Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.

History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets.

While all these Sapiens have grown increasingly impervious to the whims of nature, they have become ever more subject to the dictates of modern industry and government. The Industrial Revolution opened the way to a long line of experiments in social engineering and an even longer series of unpremeditated changes in daily life and human mentality. One example among many is the replacement of the rhythms of traditional agriculture with the uniform and precise schedule of industry.