Jika anda belum membaca buku Sapiens karya Yuval Noah Harari (YNH) saya sarankan anda cepat-cepat membaca buku itu karena itu adalah buku yang meringkas sejarah umat manusia selama ribuan tahun dengan bahasa yang begitu sederhana dan membuka banyak benang-benang kusut dalam narasi sejarah, ekonomi, politik, agama dan banyak isu-isu yang sangat penting. Saya sudah banyak membaca buku non-fiksi dan sejarah akan tetapi Sapiens benar-benar stand out sebagai salah satu buku dengan penjelasan sangat gamblang dan apa-adanya. Berikut ini hanya beberapa kutipan menarik dari Sapiens dan Homo Deus karya YNH.
1. Sejarah itu bukan berupa satu narasi, tetapi ada ribuan narasi alternatif yang berbeda, setiap kali anda mencertakan satu narasi saja, anda juga telah membungkam ribuan narasi-narasi lain tersebut.
"History isn’t a single narrative, but thousands of alternative narratives. Whenever we choose to tell one, we are also choosing to silence others."
- Homo Deus. YNH.
2. Sudah ada komputer (Artificial Intelligence) yang menscan dan membaca berita-berita di internet dan media sosial secara otomatis dan melakukan keputusan menjual atau membeli saham secara otomatis tanpa input dari manusia. Keputusan ini bisa di lakukan dalam waktu milisecond, karena kunci menang atau kalah dalam jual-beli saham adalah kecepatan reaksi komputer dalam mengeksekusi beli atau jual saham pada titik yang paling tepat. Sehingga ketika akun twitter berita Associated Press di retas oleh hacker dan menulis status bahwa Gedung Putih telah di serang dan Presiden Barrack Obama telah terluka akibat serangan itu, ini adalah berita palsu yang di tulis hacker tersebut, akan tetapi karena alogaritma komputer pasar saham membaca berita tersebut, secara otomatis dia langsung menjual saham secara besar-besaran dan harga index saham Dow Jones (kumpulan 30 saham terbesar di Amerika) langsung anjlok dan turun 150 poin, kehilangan nilai 136 miliar dollar. Hacker menulit tweet tersebut pada 23 April 2013 pada pukul 13:07, dalam hitungan detik harga saham langsung anjlok, dan pada pukul 13:10, Associated press mengklarifikasi bahwa status twitter itu hoax, alogaritma komputer berbalik arah dan pada pukul 13:13, Index Saham Dow Jones sudah meraih kembali hampir semua nilai yang hilang 6 menit sebelumnya. Hal yang serupa terjadi pada tahun 2010 dimana Dow Jones kehilangan 1000 poin dan kehilangan 1 trilun dollar, dan kembali normal setelah 3 menit, ini di sebut 'Flash Crash', hal ini terjadi karena manusia telah memberikan otoritas penuh kepada alogaritma komputer untuk melakukan eksekusi jual/beli saham secara otomatis dan super cepat. Ini mengalahkan trader saham biasa yang di lakukan manusia, karena kecepatan reaksi manusia kalah jauh di banding kecepata super-computer.
"Stock-exchange traders are also in danger. Most financial trading today is already
being managed by computer algorithms that can process in a second more data than ahuman can in a year and can react to the data much faster than a human can blink. On 23
April 2013, Syrian hackers broke into Associated Press’s official Twitter account. At
13:07 they tweeted that the White House had been attacked and President Obama was
hurt. Trade algorithms that constantly monitor newsfeeds reacted in no time and began
selling stocks like mad. The Dow Jones went into free fall and within sixty seconds lost
150 points, equivalent to a loss of $136 billion! At 13:10 Associated Press clarified that
the tweet was a hoax. The algorithms reversed gear and by 13:13 the Dow Jones had
recuperated almost all the losses."
sharper shock. Within five minutes – from 14:42 to 14:47 – the Dow Jones dropped by
1,000 points, wiping out $1 trillion. It then bounced back, returning to its pre-crash level
in a little more than three minutes. That’s what happens when super-fast computer
programs are in charge of our money. Experts have been trying ever since to understand
what happened in this so-called ‘Flash Crash’. They know algorithms were to blame, but
are still not sure exactly what went wrong. Some traders in the USA have already filed
lawsuits against algorithmic trading, arguing that it unfairly discriminates against human
beings who simply cannot react fast enough to compete. Quibbling whether this really
constitutes a violation of rights might provide lots of work and lots of fees for lawyers."
- Homo Deus. YNH.
3. Manusia bisa membangun kerajaan dan negara besar karena kemampuan mereka mengarang fiksi. Fiksi yang di karang berupa Tuhan-Tuhan, Negara, Uang, Dan Sistem-Sistem Sosial, Pemerintahan dan Ekonomi yang mampu membuat jutaan manusia bekerjasama untuk tujuan tertentu yang akan menguntungkan mereka secara kolektif. Di dalam buku Sapiens YNH akan menunjukkan bukti2 menarik bagaiamana manusia pertama kali menciptakan legenda, uang, bank, negara, bagaimana manusia berkembang dari beberapa individu nomaden dan pemburu pengumpul menjadi petani dan peternak hingga membangun kerajaan dan negara dengan jutaan penduduk yang mempercayai legenda dan cerita yang sama. Akan banyak miskonsepsi anda yang di bongkar dan di jungkir balik oleh penjelasan tajam YNH di dalam buku Sapiens. Jika ada satu saja buku yang bisa saya sarankan untuk di baca semua orang, maka buku itu adalah Sapiens. Anda juga akan melihat betapa banyak kerusakan dan kepunahan binatang yang di akibatkan kemajuan peradaban manusia.
