Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
It takes a special kind of book to leave you haunted, feeling like not only is your life unimportant, but so are the lives of every single person. That may not be the take away Harari was going for, but it’s what I got, and I loved it. For those who look at this tome and see 400+ pages they’ll never get through, the book basically says this, Human’s giving meaning to themselves has led to many achievements, like agriculture, language, landing a man on the moon, Snapchat. This is humanism, and humanism worships humans. So, Harari concludes if we’re worshiping ourselves all the time, we’ll relentlessly push for humans to achieve happiness, power, and immortality. And, as technology conintues to threaten our human ability to give meaning to our lives, Harari suggests we’ll one day replace humankind, aided by technology, with super-man, or “homo deus” (latin for human god). I don’t recommend reading this before bed, as it will lead to long bouts of crying into a pillow.
