Unraveling Web
"That's how history unfolds. People weave a web of meaning, believe in it with all their heart, but sooner or later the web unravels, and when we look back we cannot understand how anyone could have taken it seriously." ― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, p. 150
In a section of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, titled "Web of Meaning" Yuval Noah Harari breaks down how humans develop meaning through a common belief in something through the examples of money, politics, religion and religious rites. This may oversimplify his arguments a bit, but he does a much better job of explaining it there, so I'll just suggest you go read it. I really liked this quote however, toward the end of the section. I think many would argue that Harari is pretty adept at tearing down and unraveling beliefs throughout all of Homo Deus, where he critiques in great detail the institutions of religion, humanism, liberalism, and politics amongst others. Granted he does a lot of the same in his prior book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, but here it's leading to new frontiers in human history, not simply recanting the past.
As for the Absurd here, maybe there isn't any? I believe that overall Homo Deus trends more toward Nihilism than anything else, but it's in these comments like the quote above that (when I read it at least), I found humor and a little absurdity. Even if that humor is portrayed in an otherwise very serious book. I don't know how I feel yet about his eventual thoughts on the algorithms that will overcome us and make us obsolete (spoiler alert), but I think he's pretty clear, that there is no meaning in life, and that it's not serious to think that even in our next evolution of beliefs and the coming world of Dataism, that we will find any. In fact it's quite the opposite, our intelligent machines will be leaving us behind and operating without any meaning from us at all, the value coming from the mass of data, and not the individual. Through quotes like the one above, it's clear that we won't take ourselves or our attempts to find meaning in life through the aforementioned beliefs and institutions seriously, even in the near future, and certainly not once Dataism is upon us.
Therein lies more of the absurdity in his work to me. That in this quest to find and ascribe meaning to life through science and technology we discover and can prove through the same math and science that got us there, that we don't matter, and never did, and free will is an illusion - absurd stories we tell ourselves (my take on his words). Harari doesn't even mention Camus in Homo Deus, and certainly isn't concerned with the Absurd as we normally recognize it. But, as I'm taking liberties with what I include here, I think his comments related to about how pointless it is to look for meaning in these institutions when there isn't any, and that it's even more pointless to continue to do so in light of how we're progressing as a species and technologically fits well for contemplations of the Absurd. I may revisit him more later, when I get around to reading his latest book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and can formulate thoughts I feel like sharing on the latter parts of Homo Deus.
P.S. I'm pretty sure Rick does this proof in an episode of Rick and Morty, showing how Summer and Morty don't matter. Something for a later post…
