of reference that may not be sufficiently helpful in reaching a solution to our problems.
The last small part is focused on whether a solution is possible and how it might happen. One is hopeful, but a lot of change is needed in a short amount of time.(less)
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Dec 19, 2017Jonathan Latham rated it it was amazing
This is a really tremendous book for understanding some of the key events and strands of human intellectual history. Jeremy Lent has a great way of pulling out important threads, especially in the development of religions, and the broad reading and independent-mindedness to do so. His search begins with the separation of homo species from other primates and goes right up to the present day. Some of the events that Jeremy Lent describes I was already familiar with but I always found his interpretations fresh, concise, often helpful ,and only incorrect on very minor issues. Some of the developments and intellectual currents he describes, such as the transition from animist to human deities and the development of Chinese philosophy since Confucius, were almost entirely novel to me. His ultimate point is that we live in a world of unexpected choices, we dont have to see the world in the narrow way we now typically do, and that is an extremely important message of hope. He used his research to extricate himself from an existential crisis and we can too.
I do have some quibbles though. He organises the book loosely around an ill-defined "patterning instinct" whose uniqueness and validity is unclear and it makes no real contribution to the book. Plus, an instinct is one of those concepts often invoked to narrow human potential, exactly the kind of genetic determinist thinking the book is intended to refute. So its use in the title and the hook seems unfortunate.
Ultimately too, the book ends weakly, with no real recommendations and pointers, which to me implies that his enquiries, though profound, are nevertheless slightly off-track. Somehow he lost the scent. The real book that will blow apart the Western cultural mindset has yet to be written. The Patterning Instinct though, is still easily 5stars since for most people it will substitute and far exceed a conventional liberal arts education, and for anyone who wants to change the world or understand themselves it will be both an inspiration and a primer. (less)
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Jun 20, 2018Keith Akers rated it liked it
This book is a brilliant but bulky first draft that badly needs to be edited. This ambitious doorstop of a book is much too long (569 pages) and needs to be cut by about half, with many sections cut out entirely or brought into better focus. It doesn't quite deliver on its premise and promise, but it does say enough to make it quite worth looking at. Therefore, I'd really say that this book rates 5 stars for "you should look at it" but only 3 stars for "you should read the whole thing." Let me explain.
The idea of a cultural history explaining how our environmental crisis arose out of cultural factors is a key reason I picked up and read the book. I am grateful for his numerous references to rapid cultural and social transformation, e. g. China in the 20th century, so clearly rapid cultural and social transformation is possible, and given the environmental crisis, something that needs to happen in a hurry.
Culture? Environmental crisis? Lead me on! It starts out with a bang, but gets bogged down in the middle. He could have cut the book by at least 50% --- get rid of much or most of parts 2, 3, and 4. He should lose the part where he tries to explain the cultural history of the west, and then China, India, and everything else for the past 10,000 years. Please just focus on cultural attitudes and our present-day environmental crisis with some illustrations from our past.
Early on, when he discusses the ancient Greeks and Plato, my mind started raising red flags. He says that Plato is responsible for our dualistic world view. All right, fine. I was a philosophy major (and even did some graduate work), and I think I know something about Plato. So what does he say about Plato? He starts talking about Plato's theory of the forms. He doesn't cite anything in Plato, but quotes from secondary sources, such as Francis Cornford's book on Plato.
Francis Cornford is a respected commentator on Plato who I am sure has followers, but he is hardly the last word on Plato, and I think he is dead wrong about Plato's Theory of Forms. Plato doesn't have a theory of forms. That Plato has a "theory of the forms" in the first place is a misconception which Cornford unfortunately seems to be somewhat responsible for. The only place in Plato where there is extensive discussion of the so-called "forms" is in the "Parmenides," in which the Young Socrates talks with Parmenides and the conclusion is that the theory of the forms is to be rejected.
Most of Plato's writings are agnostic and negative in their outcome. A plausible theory is put forward, and then shot down. In the "Theaetetus," one of Plato's key "mature" dialogues, for example, Socrates discusses three theories of knowledge: knowledge is perception, knowledge is true opinion, and knowledge is true opinion plus reasons. We wind up rejecting all three. In the Seventh Letter, he explicitly says that his doctrine cannot be taught like other disciplines, but that it catches fire in the mind of the student after much preparation and study. Plato's dialogues often have memorable mystical myths, such as the myth of Er in the Republic and the theory of recollection in the Meno. Plato is a mystic; he doesn't teach "explicit" objective knowledge or science in the sense that we think of today. For science, you need to go to Aristotle.
