In-flight Construction

Still making my way through Sapiens, by Y. N. Harari, and trying to get my head around a theme, or one of the threads, running through the book.

I don’t know if it’s the right word, but biologically speaking, certain instincts are imprinted in our DNA, which manifest themselves in certain behaviors that we just know how to do. For example, the average bird knows it needs to build a nest out of certain materials and in certain places, and it hunts and gathers food for and sustains its young—things our human ancestors also had in their DNA and that we still have.

Alongside this “pre-programming” is a long list of other behaviors that are learned and conditioned, contextual and evolving, which seems to mostly apply to Homo Sapiens. Harari maintains that one of our species’ shortcomings is that whatever is preprogrammed in our DNA has only taken us so far, and that the speed at which we developed socially and in other ways outran the tools we have biologically.

Harari makes it sound like if the directions were in our DNA, we might have fewer issues with how we decide to label and organize ourselves, how and what and who we worship– if anyone– what makes for proper behavior, who has the power, who makes decisions, what’s important and has value, etc. This is where his emphasis on myth-making comes in. In the absence of hardwired directions, we humans create other guideposts and guidelines and expectations for behavior that are agreed upon by large groups of people.

I should probably stop before I get too far off course. Bottom line is that I think this discrepancy between DNA encoding and what we’ve had to come up with on our own is the basis for the often-calamitous disparities and differences that exist among us as citizens of Earth. We’ve had to wing it, in a sense, and we haven’t always made the right choices and decisions. We are still hunters and gatherers—foragers—who have found themselves thrust into roles and situations that have long taken us out of our element, demanded we think on our feet, just making stuff up as we go.