Summary

In the final two chapters, Harari argues that liberalism is likely to be replaced by one of two “techno-religions.” The first of these, “techno-humanism” (351) is described in Chapter 10. Techno-humanism would be a less dramatic transition, as it retains many traditional humanist values while also agreeing that Homo sapiens has run its evolutionary course. As a result, we will begin using technology to upgrade the species into Homo deus. This would represent a second Cognitive Revolution, in which the human mind is reshaped dramatically, and can be viewed as a form of Evolutionary Humanism without ethnic cleansing. Notably, these cognitive advances would give us access to a wider array of mental states. Psychology knows very little about mental states outside of Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies and states considered sub-normative (353).Consequently, developing and experiencing new mental states is comparable to beginning...