So, to get back to Lent, the author presents Plato all wrong. I see that this doesn't fatally damage his thesis, because this kind of dualism is clearly present in many Western thinkers, such as the early orthodox Christian theologians like Augustine as well as Descartes, Kant, and so on. However, at this point I am having to supply my own rationalizations to help the author out, and I start to lose interest in everything else he has to say. He is going to rely on secondary sources, albeit plausible secondary sources, and so we are going to get a long-winded, but fuzzy, intellectual history of the West, and later the East, too.
I haven't gone through all his sources, but I see that he even relies on secondary sources for writers for which there could easily have been explicit references. For example, at one point (p. 378) he quotes Nietzsche as saying "God is dead." Oh yeah, I say to myself, I remember a big discussion of that in the 1960's! I wonder where Nietzsche says that? I turn to the footnote, and I get a secondary source, a reference to Peter Watson's "The Age of Atheists." Jeez, Louise! I did a Google search and quickly found the Wikipedia article identifying the phrase "God is dead" as coming from "The Gay Science" and "Thus Spake Zarathustra." Why can't Lent do an extra 45 seconds of research and give us the exact reference? And is this how he is going to do all of his research, and if so, why should I read this?
So in conclusion, this is a fascinating but unfinished book. Send it back to the author with a request for extensive revisions. A cultural resolution to the environmental crisis is possible, in fact, we may be undergoing such a transformation right now. But it might also turn out badly. What kind of cultural transformations do we need for human survival, and how do we get there? I wish someone would write about that.
(less)
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Mar 10, 2018Ken rated it really liked it
Entertaining read - I read this at the same time as “Enlightenment Now”. Both authors present an interpretation of the swathe of human history and the “reason “ societies evolved as they did. Both use a model of history built upon a very long time scale and apply it to understand the next 50 years - far too shot to be sensitive to the forces they invoke for history. Doesn’t anyone understand the concept of signal to noise anymore? Both authors appear to be intellectually rigorous - and yet their conclusions seem to be based primarily on belief systems. Lent has a strong affinity for the supposed less brutal philosophies of the East, and his argument that cultural norms drive beliefs is more compelling than Pinker or the “Guns, Germs and Steel” deterministic view in my mind. The Patterning Instinct emphasizes the human compulsion to find patterns - perhaps when they don’t even exist(?). That is where I think most of these interpretations of history fall short. Maybe there was no good reason for things to evolve as they did. History is a mystery and the future is ours to see....? But Lent’s assertion that core cultural norms impact belief and this is built into the politics that will drive critical decisions over the next 50 years is important. Understanding the foundations of our belief systems is surely the only way we can challenge them and learn to look outside the boundaries we set for ourselves. Read this book ... (less)
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Apr 25, 2018Red rated it really liked it
Shelves: economy-stupid
A beautyful book with many insights that are put skilled together. So my takeaway is this, some 100K years ago first humans left Africa on a persuit of happiness. The ones that stayed home would become wise. And this pattern continues ever since.
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Jun 05, 2017University of Chicago Magazine added it
Shelves: chicago-booth
Jeremy Lent, MBA'86
Author
From the author: "This fresh perspective on crucial questions of history identifies the root metaphors that cultures have used to construct meaning in their world. It offers a glimpse into the minds of a vast range of different peoples: early hunter-gatherers and farmers, ancient Egyptians, traditional Chinese sages, the founders of Christianity, trail-blazers of the Scientific Revolution, and those who constructed our modern consumer society.
"Taking the reader on an archaeological exploration of the mind, the author, an entrepreneur and sustainability leader, uses recent findings in cognitive science and systems theory to reveal the hidden layers of values that form today's cultural norms.
"Uprooting the tired clichés of the science-religion debate, he shows how medieval Christian rationalism acted as an incubator for scientific thought, which in turn shaped our modern vision of the conquest of nature. The author probes our current crisis of unsustainability and argues that it is not an inevitable result of human nature, but is culturally driven: a product of particular mental patterns that could conceivably be reshaped.
