A New Book of Genesis & The Power of Story
We are surrounded by stories and they shape our reality
Unwinding the illusion
Hello, Friends. I hope you are well. ❤️
Something recently came to me in meditation:
To unwind the illusion
Unwind the language
Unwind the story
The illusion is the world around us. Not the natural world, but the social constructs of humanity that surround us and govern our lives. And by unwind, I imagine it means to breakdown and better understand. The more we unwind the illusion, the more free we become.
I’ll likely write more on this idea of “unwinding the illusion” in the future, but for now I want to revisit the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, which I believe is a great place to start.
Years ago I remember telling a close friend that anyone starting a church from scratch should do so through the filter of this book. Not that this book has much at all to do with the Divine, but because this book can be viewed as a sort of modern day Book of Genesis.
The original Genesis
While I recall knowing many people as a kid who took the Bible literally, believing the earth was only a few thousand years old and that characters like Noah and Methuselah were real people, the original Genesis is still fascinating for many reasons, setting historicity aside.
It not only gives us insight into how some ancient people thought about the world and where humanity came from, but Genesis also has stories such as Cain and Abel that provide powerful psychological insights millenia before their time. It also presents narratives borrowed from earlier cultures which attempt to explain events that occurred much further back in history, such as a great flood.
And Genesis has metaphorical insights such as humankind’s rise (or fall) out of hunting and gathering when we gained the knowledge of all things,1 which seemed to open the door to civilization as we know it, while simultaneously barring us forever from living in harmony with the natural world. (Carefully consider that sentence and you’ll never think of Adam & Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden in the same light again.)
A new Genesis
I refer to the book Sapiens as a new Book fo Genesis because it’s also about where humanity came from, what we’ve done as a species, and why we continue to do it.
While Sapiens has been available for several years now, few Christians I know have read it. And many who’ve spent their lives in church often have an incomplete, or at least an outdated, picture of the origins of humans.
Harari is a brilliant writer and storyteller, and what I love most about Sapiens is not just the story it tells of humanity’s history, but also the psychology of how we got here.
Here’s how the first chapter opens…
ABOUT 1 3 . 5 BILLION YEARS AGO, MATTER, energy, time and space came into being in what is known as the Big Bang. The story of these fundamental features of our universe is called physics.
About 300,000 years after their appearance, matter and energy started to coalesce into complex structures, called atoms, which then combined into molecules. The story of atoms, molecules and their interactions is called chemistry.
About 3.8 billion years ago, on a planet called Earth, certain molecules combined to form particularly large and intricate structures called organisms. The story of organisms is called biology.About 70,000 years ago, organisms belonging to the species Homo sapiens started to form even more elaborate structures called cultures. The subsequent development of these human cultures is called history.
Wow.
Harari goes on to speak of the relatively recently uncovered secret that we humans are not so set apart from the animals, but that we have quite an extended family: the great apes.
And the potentially more disturbing secret that we may have had some part in the extinction of some, if not all, of our more immediate family members: the many other human species such as the Neanderthals, the Denisovians, the Floresienses, and others. (A reminder that in the story of Cain and Abel, Cain survives, and he is likely us.)
From there we learn about why an ever enlarging human brain allowed us to develop tools, but required us to be born prematurely, at least as compared to other animals, and how this prematurity requires us to be social creatures in order to survive.
And yet, because we’ve been historical underdogs, under constant threat from the larger predators who might kill us and eat us, we remain even today an anxious and sometimes murderous species. Harari writes about our rapid jump to the top of the food chain…
That spectacular leap from the middle to the top had enormous consequences.
Other animals at the top of the pyramid, such as lions and sharks, evolved into
that position very gradually, over millions of years.This enabled the ecosystem to develop checks and balances that prevent lions and sharks from wreaking too much havoc. As lions became deadlier, so gazelles evolved to run faster, hyenas to cooperate better, and rhinoceroses to be more bad-tempered.
In contrast, humankind ascended to the top so quickly that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust. Moreover, humans themselves failed to adjust. Most top predators of the planet are majestic creatures. Millions of years of dominion have filled them with self-confidence.
Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana republic dictator. Having so recently been one of the underdogs of the savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous. Many historical calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have resulted from this over-hasty jump.
All of this in the first dozen pages.
From there we get chapters called “The Tree of Knowledge”, “A Day in the Life of Adam and Eve”, and “The Flood.” Of course these titles are metaphorical. “The Flood” has nothing to do with water, but rather the flood of humanity that swept across the world tens of thousands of years ago, wiping out many of the long-established megafauna in its wake.
