Telling different stories about the French Revolution

3.2 in my critique of Big History in Harari’s “Sapiens”

[Section of a drawing by

April Burke

]

In the Big History of Harari’s Sapiens, biology and mythology take priority.

From the Cognitive Revolution onwards, historical narratives replace biological theories as our primary means of explaining the development of Homo sapiens. To understand the rise of Christianity or the French Revolution, it is not enough to comprehend the interaction of genes hormones and organisms. It is necessary to take into account the interaction of ideas, images and fantasies as well.[i]

Regarding the making of history, in understanding its direction, Harari prioritizes things like ideas, myths, and fantasies as opposed to things like social structures and economic classes which he sees as generally following from myths, such that “the way people cooperate can be altered by changing the myths:”

Since large-scale human cooperation is based on myths, the way people cooperate can be altered by changing the myths – by telling different stories. Under the right circumstances myths can change rapidly. In 1789 the French population switched almost overnight from believing in the myth of the divine right of kings to believing in the myth of the sovereignty of the people.[ii]

Harari explains that in the French Revolution beliefs changed “almost overnight,” exemplifying how “[u]nder the right circumstances myths can change rapidly.”

Contrary to the idea that such ideological changes happened “almost overnight,” the historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin describes the French Revolution an “an event unique in human history, if only because it was perhaps the most persistently anticipated, discussed, deliberately undertaken reversal of an entire form of life in the West since the rise of Christianity.”[iii]

Harari’s broader point that myths can change given the right circumstances sounds agreeable to me, but what story does Harari tell about the circumstances from which the French Revolution emerged?

How does he understand the process by which a society goes about telling different stories?

The problem is Harari doesn’t provide a consistent way of thinking about it. He comments on the French Revolution often in the book, but the stories he tells are different.

A gloomy biochemistry

First, I should address that Harari considers not only ideas and myths but also genetics and biology. Again, in addition to “tak[ing] into account the interaction of ideas, images and fantasies,” he thinks we must also “comprehend the interaction of genes, hormones and organisms.” Harari considers the French Revolution in the light of biochemistry and its implications for happiness.

what good was the French Revolution? If people did not become any happier, then what was the point of all that chaos, fear, blood and war? Biologists would never have stormed the Bastille. People think that this political revolution or that social reform will make them happy, but their biochemistry tricks them time and again.

[…] If we invest billions in understanding our brain chemistry and developing appropriate treatments, we can make people far happier than ever before, without any need of revolutions. Prozac, for example, does not change regimes, but by raising serotonin levels it lifts people out of their depression.[iv]

Harari argues that politics and reforms are a waste; that revolutionaries are just people “with a gloomy biochemistry;” that “history turns out to be of minor importance, since most historical events have had no impact on our biochemistry;” and that the only historical development with real significance is the ability to manipulate our biochemistry with medicines like Prozac, what he thinks revolutionaries need.

I’ve covered this particular argument more thoroughly in a previous essay, but it’s worth asking here, with the biochemical explanation, how do we make sense of Harari’s earlier claim that myths changed “almost overnight” during the French Revolution?

If biochemistry is programmed to be relatively stable, as Harari contends, how does it cause periodic revolutions? How does it cause a revolutionary transformation in the stories being told within society?

Could the revolutionaries’ “gloomy biochemistry” have something to do with circumstances? In Harari’s view, apparently not.

As he explains, evolutionary psychology tells us that essentially the whole of our desires and happiness is based in our bio-chemical makeup—our “subjective wellbeing is not determined by external parameters:”

Like all other states, subjective wellbeing is not determined by external parameters such as salary, social relations or political rights. Rather, it is determined by a complex system of nerves, neurons, synapses and various biochemical substances such as serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin.[v]

In short, for Harari, all mental states can be reduced from biochemistry to genes.

Hence, even on his own terms, biochemistry doesn’t explain how the telling of stories changes in society—how they would change at all, much less change with a revolutionary potential. Although in this instance Harari explains the French Revolution as a matter for the field of biology, we still don’t know how in Harari’s view myths can change “almost overnight.”

Setting aside what he says about biochemistry, in writing about the French Revolution, does Harari at all consider economic circumstances?

In one passage at least, it would seem so, but that’s complicated too.

One of history’s most spectacular financial crashes

In one place, late in the book, he gives what looks like an economic explanation, placing the French Revolution as the culminating point of his section on the Mississippi Bubble, a financial crisis in France which involved a speculative frenzy over land in the French territories along the Mississippi River.

The Mississippi Bubble was one of history’s most spectacular financial crashes. […] The way in which the Mississippi Company used its political clout to manipulate share prices and fuel the buying frenzy caused the public to lose faith in the French banking system and in the financial wisdom of the French king. […] Eventually, in the 1780s, Louis XVI, who had ascended to the throne on his grandfather’s death, realised that half his annual budget was tied to servicing the interest on his loans, and that he was heading towards bankruptcy. Reluctantly, in 1789, Louis XVI convened the Estates General, the French parliament that had not met for a century and a half, in order to find a solution to the crisis. Thus began the French Revolution. [vi]

To me, this would serve as a sufficient account for understanding what Harari means by the circumstances in which “[i]n 1789 the French population switched almost overnight from believing in the myth of the divine right of kings to believing in the myth of the sovereignty of the people.” As is typical throughout Sapiens, Harari emphasizes here the role of belief in that these events “caused the public to lose faith in the French banking system,” but the crisis is obviously the precondition for the loss of such faith in this case.

