The book was supposed to be Sapiens .We did spend a lot of time thinking and conversing about what Harari said as mankind progressed from being an also ran species to the the apex of the earth and arguably beyond. Over the last 70000 years, humankind has moved on from agriculture, cognition and science. Humans were colonized by agriculture that led us to looking at life at a location. This led to creation of our myths and legends and imagination that has made us spend much more calories on the brain . We have created institutions like myths, religions, countries and money - none of which were natural. Our ability to cooperate and mutually believe in our myths and flexibly cooperate reacting to situations means that we are evolving constantly. With the acceleration of scientific revolution that followed our cognition to now having large computers processing AI, surely we will evolve further and what than evolution will be according to Harari has been mentioned in his subsequent books Homo Deus and 21 lessons for 21st Century
We then connected with our own experiences of the new generation and families going to restaurants and droomscrolling, our thumbs being more comfortable than other fingers, loss of cursive writing and how this have changed in our lifetimes. We have all outsourced some faculties of our brain to our mobiles and have adapted to it . Like always, Sapiens is dark bright and real and a life changing book and a subject that combines history, economics, psychology and science and brings it altogether in a thought provoking way. It was also interesting to see Uday pointing out that Harari's journey of connecting the world began with Vipassana .
We did touch upon other books like Factfullness , a story of Daniel Goleman and his discovery of Emotional Intelligence again post Vipassana, a short story of a criminal touched upon a saint who moved to sainthood among others . The other interesting aspect was how our biases are being reinforced by the algorithms of the social media networks we follow leading to more polarized thought and mental manipulation models
The Japanese techniques to a better life primarily Ikigai
Ikigai - Goodreads link
Ikigai - Wikipedia
Ikigai - Positive Psychology
Ikigai - Better Up
Ikigai - Blogger from a place which I liked reading. This has 10 interesting rules
How to Ikigai - Ted Talk that is popular. There are other Ted Talks also
If time permits, we can also touch upon Wabi Sabi and Ichigo Ichie .
Next Date to be decided
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