Next comes the Agricultural Revolution and human societies, made possible by the power of stories, which when powerful enough can unite small groups into large groups, and further unite large groups into even larger groups.
The power of stories
Throughout most of our existence human tribes couldn’t sustain a number more than about 150 people before the tribe would split. On the one hand this created massive diversity as humans spread rapidly across the globe over the last 70,000 years. On the other hand it prevented any real large scale cooperation or innovation.
That is until humans learned to leverage the power of stories to organize and motivate. Suddenly the common belief in a single story could unite multiple tribes under a single cause or purpose.
And what are the most powerful stories in all of history?
Money.
Nations.
And religion.
You’re of course familiar with what followed this development:
The rapid rise of economies, governments, and state religion; along with socioeconomic classes, large scale war, and complex religious mythologies, some of which still survive to this day.
The debate over whether or not the Agricultural Revolution marked humankind’s rise or fall is not original to Harari or Sapiens, but he does raise interesting questions around what we as a species should be optimizing for.
We all must choose our stories
And if we know humans are susceptible to stories then we can understand why the stories we’re programed with early in life tend to stick, which is why some people still prefer to believe the earth is 6000 years old and that Adam and Eve were real individuals.
These earliest stories we learn as children can be difficult for some to unlearn or replace (especially when you’re surrounded by other adults who also believe them.)
Plus a newer, more scientific story where the earth is billions of years old and humans only emerged within the last few moments of deep time is one that is far more difficult to put ourselves at the center of, and if we know anything about humans it’s that we love to be the focus of attention.
The secular can inform the spiritual
It’s worth noting that even though Harari’s Sapiens is not in anyway a spiritual book, and the author describes himself as an atheist, he can still teach us a thing or two about the Divine.
Here’s the first:
"There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings."
Yuval Noah Harari
Of course he’s not saying there’s no Divine force at work around us, just that any sort of name or personification we apply to this divinity are purely human labels and invention. The same is true for all of our cultural and societal constructs.
And here’s another quote from Harari about our futile attempts to pin “God” down…
"When I think of the mystery of existence, I prefer to use other words, so as to avoid confusion. And unlike the God of the Islamic State and the Crusades--who cares a lot about names and above all His most holy name--the mystery of existence doesn't care an iota what names we apes give it."
Yuval Noah Harari
Incredible.
While I own a physical copy, I recently also purchased the audio version of Sapiens and have begun listening to it almost as a meditation, again with the goal of unwinding the illusion.
No perfect books
One last word on Sapiens…it isn’t a perfect book, mainly because no book of history is. Some historians, sociologists, and scientists may disagree with certain conclusions it makes.
But I’m guessing that’s OK with anyone reading this substack, because the last thing any of us want is another book claiming to be perfect.
Are there things that have allowed you to unwind the illusion? To become more free?
Please let us all know in the comments or you can reply to this email.
I hope you have an awesome week!! ❤️
I’ve heard it argued by Gary A. Rendsburg that the phrase “good and evil,” as in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, simply means “all things,” representing humankind’s ever increasing abilities to control the world.
I’ve been Christian all my 83 years, yet not a biblical funda-literalist, and have concluded much as the author of Sapiens has in your quotes, so think I needn’t read his book, and while I’m adamant about wanting my Anglican tradition’s liturgical texts to un-stick from ancient historical contexts (which present ones keep me from worshiping with them), I’ve given thanks for well-educated clergy who interpret biblical texts as 21st century preachers-theologians with intelligent broad knowledge of what can be known scientifically...while underlining that some of them are myths, not science...Genesis origin story as prime example. Christians may be able, if in communities where such interpretation is alive and well, to understand/appreciate that we don’t read such texts for scientific information...but for contemplation, examination more deeply, intuitively what they have to say for the way we live...I hope!! I’m also aware that while on the surface it would seem that a re-writing of Genesis as Yuval Noah Harari suggests is needed, just this week, naming our human origins resulting from the “Big Bang”, has been superseded by new scientific information brought in by the more powerful James Webb Space Telescope...so maybe Genesis as it is, needs resting to engage over and over!
No longer a theist, nor being able/willing even to speak of the Mystery - calling it “God”, since I don’t mean an interventionist force outside of life as we know and live it, I may be an “atheist”...with Harari saying: "There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings." (appreciating the idea someone else has suggested in a phrase “God, disguised as life”. So be it, even as I experience an innate Presence inexplicably real, I might describe as grace, intuition, beauty, love, friendship...moving in me and through all life as I know it and live it on this planet among the people I’m given to know and appreciate.
Do you happen to agree with any of my options?