However, in Sapiens, the topic of the French Revolution remains at the heart of arguments Harari makes against materialism and understanding history in the light of economic causes.

It was not food shortages that caused it

Early in the book, explaining, rightly so, that just because a society can produce enough resources for everyone doesn’t necessarily mean they will agree on how resources should be distributed, Harari states “[i]t was not food shortages that caused most of history’s wars and revolutions,” adding that “[t]he French Revolution was spearheaded by affluent lawyers, not by famished peasants.”[vii]

In other words, by Harari’s logic, the French Revolution being led by “affluent lawyers” means that we can rule out as a causal factor the famine that was taking place in the lead up to the revolution—as if the revolution would have been possible without the participation of the peasants.

Of course, food shortages are not the only kind of economic crisis—the Mississippi Bubble is a case in point. However, Harari takes this same rhetorical line of argument when he challenges the supremacy of “the materialist school” of history directly.

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Harari argues that the materialist school reigns supreme in ancient history because for ancient history we lack the kinds of ideological and cultural evidence we have for causes in modern history. Whereas, he claims, “We have enough documents, letters and memoirs to prove that World War Two was not caused by food shortages or demographic pressures:”

Scientists usually seek to attribute historical developments to cold economic and demographic factors. It sits better with their rational and mathematical methods. In the case of modern history, scholars cannot avoid taking into account non-material factors such as ideology and culture. The written evidence forces their hand. We have enough documents, letters and memoirs to prove that World War Two was not caused by food shortages or demographic pressures. But we have no documents from Natufian culture, so when dealing with ancient periods the materialist school reigns supreme. It is difficult to prove that preliterate people were motivated by faith rather than economic necessity.[viii]

We obviously do have vastly greater ideological and culture artifacts intact from the recent past than we do from the ancient past, and of course “non-material factors” like ideology and culture are important for understanding the origins of World War Two. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that prioritization of material factors is not “supreme” in terms of understanding the causes of major historical events in modern history.

How does proving that “World War Two was not caused by food shortages or demographic pressures,” by reference to “documents, letters and memoirs” or otherwise, mean that the materialist school no longer “reigns supreme”? At what point do the letters and documents outweigh the material factors of the Great Depression?

How does the French Revolution being “spearheaded by affluent lawyers” mean that we can rule out as a potential cause of the revolution the very real food shortage and famine that was taking place in the lead up to the revolution?

To the larger question about material vs. non-material factors, we should also note that to understand the overthrow of a monarchy in a revolution led by affluent lawyers and backed by famished peasants is to understand the event in terms of class, which of course conditions, functions within and is reproduced by economy.

Even if there’s no food shortage, a disagreement over distribution of resources is obviously economic in nature. Distribution is an essential topic of economics—if not the most essential—and questions of distribution ought to be asked when you have economic crises occurring even amid abundance.

If the French Revolution’s “almost overnight” change in the telling of stories was not at all related to food shortages or the crisis more broadly, and the loss of faith in France’s financial system was not something the “materialist school” of history would “reign supreme” over, is there any real logic to Harari’s account of what makes ideas and cultures change?

Historians can speculate, but not provide any definitive answer

For Harari, history and the ideas driving it are chaotic, random and coincidental, and, therefore, historians cannot make claims about causality. Instead, historians can only “reconstruct the series of specific events that led from one point to another.” He erroneously claims, for example, “[t]hey can describe how Christianity took over the Roman Empire, but they cannot explain why this particular possibility was realised.”[ix]

In other words, according to Harari, there is no way to understand the causes of historical events. While he admits that “[g]eographical, biological and economic forces create constraints,” he doesn’t consider the possibility of such “constraints” having knowable tendencies or laws by which we could understand an historical event.

Harari himself gives countless historical explanations. Reducing a major historical event like the French Revolution to biochemistry, or even vaguely referring to ideology, is an explanation, but when it comes to explaining how ideologies are created, adopted, transformed, Harari offers many inconsistent explanations and often alludes to mystery.

Thus, in tracking his arguments, we find it is Harari who is telling different stories, about the French Revolution and the making of history in general.

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Notes

[i]. Harari, Sapiens (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), 38.

[ii]. Ibid.

[iii]. “It was well for those whom it had ruined to talk of it as an inexplicable cataclysm, a sudden outbreak of mass depravity or insanity, a violent eruption of divine anger, or a mysterious thunderstorm out of a clear sky which swept away the foundations of the old world. This, no doubt, is how it may genuinely have appeared to the more bigoted or stupid royalist exiles in Lausanne or Koblenz or London.” Isaiah Berlin, “Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism,” in The Crooked Timber of Humanity, edited by Henry Hardy (Princeton University Press: 2013), 101.

[iv]. Harari, 386.

[v]. Ibid, 388-9.

[vi]. Ibid, 324.

[vii]. Ibid, 102.

[viii]. Ibid, 89.

[ix]. Ibid, 238.