“Good Guys and Bad Guys in History
It is tempting to divide history neatly into good guys and bad guys, with all empires among the bad guys. For the vast majority of empires were founded on blood, and maintained their power through oppression and war. Yet most of today’s cultures are based on imperial legacies. If empires are by definition bad, what does that say about us?
It is tempting to divide history neatly into good guys and bad guys, with all empires among the bad guys. For the vast majority of empires were founded on blood, and maintained their power through oppression and war. Yet most of today’s cultures are based on imperial legacies. If empires are by definition bad, what does that say about us?
There are schools of thought and political movements that seek to purge human culture of imperialism, leaving behind what they claim is a pure, authentic civilisation, untainted by sin. These ideologies are at best naïve; at worst they serve as disingenuous window-dressing for crude nationalism and bigotry. Perhaps you could make a case that some of the myriad cultures that emerged at the dawn of recorded history were pure, untouched by sin and unadulterated by other societies. But no culture since that dawn can reasonably make that claim, certainly no culture that exists now on earth. All human cultures are at least in part the legacy of empires and imperial civilisations, and no academic or political surgery can cut out the imperial legacies without killing the patient.
“Even if we were to completely disavow the legacy of a brutal empire in the hope of reconstructing and safeguarding the ‘authentic’ cultures that preceded it, in all probability what we will be defending is nothing but the legacy of an older and no less brutal empire. Those who resent the mutilation of Indian culture by the British Raj inadvertently sanctify the legacies of the Mughal Empire and the conquering sultanate of Delhi. And whoever attempts to rescue ‘authentic Indian culture’ from the alien influences of these Muslim empires sanctifies the legacies of the Gupta Empire, the Kushan Empire and the Maurya Empire. If an extreme Hindu nationalist were to destroy all the buildings left by the British conquerors, such as Mumbai’s main train station, what about the structures left by India’s Muslim conquerors, such as the Taj Mahal?
Nobody really knows how to solve this thorny question of cultural inheritance. Whatever path we take, the first step is to acknowledge the complexity of the dilemma and to accept that simplistically dividing the past into good guys and bad guys leads nowhere. Unless, of course, we are willing to admit that we usually follow the lead of the bad guys.
Nobody really knows how to solve this thorny question of cultural inheritance. Whatever path we take, the first step is to acknowledge the complexity of the dilemma and to accept that simplistically dividing the past into good guys and bad guys leads nowhere. Unless, of course, we are willing to admit that we usually follow the lead of the bad guys.
AN ANIMAL OF NO SIGNIFICANCE
“SEVENTY THOUSAND YEARS AGO, HOMO sapiens was still an insignificant animal minding its own business in a corner of Africa. In the following millennia it transformed itself into the master of the entire planet and the terror of the ecosystem. Today it stands on the verge of becoming a god, poised to acquire not only eternal youth, but also the divine abilities of creation and destruction.
Unfortunately, the Sapiens regime on earth has so far produced little that we can be proud of. We have mastered our surroundings, increased food production, built cities, established empires and created far-flung trade networks. But did we decrease the amount of suffering in the world? Time and again, massive increases in human power did not necessarily improve the well being of individual Sapiens, and usually caused immense misery to other animals.
In the last few decades we have at last made some real progress as far as the human condition is concerned, with the reduction of famine, plague and war. Yet the situation of other animals is deteriorating more rapidly than ever before, and the improvement in the lot of humanity is too recent and fragile to be certain of.
Moreover, despite the astonishing things that humans are capable of doing, we remain unsure of our goals and we seem to be as discontented as ever. We have advanced from canoes to galleys to steamships to space shuttles – but nobody knows where we’re going. We are more powerful than ever before, but have very little idea what to do with all that power. Worse still, humans seem to be more irresponsible than ever. Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one. We are consequently wreaking havoc on our fellow animals and on the surrounding ecosystem, seeking little more than our own comfort and amusement, yet never finding satisfaction.
Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?”
Unfortunately, the Sapiens regime on earth has so far produced little that we can be proud of. We have mastered our surroundings, increased food production, built cities, established empires and created far-flung trade networks. But did we decrease the amount of suffering in the world? Time and again, massive increases in human power did not necessarily improve the well being of individual Sapiens, and usually caused immense misery to other animals.
In the last few decades we have at last made some real progress as far as the human condition is concerned, with the reduction of famine, plague and war. Yet the situation of other animals is deteriorating more rapidly than ever before, and the improvement in the lot of humanity is too recent and fragile to be certain of.
Moreover, despite the astonishing things that humans are capable of doing, we remain unsure of our goals and we seem to be as discontented as ever. We have advanced from canoes to galleys to steamships to space shuttles – but nobody knows where we’re going. We are more powerful than ever before, but have very little idea what to do with all that power. Worse still, humans seem to be more irresponsible than ever. Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one. We are consequently wreaking havoc on our fellow animals and on the surrounding ecosystem, seeking little more than our own comfort and amusement, yet never finding satisfaction.
Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?”
- Sapiens. YNH.
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