"By shining a light on our possible futures, the book foresees a coming struggle between two contrasting views of humanity: one driving to a technological endgame of artificially enhanced humans, the other enabling a sustainable future arising from our intrinsic connectedness with each other and the natural world. This struggle, it concludes, is one in which each of us will play a role through the meaning we choose to forge from the lives we lead." (less)
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Jun 03, 2018Vivify M rated it it was ok
Shelves: general-interest
The title of this book had me eagerly anticipating a scientific exploration of cognition, and its impact on culture over time. Unfortunately, that was not what I got.
This author has tremendous depth of knowledge of culture and religion, across the globe and through time. His extensive knowledge of religious history is amazing, but exceeds the limits of my interest.
The book introduces concepts of complex systems, and the idea that language and the metaphors we use, determine our cognitive processes and ultimately our actions. It suggests that culture can be viewed as two intertwined complex systems, one tangible and the other intangible. I enjoyed considering these, but aside from presenting the ideas, the book did little to substantiate them.
To me this read like snippings of Sapiens, and Guns Germs and Steel, tenuously connected by a promising but poorly constructed argument.
The author has a strong bias in favour of Chinese culture, and often gushes over the noble ancients. He is clearly very taken by the wholistic nature of eastern cultures. I don't know much about these, and found much that was new and interesting to me. Sadly, I also found myself heavily discounting this information, since the remainder was often weekly argued and downright questionable.
I was happy to broaden my understanding of the forces and interactions that have defined humanity through time and into the present. As he points out, Jared Diamond, Dawkins, Harari and Pinker have discussed this topic in terms of technological, geographical, language, and biology. But, he goes on to say that they have neglecting the impact of cultural and ways of thinking. I'm not sure this is an entirely fair claim. None the less, it would be worth exploring those factors in further detail. If he only brought something to add to the conversation, I would be happy. Unfortunately, I found this book distastefully combative towards all his contemporaries. Throughout, he is arrogantly critical of the aforementioned authors, needlessly accusing all his counterparts of Reductionism and Post modernism. I found it ironic, how this attitude contradicts the wholistic system thinking cultures which he spends so much time gushing over.
Notes:
One of the most interesting parts were the description of how some hunter gatherer cultures keep egos in check. Successful hunters are derided to prevent anyone from feeling above the group. Other social norms enforce extreme sharing of all forms of wealth. This topic is also discussed in the article "Envy's hidden hand" by James Suzman, author of "Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen".
Another interesting idea put forward, is that war may be linked to the evolution of cooperation. People who were willing to risk themselves to defend companions, thrived through the strength of their group, and paved the way to armies and war. If I remember correctly this is also discussed by Dawkins in the selfish gene.
Many times I found myself thinking his analysis could have benefited by some application of game theory. Unfortunately, only narratives and tangential facts are offered to support the theories.
He hates on the West, for good reason. But I found myself wondering why he didn't talk about the stoics. It is late in the book, when he does finally discuss them, and then only briefly.
While he extensively covers society from West to East, not much is said about Africa. As someone living in Africa, and mindful of topics such as post-colonial education, I wondered; Is this because he doesn't know much about Africa, or is there simply not much to be said?
He seems to say that the west conquered the world and initiated the scientific revolution, because it had ways of thinking that were sinister. While other parts of the world were happy to live in harmony. And as he put it, didn't usher in the scientific revolution simply because they didn't want too. But I don't see how this substantiates his claims, or tells us very much about the myriad of reasons leading to this state of mind. (less)
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Aug 20, 2018Jacob van Berkel rated it it was amazing
Shelves: eastasia, religion
This book is two things:
(1) it's a journey through the 'cognitive history' of humankind. This constitutes the bulk of the book, and covers a lot of ground.
(2) an Elijah-like call to repent, sustainability and connectedness-wise. This constitutes only roughly the last two chapters. And though I think this message is really important, and I'm certainly sympathetic to it, I fear is that a lot of (professional) reviewers will define this book by it, and scare people off in the process.
Because that's the thing with Elijahs and Cassandras: no one wants to listen to them.
