Summary

Chapter 6 argues that modernity forces humanity to trade meaning for power and connects this relationship to our obsession with economic growth. Modernity, in Harari’s view, is a deal in which humans exchange meaning for power. Throughout history, we believed in a grand cosmic plan, such that even unfortunate events had some meaning. Now, we have the power to control these events, but have lost that sense of deeper meaning. More specifically, the author argues, the modern pursuit of power is based on an alliance between science and economic growth. We believe that the economy must always expand and are confident that it will. This is a relatively new idea; previous generations believed the size of the economic “pie” to be fixed and that an individual could enrich oneself only at the expense of another. Regardless of what ideology they claim to follow...