Sapiens: a brief History of Humankind

Homo sapiens
has no natural
rights, just as spiders, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights. But don’t
tell that to our servants, lest they murder us at night.
Such fears are well justified. A natural order is a stable order. There is no chance
that gravity will cease to function tomorrow, even if people stop believing in it. In
contrast, an imagined order is always in danger of collapse, because it depends
upon myths, and myths vanish once people stop believing in them. In order to
safeguard an imagined order, continuous and strenuous e orts are imperative.
Some of these e orts take the shape of violence and coercion. Armies, police
forces, courts and prisons are ceaselessly at work forcing people to act in
accordance with the imagined order. If an ancient Babylonian blinded his
neighbour, some violence was usually necessary in order to enforce the law of ‘an
eye for an eye’. When, in 1860, a majority of American citizens concluded that
African slaves are human beings and must therefore enjoy the right of liberty, it
took a bloody civil war to make the southern states acquiesce.
However, an imagined order cannot be sustained by violence alone. It requires
some true believers as well. Prince Talleyrand, who began his chameleon-like
career under Louis XVI, later served the revolutionary and Napoleonic regimes,
and switched loyalties in time to end his days working for the restored monarchy,
summed up decades of governmental experience by saying that ‘You can do many
things with bayonets, but it is rather uncomfortable to sit on them.’ A single priest
often does the work of a hundred soldiers far more cheaply and e ectively.
Moreover, no matter how e cient bayonets are, somebody must wield them. Why

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should the soldiers, jailors, judges and police maintain an imagined order in which
they do not believe? Of all human collective activities, the one most di cult to
organise is violence. To say that a social order is maintained by military force
immediately raises the question: what maintains the military order? It is
impossible to organise an army solely by coercion. At least some of the
commanders and soldiers must truly believe in something, be it God, honour,
motherland, manhood or money.
An even more interesting question concerns those standing at the top of the
social pyramid. Why should they wish to enforce an imagined order if they
themselves don’t believe in it? It is quite common to argue that the elite may do so
out of cynical greed. Yet a cynic who believes in nothing is unlikely to be greedy.
It does not take much to provide the objective biological needs of 
Homo sapiens
.
After those needs are met, more money can be spent on building pyramids, taking
holidays around the world, nancing election campaigns, funding your favourite
terrorist organisation, or investing in the stock market and making yet more
money – all of which are activities that a true cynic would nd utterly
meaningless. Diogenes, the Greek philosopher who founded the Cynical school,
lived in a barrel. When Alexander the Great once visited Diogenes as he was
relaxing in the sun, and asked if there were anything he might do for him, the
Cynic answered the all-powerful conqueror, ‘Yes, there is something you can do
for me. Please move a little to the side. You are blocking the sunlight.’
This is why cynics don’t build empires and why an imagined order can be
maintained only if large segments of the population – and in particular large
segments of the elite and the security forces – truly believe in it. Christianity
would not have lasted 2,000 years if the majority of bishops and priests failed to
believe in Christ. American democracy would not have lasted 250 years if the
majority of presidents and congressmen failed to believe in human rights. The
modern economic system would not have lasted a single day if the majority of
investors and bankers failed to believe in capitalism.
The Prison Walls
How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity,
democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined. You
always insist that the order sustaining society is an objective reality created by the
great gods or by the laws of nature. People are unequal, not because Hammurabi
said so, but because Enlil and Marduk decreed it. People are equal, not because
Thomas Je erson said so, but because God created them that way. Free markets

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are the best economic system, not because Adam Smith said so, but because these
are the immutable laws of nature.
You also educate people thoroughly. From the moment they are born, you
constantly remind them of the principles of the imagined order, which are
incorporated into anything and everything. They are incorporated into fairy tales,
dramas, paintings, songs, etiquette, political propaganda, architecture, recipes
and fashions. For example, today people believe in equality, so it’s fashionable for
rich kids to wear jeans, which were originally working-class attire. In the Middle
Ages people believed in class divisions, so no young nobleman would have worn a
peasant’s smock. Back then, to be addressed as ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’ was a rare
privilege reserved for the nobility, and often purchased with blood. Today all
polite correspondence, regardless of the recipient, begins with ‘Dear Sir or
Madam’.
The humanities and social sciences devote most of their energies to explaining
exactly how the imagined order is woven into the tapestry of life. In the limited
space at our disposal we can only scratch the surface. Three main factors prevent
people from realising that the order organising their lives exists only in their
imagination: