## Notes - Everything is a [[Collective myths|Social construct]] ## Highlights cognitive revolution - inspired trade, hunt, collaboration agricultural revolution - invention of management, cooperation since peer to peer was impossible - before religion was based on animism, but since people started to control animals and food they were no longer considered powerful gods, and had to turn to something else requirements of an imagined order what keeps us from realizing our imagined order? - western promotes individualism by disregarding what other people think, rooms provide privacy - eastern promotes collectivism, determined by what other people think about you which includes social status what is the significance? - desires are influenced by imagined order - following heart is based on imagined order of romanticism - lots of our desires are not direct biological urges, but they capitalize on some invention of writing - not for literature or language but to record and transfer data we use hierarchicies to determine where to put our efforts genders the immorality homosexuality is a theological myth level 1 chaotic system prediction no influence, level 2 yes things like history are not inevitable and are emergent capitalism in assumes growth and is given credit because innovation allows for more resources and more productivity consumerism was needed to fit newer supply time went from agricultural to industrial to synchronize workers in then ame of productivity community before it would be nuclear, extended, then small community now we rely on external insitutions happiness expectations - based on difference between expectations and reality biology - hormones finding meaning - lessened because of secularism all above are based on feelings present moment question of self if people can live your experiences ## Highlights Sapiens have managed to found cities, nations, and empires of hundreds of millions of subjects. How did they cross the 150 threshold? This is where common myths, or collective fictions, come into play. Cities, nations, and empires aren’t real entities. They exist only in the collective mind of the group. ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/bac6caa4-a6c3-4e8b-ad5a-8ae55a1800e2)) Without collective fictions, the systems built on them collapse. And as we’ll see, most of our modern systems are built on these imagined realities. These myths are powerful, and the fact that they’re not rooted in objective reality doesn’t undermine them. ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/09b84fe5-d39d-4728-b43c-8dc11fff72b7)) Collective fictions allowed early Sapiens to cooperate within extremely large groups of people they’d never met, and it rapidly changed their social behavior. ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/a100ef70-5037-4857-89e2-dba3d436be9f)) ### New highlights added December 16, 2023 at 10:21 PM Cultures Take Advantage of Humans We think that cultures exist to serve us, but we’re actually serving them. Scholars in different fields have different analogies to describe this process. Therefore, this concept has three names: mimetics, postmodernism, and game theory. ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/338d3e20-87de-48e9-8ccc-dcdca68d0334)) Mimetics: Culture as a Parasite of Humanity ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/ed61165e-8a70-4dc2-8c6e-bde823da38f1)) Postmodernism: Culture as a Plague of Society ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/e6bf253d-4630-4a8d-910d-78572a68d036)) the process of humans serving cultures “postmodernism.” For example, they talk about nationalism as a plague that infiltrated the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/d75d6e73-c347-4d4f-8529-c4a84188f988)) Game Theory: Culture as a Game That No One Wins ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/82677ad3-b36d-4f54-9df4-b14fad8a9067)) ### New highlights added December 18, 2023 at 10:19 AM The modern agreement to represent future (and therefore imaginary) resources with money today is called credit. Credit is founded on the assumption that the future will have more abundant resources than the present. ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/b73e18c4-9f47-4c0e-90de-337fa211b0b8))