And that would be a shame, because I think a lot of people would really really love this book for the (1) part. I mean, if people liked Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens (and a lot of people did), they will probably also enjoy this book. In fact, they (like me) might enjoy it even more, as Sapiens was only special or good in the first part and a half, in which Harari framed history into the role of the 'stories' people tell each other and the 'imaginary orders' these stories are weaved into. After that Sapiens becomes sort of a standard history textbook, not particularly bad but not particularly good either. The Patterning Instinct also interprets history as (at least partly) idea-driven - Lent says: culture shapes values, values shape history; Harari put it as: the cognitive revolution is the point at which history declared itself independent of biology (paraphrasing both) - but manages to stay fresh and fascinating throughout. The main difference is that Lent focuses on intellectual history while Harari focuses just as much on events.
Anyway, for what it's worth, personally I really loved this book. (For the (1) part.) A good indicator of how interesting a book was to me, or much I learned from it, is the amount of notes I took. Usually I take between 2 and 5 pages (A5 sized) of notes. A little more if I'm completely new to a subject, but even then 10 pages would be exceptional. For this book I took 41 pages of notes, and basically added the entire 'further reading' section to my 'to-read' list. And I wasn't even new to most of the subjects! In fact, a lot of the references were already in my 'read' and 'to-read' lists.
Of course that also means I might be biased, as this book covers exactly the sort of topics I was already clearly interested in. So I will have to be careful and say that maybe or even probably anyone who likes history - especially the big, wide kind, in the vein of Jared Diamond, Ian Morris, or Harari, etc. - will enjoy this book. But will definitely recommend this this book to anyone who is interested in intellectual history (philosophy & religion) of various 'civilizations'.*
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* Esp. the religious and philosophical traditions of Chinese, Indian, Greek, and 'Western' civilizations receive a lot of attention in this book, along with the hunter-gatherer worldview & ethic, but Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Persian, Jewish, and Islamic thought are also discussed in some detail; more are mentioned (Incas, Mayans, & al.) of course, but mostly for comparison and not in too much detail. (less)
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Jul 29, 2018Warren Mcpherson rated it really liked it
Shelves: ideas
Cognitive history. Exploring core beliefs and understandings, as well as how they change over time in the context of society as a complex system.
The analysis of the original development of language and the dawn of agriculture and the impact of these developments on our belief systems was fascinating. The book follows the development of philosophy in ancient Greece and it impacts on Christianity and Islam. These systems are contrasted with the cultural developments on China. The fawning exploration of Chinese beliefs was new to me and interesting. I don't particularly mind if a discussion is biased, but as the book spent more time comparing religions I felt this was not what had drawn me to it in the first place. It remained informative. In the end, the author spends the last chapter telling the reader what ought to happen in the future. Perhaps this was inevitable.
The book is long, reflecting and referring to a great deal of research. I think it could be better with a clearer synthesis of the books purpose and a review of how each section serves that purpose. I suspect the scope of the book makes the writing process a touch unwieldy so organizational shortcomings are understandable.
One thing I particularly liked was the discussion of reciprocal causality of complex systems.
Overall this is a very informative book on a reasonably novel and fascinating topic.(less)
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Jul 27, 2018Barnabas rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: science
It's a heavy one....
I liked Sapiens, and even more Homo Deus from Harari, and this book is pretty much on par with those, actually in many ways goes deeper and analyses more.
If you consider where is humanity coming from and where are we going (sustainably or not) this book is for you.
Get prepared though that your concepts of mythology, religion, ideals, will be tested as this book is very deep on going back to historical roots.
I believe this is a book to be read or listened to more than once - I thoroughly enjoyed the audio performance, but being honest, it is a tough book to listen to in one setting.
Make you set the time aside to take the mental journey with Mr Jeremy Lent. It is worth it.(less)
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Jul 01, 2018Mitch Olson rated it really liked it
A fantastic journey through the history of mankind viewed through the perspective of culture. Reading it made me more conscious of the implicit choices that resulted in the world as we know it. A little drawn out
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Aug 01, 2018Rob Smith rated it it was ok
Strong beginning, but devolves into a lot of generalisations and relies too much on books like itself to sell itself. I'd skip it, or read part one.
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